halloween costumes

So ... the Halloween Party at the National Humanities Center didn't exist when I was there eight years ago, and a disappointing number of Fellows seemed to think that it still didn't exist ... but I digress.  The staff were there en masse, including Brooke, the librarian (on the right), who walked away with the Scary category, dressed as someone from the Bacchae (you can't see the severed head that she's carrying ...).  Here are some prize winners ... right on the left, the Project Themed category - there's a statue of a Civil War confederacy soldier, complete with pigeon shit.  And there are a sweet pair of Chinese eunuchs, and a Ghanian something or the other.

I much enjoyed making my own costume, though who knew one could cut one's fingers on silver foil duct tape?  I was the Spirit of Flash Photography.  A hula hoop; much silver crape paper.  And then I was so happy to find LED illuminated balloons in Target.  You'd have thought that - given my project, after all, that would have been easy to work out (and presumably was, after we all had to introduce our selves, our costumes) - but evidently not.  One colleague asked if I was an anemone.  WHY would I have gone as an anemone?  And who voted for me in the "scary" category?  Maybe, judging by the picture below, it's because my feet seem to be on strangely, but that's hardly deliberate.   And yes, of course I wished that I'd won ... ah well ...