How is your spooky season going? Well, if your fright-o-meter is already at capacity, you might want to skip this rundown because my writing is really scary! Here are tonight’s five topics…

More Face Painting – Back in August, I devoted a whole blog post to face painting and how my kids are infatuated with the art. Sloan and Beau couldn’t pass up the opportunity once again this past weekend. At Saturday’s Autumn On the Ave event in the Union district and at the Brick West Pumpkin Fest on Sunday, the kids took advantage of the free face painting stations. Both artists were really talented as the faces of Sloan and Beau became canvases for Spider-Man, a unicorn, and a turtle.

The kids naturally gravitated toward the face painting stations while we were out in the community last weekend.

In the EWU Classroom – A project I have spearheaded at work is the updating of our photo and b-roll libraries. On Tuesday and today, I worked with crews to gather student affairs-based content and academic-based content. Today was all about academics as we visited seven different classrooms/labs on both the Cheney campus and Spokane campus. From ceramics to robotics to biology to photography (and so much more), we captured a lot! It was really cool to see the students so focused and to observe the professors engaging with them. Can’t wait to put all this incredible content to use in our marketing materials.

It was a packed day as we visited seven different Eastern Washington University classrooms/labs.

National Pasta Day – Today is National Pasta Day and I actually wrote an entire post to commemorate this special date last year. I celebrated by listing my top 5 favorite pasta noodles (I am sure you are so surprised, right?). You can tap the link for my entire list but I will throw you a bone—or a pasta noodle—by revealing my #1 noodle: it’s angel hair! I appreciate how I can effortlessly twirl this angelic type of pasta on my fork and it seems like all sauces naturally pair well with it.

I like nothing more than bowl of pasta and a glass of milk.

Flavored Cotton Candy – On Friday night, Sloan and I enjoyed a daddy-daughter high school football date night. We went to nearby University High School to watch the Titans defeat Ferris High School. Sloan most likely won’t remember the final score nor the homecoming halftime show, but I do think she will remember the cotton candy stand. Besides the giant servings, this stand was particularly memorable because of the different flavors you could order. Whether you wanted green apple, POG, or even bacon-flavored cotton candy, it was like you were in a Baskin-Robbins with the variety. Sloan opted for watermelon.

Sloan and I pose for a photo with her watermelon cotton candy at the 10/11/24 football game at University High School where the host Titans defeated Ferris High School.

The Office That Ages – As Donald Trump and Kamala Harris battle for the White House, they know that if they win the presidency, unimaginable stress will be waiting for them. And, as we have seen throughout history, that stress will definitely show physically. Make no mistake about it, being President of the United States will age you and Abraham Lincoln is perhaps the most popular example. This photo shows him in 1860 compared to 1865. In my honors humanities class as a junior in high school, my end-of-year project was a study on the aging effects of the presidency. My two group members and I constructed a White House replica and filled it with before and after photos of past U.S. Presidents. We supported our thesis that presidents age more rapidly than an average American with literature, mathematics equations, and death rate data (of course if we did this study today, Jimmy Carter would have skewed our results).

Abraham Lincoln in 1860 (left) vs. Abraham Lincoln in 1865 (right).

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I hope you will be doing the monster mash all weekend long. Thanks for reading and we will catch up on Monday. Don’t Blink.