Halloween at Housing Works

As you, my lovely readers, may know, last year Hurricane Sandy hit NYC on Halloween.  This led my WONDERFUL city, Yonkers, to postpone Halloween.  Yeesh.  It was VERY detrimental to the city.  My friend, Maeve, who lives near Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, got the worst of it.  Thankfully, her house is totally intact, and nobody was hurt, but she said that she saw cars floating in the streets.
Then, the year before that, we had a freakin' blizzard!  ON HALLOWEEN!
It's quite impressive what New York City has gone through. King Kong!  The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man!  Daleks!
So, naturally, this year, I wasn't going to get my hopes up completely.

I had a bit of trouble in the costume department, as I was in the thick of rehearsals, as well as moving into a new house.  And usually I sew my costumes.  Usually two or three of them, because I couldn't decide what to be.  Usually planned in late July.  (I have a thing for costumes.)
But eventually, I just decided to be a steampunk fairy, because I was going to a steampunk event at the Housing Works bookstore in SoHo with a couple of friends.  There was going to be a costume contest, and steampunk writers talking about steampunk.
The Housing Works bookstore is AWESOME.  It's got a cafe in the back, and everyone that works there are volunteers.  It's got two floors of WONDERFUL, wonderful used books, with a lovely polished staircase that was great for taking pictures on.  And the best part is, 100% of the profits go to helping homeless people, and people with HIV/AIDS.

So, this was my first Halloween not going trick-or-treating.  I'm not TRYING to be "popular" or "cool" or anything like that. I'm homeschooled, for crying out loud!  It's just that I'm a bit tired of it, and most candy isn't vegan, anyway.
SO I spent twenty dollars on candy!  I loaded up on vegan marshmallows, dried apricots... and Turkish Delight.  (I also made gluten free vegan pumpkin scones to bring to the steampunk event.  They were quite good, and even passed the Mom test!)  That weekend I gained eight pounds.  But it was so worth it.
After my playwriting and drawing classes ended, I went uptown to buy said Turkish Delight at Zabar's.  And then, I walked to Lush, because they let you try on their makeup for free and i needed blue lipstick for my outfit.  So as I'm smearing blue all over my mouth, a lady that worked there noticed the turkish delight poking out of my bag, and asked what it was.  I told her, and she said she's never had any.  So I gave her some, as well as everyone that worked there.
It turns out, Lush actually has a product (a body wash) called Turkish Delight, so I ended up with a free sample!  And THEN they suggested taking a picture of me holding both the Turkish Delight candy and body wash to put on their facebook page. (I agreed, of course.)(But I've yet to find the picture.)
So, after this episode, I took the subway back downtown again, going ALL the way to SoHo.

It's VERY interesting, seeing the different characters on the subway on Halloween night.  One of my favorites was a mummy, wrapped in toilet paper completely.  He left toilet paper in the subway car and up the stairs.
So then I arrived at Housing Works!  There were lots of people in costume, Georges Melies silent movies were playing, and I saw... Valentina!  I had just explained steampunk to her last week, so she opted for wearing an elegant gold and white sequined top.  And Julia arrived as well!  She left homeschooling and started high school last fall, so she was missed dearly by us.  The third girl that came wishes to remain anonymous, so I'm just going to call her Delilah.
So, as Delilah, Julia, and I were all wearing steampunk outfits, we entered the costume contest.  And Delilah won!  The prize was four horror novellas and a steampunk novel.
After the event, we all got on the subway to go to our appropriate destinations.  I was going to spend the night at Valentina's house, so I went with her and Jackie, for which I was glad, because there was a creepy older man eyeballing me. Thankfully, he was off the subway, but it just occurred to me that perhaps it wasn't the wisest thing to wear an underbust corset on the subway at night.