Seasons

A recent stauts update on Facebook commented that about 75% of the updates in the past day or so had to do with weather. That ties in well with a reflection I had this morning.

I was gone for the Thanksgiving holiday, and had only one day back doing the commute before I was again away and then off. Tuesday was a crappy weather day, warmish, but rainy and windy. Driving to work in the morning I leave in the dark, and going home is the same.

Today, because the sun was up (and out) for the last half of the commute, I saw some things which I had not noticed before. First was the leaves on the trees. There were some trees which had lost their leaves, and others with brown instead of green. The was the occasional swamp maple (with the emphasis on swamp!) with its red or red/brown leaves. It was the first time that I really began to believe that it is fall.

It is interesting how our perceptions of the seasons depend on these visual cues. The days have been getting shorter. (And don't start on the annual, pointless and useless time change fiasco...) But certainly sitting in my office, with its floor to ceiling windows looking out on the Spanish oaks with all their leaves, it does not feel much like fall! It took seeing the reds of the maples for me to (finally) realize that fall is here.

A final note about periodicity for this blog. You will see fewer posts, at least for a while. It is related to what is happening in my life. Most of it is good, and you will see conference posts when those seasons begin again (Midwinter, LLA, etc.)