Autumn

It’s here. Fall. Autumn. The autumnal equinox has arrived. The sun’s journey across the sky sinks slowly toward the south now, little by little each day. Daylight is short and getting shorter. Dawn arrives later; dusk arrives sooner. The autumn sun is still hot but losing its intensity. Brown and yellow leaves litter yards and fill gutters. The day can be warm – even hot – but the nights are chilly – or downright cold – and sometimes there’s frost in the morning.

Today is a chilly, gloomy day, a dreary day. The sky is overcast. Rain fell last night and this morning.

As I was driving home from a doctor appointment, a traffic light stopped me in front of McDonald’s. I looked through my window and saw a hawk soaring above the restaurant, no doubt lifted upward on currents of warm air from the fryalator. That fryalator stays busy. Maybe it was a French fries-lovin’ hawk basking in the rising grease fumes. It’s all part of autumn.

I haven’t turned on the heat yet. Well, that’s not quite true. I turned on the boiler for two nights when the temperature was forecast to hit freezing. I wasn’t cold; that’s not why I turned on the heat. I was a little paranoid about frozen pipes. I turned on the boiler so that the radiator pipes would warm the crawlspace. It was an abundance of caution type of thing. It’s still too early in the season to seriously worry about frozen pipes.

The overnight temperature is supposed to hit 37° F tonight; the high tomorrow is supposed to reach 55°. But in 3 or 4 days the high will be back to 70° and the low will be 50°. Autumn can’t decide whether it wants to be the end of summer or the beginning of winter.

Autumn is nature tapping you on the shoulder and whispering in your ear: “Get ready, cold whether is around the corner.” Autumn is your reminder to finish your outside jobs. Paint that board on your house; wash your car; put up weather-stripping; seal the air leaks around that window air conditioner.

Autumn is the season for outdoor parties, for sitting with friends on hay bales around a bonfire, browning hot dogs and marshmallows, talking and laughing until someone leans back too far and does a slow motion roll right off their perch, and just generally having more fun than is natural.

Autumn is the remembrance of long ago high school football games, and trees with fiery colors, and outdoor walks wearing long johns under your jeans and a hoody zipped up over your shirt. Autumn is hot chili and pumpkin pie, and switching from iced tea to hot cocoa, and herbal tea at bedtime.

Autumn is Nature pretending to die so that, come Springtime, it can be reborn, revived, resurrected. In this way, Nature speaks to us. If we listen, if we hear, we may understand something very important about our own reality.

Or perhaps it’s not important at all.

Taxi Driver Followup

This is a followup to the previous post titled “Taxi Driver”. Therefore, if you haven’t read it yet, now would be a good time. It’s short. Read it then come back here.

In the news tonight, the police have arrested a dumbass mofo for shooting that cab driver to death. Oh, did I say, “dumbass mofo”? Excuse me. I meant to say, “alleged dumbass mofo.”

The police and U.S. marshals from the Fugitive Task Force burst through his front door, and the alleged Mr. Dumbass jumped out a back window into the arms of waiting police. He’s been charged with homicide, robbery, and two counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony.

One final note: the cab driver and his wife had adopted a baby girl just one week before the cab driver was murdered.

Taxi Driver

When I’m driving around the city, I often see a certain taxi driver. I don’t know the man but I recognize his vehicle. He drives a white taxi cab, and his taxi has two short “flagpoles”, one on each side of the vehicle near the rear window, that display New York Giants flags. It’s a very distinctive vehicle with those flags flying. It always amused me slightly to see him driving down the road; I thought he must be a real die-hard Giants fan. I saw his taxi so many times around the mall, taking people to shop, taking people home.

Last night the local TV news announced that a taxi driver had been found shot dead in his taxi cab. When they showed a picture of the taxi, it was that distinctive white taxi with two Giants flags near the rear window. Seeing it made me a little sad. I had seen that taxi so often I felt almost as if I knew that driver. So far, no one has been arrested for his murder.

The same taxi cab company lost another driver five months ago. He, too, was found shot dead in his taxi. No arrest has been made for his murder either.

The owner of the taxi cab company said that “every job has its dangers.” Maybe so, but taxi driver and convenience store clerk are two jobs that seem to be in the news a lot, and not in a good way.

Adele

This young British singer (Adele Laurie Blue Adkins) has talent. Her first album, “19”, debuted at number one and has been certified 4x platinum in the U.K. The song Set Fire To The Rain is from her second album, “21”.



The song Someone Like You is also from her second album.

Speeding Poem

This short video always makes me smile.

The Bolshoi Simulation

Pleiades, the world’s seventh fastest supercomputer, spent 6 million CPU-hours creating this simulation, called the Bolshoi Cosmological Simulation. In it, you fly through an evolving universe of dark matter. There are other Bolshoi movies here.


Bolshoi Simulation from UC-HPACC on Vimeo.

Johnny Galecki Interviews Kaley Cuoco

An actor on actor interview from 2011.

Windows 8

Microsoft’s next operating system, Windows 8, will probably be released in the latter half of 2012. But as someone who occasionally creates programs to run on Windows systems, I’m curious about it. Will my programs that run so well on XP, Vista, and 7, run just as well on Windows 8? Will I have to change the way I code programs? How does the new Metro interface work?

Daughter

I first heard this song at the end of the movie Knocked Up as the credits rolled. Interestingly, Loudon Wainright appears in the movie as Dr. Howard. Lyrics can be found here.

Rainy Day, Rainy Night

Late night/early morning. Listening/watching Gnarls Barkley on Austin City Limits.

It rained Tuesday/Tuesday night. It rained Wednesday/Wednesday night. It rained Thursday. The rain hasn’t been continuous but it’s been often and at times heavy. The remnant of tropical storm Lee is heading north through Virginia on its way to flood Pennsylvania.

We’ve had severe electrical storms. Electricity, out for over a day after Irene, has flickered several times, setting the digital clocks in the house to blinking.

I once knew a bartender named Darlene. She told me one of her favorite things was rainy days. I can understand. When I have nowhere to go, sunny days make me feel guilty; I should be outside instead of being in the house. Rain gives me a reason to be indoors guilt-free.

At the time I knew Darlene, I wasn’t “into” rainy days. Thunderstorms were my thing. I had a reason. When I was a child, my mother – never close, emotionally or otherwise – was frightened of thunderstorms. When there was a thunderstorm, she would call my brother and I into her room and the three of us would get on her bed together for the duration. Thunderstorms brought us closer, and I loved that. As an adult, thunderstorms brought back those warm feelings.

I no longer enjoy thunderstorms so much. As some would put it, “The novelty has worn off.” Lightning hit power lines near my house and burned out my garage door opener. The system is old and repair parts are not available. Lightning flipped the circuit breaker to my electric stove. Lightning can do a world of damage or just mess with you, at its own choosing.

Like Darlene, I prefer rain now.