“Anyone who says they’re not afraid at the time of a hurricane is either a fool or a liar, or a little bit of both.”
– Anderson Cooper

So…Halloween was good, the hurricane was bad, and the upcoming elections are middling.  Sounds about right.  Here are your links, ducklings, equal parts frivolous and sober.

Ancient Chinese… piggy banks.

A cruel friend recently brought this to my attention, shortly after I found out about Disney buying Star Wars.  File under: please Odin, no!

We’re three weeks from descending on my family on the East Coast, and I’m beyond excited.  Sometimes you just need to hang out in the backwoods with no TV with fun people and good food.  I’m currently scouring for a good puzzle because we usually do huge ones when we get together.  The reigning favorite  is a thousand piece replica of the Sistine Chapel which just celebrated a birthday yesterday.

I am a nail polish junkie, but I have…opinions about these.  Thoughts?

I’ve been on a bit of an cosmos kick recently, reading up on some scientific research developments, reading some (very, very easy!) books on physics – my high school education was really excellent in the humanities, but terribly lacking in science and I constantly feel like I’m playing catch up.  But I find astronomy fascinating.  Here are a couple of my favorite articles found this week.

People make me tired.

Halloween has passed, but thanks to this site I’m seriously plotting for next year.

I, for one, welcome our new aquatic overlords.

How gorgeous are these shades from Ilia?  See, apart from being a polish junkie, I’m a lipstick fiend and the bolder the better.  Bang Bang is calling my name with it’s dark siren’s song…but then, so is Crimson and Clover from the 2012 line.  Poverty may make a girl willing to sacrifice, but we can still window shop!

The only thing I ever found in my fireplace was scraps of Santa’s torn pants and his boot print – planted.  This is much cooler, if slightly macabre, I think.

There are a lot of people impacted by superstorm Sandy and there are a lot of ways to help.  The Red Cross is in desperate need of blood, money, and donations.  Please consider helping out if you can!  I still can’t give blood (because of that one trip to China years ago!), but I have a couple of bags of things I was going to drop off locally that I’m going to get to the local Red Cross chapter instead.  There is no such thing as a small donation, kittens.

Friend and Favorite of the Blog, Caitlin Kelly has a personal piece on Broadside about the aftermath of Sandy that is well worth a read.  Having lived through several typhoons myself, I think her points are absolutely spot on.  You don’t know how little you can actually live on until something big comes along and makes life extremely hard.  Conversely, you realize just how dependent we are on other people (governments, companies, roads) to get those few necessities.

Last item of official business for American minions: VOTE.  If you think yours doesn’t matter, if you live in a primarily red/blue state and believe voting blue/red won’t make a difference, if you think voting is a waste of time or inconvenient – do it anyway.  It matters, and it’s important.  Vote or forfeit the right to any complaints/victory dances for four years, no exceptions.