“I’ve got your birthday check in an envelope,” she said. “Spend it on something fun.”

I got a separate check from my dad. It didn’t come with instructions.

I took them to the bank this morning, and then I went to Best Buy. “Just on the off chance they have Excalibur.”

They didn’t. But they did have the James Bond Ultimate Collections. And they were on sale.

I couldn’t stop there, though. Ultimate they may be, but they’re missing the most recent movies, and they’re missing the original film version of Casino Royale.

And we just can’t have that, now can we, Mr. Bond?

(By the way, that rather shiny silvery surface my Bond Bonaza is resting on there is the glass top of our rockin’ new patio set, where I am, even now, drinking a glass of wine and writing this post.)

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It’s gonna be a great evening!

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Last night was the West Hollywood Halloween crush. NovySan’s daughter hadn’t ever been, so off we went. We had to park a good two miles away (and unfortunately, the daughter in question was wearing heels), and even though we walked right by 8 Oz. Burger, we decided it would take too long to sit down and eat. So, we found an excellent taco truck in front of a gas station, and fortified with burritos and tortas, forged on to La Cienega.

If you look at the video closely, you probably still can’t make out the protesters in front of the laser show. They weren’t protesting the lasers – they were protesting fun. Homosexuality, yes, but also a long list of other sins, all of which would be punished in fire and vengeance. They were quiet, though, and the crowd seemed to be leaving them alone. At the end, some of you will recognize NovySan, as a Chaplin impersonator (a very specific Chaplin impersonator – his great-grandfather, in fact), and his daughter (who morphed during the course of the day from an undead pin-up to a vintage Bond girl).

And me? I was Caribou Barbie.

(I did manage to get that left antler bent into a more natural shape this morning. The basic shape cam from Crafting for Cheapskates.)

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From the time I was maybe 12 or 13, all the way through high school, I made some extra money in the summers shooting gophers in the horse pasture. Mom would pay me $1 a head for killing the squeaky little menaces, and never asked to see the corpses. One lovely, sunny morning, I was out in the eastern half of the pasture, near the road, when I spotted a gopher to the west of me. I fired. My aim was a bit low, and the bullet skipped off the hard-packed ground and ricocheted through the double pane of plate glass in the bow-fronted window of the house.

I didn’t realize it had happened until I came in and my father offered me the bullet. It was only a .22, so it hadn’t gotten far after punching through both panes of glass. He’d found it on the window seat. “Lucky for you that didn’t keep going and hit your mother’s china cabinet,” he said. “And that you hit the house, instead of one of your mother’s yearling foals.”

“Dad,” I said. “I would never aim toward the horses.”

Guess I shouldn’t have aimed toward the house, either…

I still have that bullet somewhere. Someday, I’m going to make a navel jewel out of it, like the dancer in The Man with the Golden Gun.

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