Time Change

We fell back this morning, piped into the time change by a good quantity of rain. A sharp contrast to the weather the last few weekends, which (when I've been in town) has had a much closer resemblance to summer.

The holidays are already here, of course. While I was shopping for candy on Halloween, the ghoulish items created for us American consumers in China (what do they think of us, I wonder, as they finish off faux rubber masks, fill tubes of fake blood, six-foot tall resin nutcrackers, and inflatable snowmen trapped in inflatable snowglobes?) had already been replaced by red, green, and white Christmas items. I have my order in to Whole Foods for the Thanksgiving turkey, to M's specifications. He's pretty much planned out the whole menu already, to be executed at Mom's, as usual. Yesterday we received a letter from the Christmas tree farm where we "hunted" (their word) our tree last year with our $5 discount for this time around.

It's funny, we don't have any plans for Christmas yet. The office is closed again for the days between Christmas eve and New Year's day, and I've taken the four days before off, so two whole weeks for the price of four vacation days. It's a great time to be on vacation, too, since everyone else is and you don't come back feeling oppressed by the amount of work that's pile up while you've been gone. What shall we do?

I did purchase a New Year's resolution item yesterday: a Fitbit. I'd met a woman at a conference last June who raved about hers, and one of my old college chums has been reporting his losses on Facebook, thanks to its inspiration. I'd been thinking about it for a while, and the need to spend my birthday bucks pushed me into the Yes zone. I've been feeling very unhappy with my weight this last year, and I hope this tool will help me be more mindful about what I eat and how active I am, two things that are heading in the opposite of the right direction for me.

Well, time to get ready to go--I have a rendezvous with the writerly Pointy Pals today, our first gathering in months! Julia's novel has been accepted for publication so it's time to celebrate with her in person. That's a very exciting development.