October.

It's about mid-month, I reckon', and people are talking about Autumn. There's been no doubt that it's been fall for a while, with the leaves adopting the color-changing action of a childrens toy before the litter yards and streets and demand that we pick them up. It's the transition time between seasons that always stuns me, though. The period where it's neither fully summer nor autumn, but where these seasons seem to co-exist and, perhaps, take coffee at noon before cooler weather takes us into the evenings.

And the mornings, too, I guess. When I wake up, I am terribly reluctant to get out of bed. Not because I'm tired, though I always am, but because my bed is warm and inviting against the chill. Mornings have become a kind of coffee-and-journal time, which I like fairly well. It's impossible to miss that work is minutes away, but that's the peril of working with a clock, I suppose. It's also hard for me to miss that November is looking in, and that's always a torn time for me. My birthday is in the month, but I have never quite taken to it. When I was a child, it was one more month in the way of delightful Christmas. These days, it just means that the nights are long and the weather is cold.

Last year was a sad winter. In the interest of good cheer, I'll say now that there is a world of difference between now and then, but that is really where that train of thought ends.