Fall

Back to the beach today on a beautiful Fall morning. I’m surrounded here on National Coffee Day by the retirement clan, dad’s with kids before school, and the assorted fitness freaks trying to no avail to make me feel guilty for my “just say no to spandex” stance. It seems as if my posts will be rather spotty of the next several months. I am in “finish or die trying” mode when it comes to grad school and to tell you the truth, I am now in a love / hate relationship with my laptop. Between an increased course load, the regular correspondence that flows through this thing and my need to develop a message for my community o’ faith each week, I cannot even bear to look at the screen much longer. On top of that, in the past months I have put all of my reference material for the Book of Books on my laptop and also purchased a Nook (like a Kindle only better) so I now spend most of my waking hours looking at a screen. Something has to give
and I guess it’ll have to be this blog.
I love Fall, and fortunately for the early phase of my Fall calendar it seems to love me. This past weekend the love of my life and I made a quick trip to Portland to combine a bit of school with a lot of enjoyment. I booked us a fabulously, shamefully nice hotel in downtown to take in a Native American celebration and Pow Wow that was taking place in the square, right next to the hotel. After taking in the celebration ( an enjoyable requirement for school) on Friday, we spent a good part of Saturday wandering the streets of “The Pearl District”. Not to rub it in to my East Cost friends but it was all blue sky and 75 degrees both days. This coming Saturday the forecast is the same for our annual Pumpkin Quest with our community o’ faith. This year we have the pleasure of taking the Princess to her first ever pumpkin farm. I have to focus though because there is way too much to do between now and then. After that, next weekend its back to Portland for 2 days, home 2 days, Portland for 10 days, home a day, to Guatemala for 7 days, back for two days and then Indiana for 3 days and then it’ll be the home stretch for Thanksgiving. I feel like I’m about to launch off again on the Rock’n Roller Coaster at Disney.
It’s reminded me how much more I must struggle to live in the moments that I have. I don’t mean the virtual ones either. Live in every moment of sunshine and clouds and rain and pumpkins that I get this Fall. That means, whenever humanly possibly, I’ll need to just say no to the laptop. You should too… see you on the other side.

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