goodbye, october

Ah, bittersweet remembrances of the best set of leaves I've seen in 4 years. Its fitting that the rain should come today to scare the last hints of gold and red from the trees. Le sigh. How I love October. The leaves. The crisp air. The necessity of sweaters. The beasties. The fact that October falls so close to two of the lamest months on record (August for the never-ending heat and November for the simple fact that it is not, and never can be, October) only adds to the wonder.

May you have wonderful Halloweens to set you down the path of November. And may I have a reprieve from the migraines that feel like my head is trying to turn itself inside-out through my right eye socket. Just thought I'd add that last bit in there for some good virtual thoughts.

late announcement

For those still interested, I finally finished my butcher block table a few weeks ago. The top is securely fastened and it is pretty, if I do say so myself. I'm so happy with it, in fact, I have not used it yet. I just can't bring myself to cut anything on it. I have this overwhelming desire to protect the table, keep it pristine, untouched by my dull knives. This too shall pass. But I do feel the need to plan a fantastic meal to complement the table. We shall see.

Other projects are now in the hopper. More to report at a later date.

tuckered out

Yo yo yo. So, I'm tired today. The culmination of a long weekend marked by a long day yesterday. I can't complain too much though, it was pretty much all fun. Friday saw a return to the corn maze. It was entertaining as ever with M. making her inaugural run through the corn. Just in time as she's leaving in just over a month. Hmmmmm, lets see here. There was also a day-long Soprano's marathon, a trip to a big city, and a day trip to an even bigger city. I had to go to San Francisco yesterday for work. The timing kind of sucked as I was only able to walk around for around an hour down in the Embarcadero area. You know, Fisherman's wharf touristy. Then it was into a workshop and back into the car to fight the rush-hour traffic to SFO. Meh. Anyway, I didn't get home until just before 1:00AM. So I'm tuckered.

The Final Countdown: Because he can, apparently.

the Dude abides

I just got final word from my parents that they finally had to put our cat Scruffy down. He was pushing 15 and really held on a lot longer than any of us really thought he would. Scruffy, if it is at all possible, was basically the equivalent of The Dude from The Big Labowski. Temperamentally speaking, anyway. We called him the Dude because it just fit. Anyway, he had many fantastic attributes (not all of them entirely cat-like), but I'd like to highlight one particular episode rather try to explain him further.

Picture it: a beautiful May evening featuring a blooming pink dogwood, clear skies, and my sister in a gorgeous Jessica McClintock black satin dress, the princess kind. Her potential suitor arrived looking snappy in his tux and my parents commenced the Prom picture-taking ritual. Standing in front of the dogwood, they struck a striking figure. Wanting to make nice (or so we assumed) Scruffy sauntered up to my sister. Now, this could have been problematic as Scruffy was known to roll in dirt to the point that he appeared a dull gray/brown color. But he seemed clean enough. Besides, everyone was all smiles with the nattily attired gent, the princess dress, and blooming dogwood. Much to our amazement, Scruffy walked up to my sister and peed on her. Sprayed her. Completely marked her as his and decidedly not the nattily attired gent's. Witnessing this I almost peed my pants I was laughing so hard. Scruffy ran off with the screams (mostly laughter, really) and a clean-up crew went to work on the dress. Luckily it was a very heavy satin and the offending liquid rolled off without much issue. Eventually the young people went to their dance and Scruffy eventually returned later that night.

Finis.

things I like that I already own, continued: smurf glass

First up in the queue was the fantastic Red Chair which is held in a very serious Chair Trust. Next on the list are my Smurf Cups. I have 4 glasses that feature Brainy, Smurfette, Gargamel and Azrael, and "Party Punch" (which showcases Papa and others with a cauldron of some smurftastic beverage that I imagine sends the smurfs dancing like Batman after his orange juice is spiked by some Riddler femme fatale while Robin-the-voyeurist watches from the Batmobile). Um, yes. Sorry. Anyway, the point is, these glasses are most entertaining and they hold liquids (water, beer, G & Ts, milk for cookies) quite well.

As the price of stocks, etc. declines perhaps I'll just switch over to collecting the whole lot of Smurf glasses.