Halloween Odds and Ends

Tomorrow is Halloween!  Personally, I could take it or leave it as a "holiday".  Being that it falls during the week is the part I like least about it.  It's not the 31st that is really the problem but rather the day AFTER halloween when you are a teacher.  While I don't mind an hour or two of "celebrating" on the day of, dealing with sugarcoated tired little kids for 7+ hours the next day is NOT my idea of a good time.  I have a pretty good group this year, so fingers crossed that they don't completely lose their minds (or that I don't lose mine) on Thursday.
For years, I've been saying I want to get a proposition on the California ballot (it only takes 350,000 signatures) to celebrate Halloween on the last Friday of the month rather than on whatever day the 31st happens to fall on - which is the day before a school day 5 out 7 times!  Just this past week, I read an article that there is an online petition on change.org for making that move.  Actually, theirs is moving it to Saturday.  Friday is a much better choice...more days to recover before going back to school or work, but I'll take a Saturday over a Wednesday any day.
Speaking of Halloween articles, I read one this weekend about some towns making it "illegal" for children older than 12 (some 14, some 16) to go Trick-Or-Treating.  I don't know how I feel about this.  When I used to man the door for trick-or-treaters back in the day, I will admit it was a little irritating to have some 6 foot 4 ninja, zombie, or trench coat wearer show up at the door and take the candy you bought for the little ones.   However, if they weren't causing trouble or being mean or nasty to the little kids, who really cares.  Kids 12-15/16 are at that odd age where they are thought of as too old to don a costume and trick-or-treat, but they aren't really old enough to party either.  If the older kids want to celebrate by going door-to-door for candy, I'd prefer that to them TPing or vandalizing the neighborhood.
Happy Halloween!

Tillamook

The trip this summer was mostly about the beauty of the Oregon Coast, but we did make a few educational (and in this case yummy) stops, one of those was the Tillamook Cheese Factory.  The city of Tillamook sits west of Portland on Tillamook Bay.  Located on the bay and also having 5 rivers, the city is known for fertile land and mild temperatures which makes for happy cows.  Not as happy as California cows of course.  The dairies there are part of a dairy cooperative called the Tillamook County Creamery Association, and the Cheese Factory is where they produce their cheese.  They have recently added a modern visitors' center which was a fun way to spend an hour or two.
When driving through town, the factory is hard to miss.

 The factory used to allow visitors onto the factory floor, but in the late 60s that was (thankfully) stopped due to safety regulations.  Now you can view some of the factory from a viewing area up above.

 Here they were checking cheese blocks for correct formation.  Those in the bin behind the checker were not acceptable.  Those were then sent to the cheese shredder for bags of grated cheese.

 This area wrapped the finished cheese in its packaging.

 The best part of the self guided tour was that it ended with cheese samples.  I can't say for sure, but we might have spent A LOT of time in this area.  Duh.

 The new visitor center has a huge food court with all things made from dairy.  A vegan or someone lactose intolerant would have been very sad at this food court.  Since I'm neither, it made me happy.  We had taken our time in Cannon Beach that day, so by the time we arrived at the factory is was dinnertime.  We had planned to share some cheese curds and macaroni and cheese - healthy stuff!  Sadly, the cheese factory was OUT OF cheese curds, so we just had mac and cheese.  It was very good.  But the ice cream was even better.

We still had a little over an hour drive to the next stop in Newport, so we couldn't spend too much time eating dairy products.  Tillamook was a quick but fun stop.