It's been a while.......

And I have no idea why.  We are deep into Fall now and the weather has been glorious.  Life is blissfully dull (and I mean that sincerely).  We have been eating popcorn which I made on the stove in the heavy aluminum pot.  I always put too much in the pot and the lid always pops up. 

This batch was consumed while watching Star Trek: Into the Darkness which has become one of our favorite movies. (even if Mr Cumberbatch has a tendency to open his mouth very wide and enunciate in a big way).

No major storms have come through so we have had some beautiful leaf displays.  The last two seasons both Irene and Sandy have cut short the fall display but this year, as if to make up for that, the leaves have been hanging around longer and turning such beautiful colors.

 Hallowe'en came and went.  I wore my t shirt with the bats and houses on it and my ghost headband to work.  I've had the headband for years but since I only wear it one day a year, it has lasted quite well.  Pk and I were passing a low grade virus back and forth so we stayed home and met the trick or treaters at the door instead of going to my brother's house. 

I'm not very good with the self portraits.  I never know where to look.  This was in the library of our building right before a meeting of the Super User group for our computer program.

There have also been some spectacular clouds.  For some reason, I have been taking lots of photos of sunsets/sunrises and clouds just blowing through.  That's my neighbor's house and the clouds moving overhead looked so ominous.  They were grey and slightly pink and also some yellow in there.  Pk always say they remind him of the clouds in Independence Day (aliens, lightning, death soon to follow). 

 This one is in a mall parking lot just around sundown.  We just stood in the middle of all the cars watching the sky turn colors.  The air turned orange and it felt like magic.

And then we had this one coming home yesterday on the train.  That's looking south along the Delaware River.  You can see the edge of the front that rushed through the area.  The day ahead of it was balmy and humid and afterward?  Back to the cool, rather damp Fall we were getting used to.

Pk wanted to give me roses for our anniversary in October but he said "they always die".  So, this year, he and Elanor dug out the bed under the front window to prepare it to plant some rosebushes.  This way I will have "roses for months at a time".  I have wanted rose bushes for a while but didn't think we would be able to grow them in our clay filled soil. 

I am thinking of floribunda roses in this kind of colors (photo from Jackson and Perkins catalog website).  These will bloom and make lovely bushes of color for most of the spring/summer and early fall.  Don't they look like little handfuls of sunshine?

In other news, I have now entered my late 50's.  The girls came for dinner last Sunday and we had cake (of course) and Chinese food.  There was laughter and soccer games and football games and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Other than that, like I said, things have been quiet.  We are slowly returning to working on the house. Pk is going to replace the siding on the side of the house and we'll put some plain wood siding on the back until we can tear it all off and have it done.

I bought the fan for the dining room and as soon as the sheet rock goes up, so will the fan so we can have air circulating through our space.  Now that we've lived with it for close to a year, I am having some thoughts about how to use it so it's comfortable and attractive.  It may involve neon colors in the kitchen area but that's still under discussion.

As we begin the long slide to the end of the year, I hope you are all filled with peace.