The Joys of the Season

My dilemma today is whether to wax poetic on soup, or give you another ghost story. How about both?

First off, the soup. I heart soup in a big, big way. One thing I do not like about summer (in addition to the sweatiness) is that I can't justify eating soup. I'm already hot and sweaty and don't really want to move all that much. I know, I'll pour some hot liquid into my stomach! Um, no.

However, Fall sets in and I revel in the soups and stews and chilis and chowders. It's all wonderful. I try to temper the cream-based, fatty nature of it a little by buying the Healthy Choice varieties or by going to Souper Salad, which has surprisingly low calorie soups. But sometimes I've got to indulge. I just have to say that Au Bon Pain's Harvest Pumpkin soup is Heaven in a little paper bowl.

Now it's story time.

My second year of college my friend Jenn and I moved into Our First Apartment(TM). It was a tiny complex of four apartments behind the Happiness is Submission to God house. If you're familiar with the University of Arizona area at all, you know exactly what I'm talking about, and you know how thrilled we were to be living at this landmark, parking in its parking lot. I'm not being sarcastic here. Thrilled!

On our first night there, the neighbors and all of their friends came over to welcome us. Turns out they were a group of people from Nogales who had all at one time or another lived in our particular apartment, which they informed us was "the haunted one."

They told us a sad story of how someone had been murdered in the parking lot for religious reasons and that since then, our apartment was haunted. They had stories of seeing dark mists in the bedrooms, and of the sliding glass door being broken during a thunderstorm and the glass arranging itself oddly in the house.

We thought that they were just trying to scare the new kids and didn't really take them seriously, although it was kind of fun to have a ghost story associated with our place. Every time something went missing or something strange happened we blamed the ghost.

One day I was putting my contacts in and dropped one. I looked all over the bathroom and got down on my hands and knees with a flashlight. It was nowhere. So I ordered another one from my eye doctor.

About a week later I got a call saying the contact was in. I mentioned it to Jenn who said, "You never found it?" I told her no and she suggested maybe the ghost took it. I said that must be in and then said, "OK, Ghost, can I please have my contact back?"

A couple of minutes later I walked into the bathroom and there on the countertop was my contact. I called Jenn in and pointed to it. She said, "Is that your contact?" I said yes. Then I said, "I guess we shouldn't make fun of the ghost anymore, huh?"

We didn't really have any more experiences (although, Jenn, if I'm forgetting something, please let me know), but that one was enough to make me think maybe those Nogales kids weren't just kidding around.