Smell the Spices on the Air

I should have posted this a week and a half ago, but I had a morning where, while relaxing outside with a Camel and some coffee, I caught a drifting scent on the still warm, summer wind that was slightly spicy, a bit earthy, and overall very warm and delicious in it's aromatic character (Oooooo, big words! I must be in a writing mood...). I'll give you three guesses what it was and the first two don't count.

Yup. Fall. Yummy, cozy, crisp and musty. I could smell it starting to creep in all sly and smooth, trying to take out a couple of trees before we dumb humans noticed. Caught ya! Mother Nature is full of tricks. I'm getting better at spotting them, though. It was perfect then when, for our Labor Day celebrations, a blustery breeze blew in from the mountains and blasted away the bad air for the briskly cold front we played host to fot the next few days. Yes, that last sentence was supposed to be cheesey. I don't remember which morning it was, but I woke up about 9-ish and looked out my bedroom window and literally almost went nuts. Headline News: naked man goes insane in bed with eyes glued to window, causes seem to be unbelievable amounts of joy and elation. Yeah, that'd be a riot. It was the most perfectest morning yet.

I think it was a big deal mainly because I'm finally done with Summer, and my favorite time of the year is the holiday seasons and the start of the waning half of the year. My friend IndieMissCranky said it best with her blog post "Must Be the Season of the Witch...". The feeling gets very "witchy" this time of year and Halloween just helps that out. I don't know why it is that the harvest celebrations so common in wiccan and pagan circles are some of the most celebrated and are obviously the favorites, but I have to agree with the general concensus and promise to speculate on it later.

With Fall here, I've started cooking good, yummy crap and hunting for recipes for all the oodles of things I want to make this year. I've already got more than enough ideas for the Equinox party I'm throwing this month and the list is quickly getting full for the October celebrations. Once that's out of the way we'll move on to Christmas and Yule. Speaking of Yule, I've no idea when that is this year. Mental note to check on that. Back to cooking. I've realized I have a lot of things I still need for my kitchen and my skills are nothing to boast about, but I do have a good cooking gene from my mom and grandma so I'm hoping it holds true and gets me happily through the holidays. Much munching.

The other day I dug up my pipe and now badly want to find some pipe tobacco for it. Another favorite thing of mine to do around this time of the year. And the coffee just gets so much better this time of the year, too! I'm telling you, Starbucks, a cup of coffee, a slice of pumpkin bread, a pipe or cigarette at hand, and a group of crazy people around you all gathered up next to the patio heater is the perfect way to spend those late nights after work this season. Random tangent!

I've developed quite an attatchment to my Starbucks buddies. All of us met through totally random occurences of one friend meeting another friend, yadda yadda, so on and so forth. I really have no desire to go on a long tangent about it, but they really have been the kick in the pants I needed to really get out and enjoy the day to day crap I wade through all the time. On a related note, some celebrity or famous person recently coined the term "framily" and it was covered by a local newspaper. "Framily" is a combo of the words "friends" and "family" and means a group of friends who naturally function as family in a sense. I'd have to say our little group is starting to become that.

One of our most anticipated group activities right now is our pumpkin carving night. We are taking over Starbucks back patio with hot chocolate and pumpkin spice lattes and a whole mess of black bags, knives, candles, and newspapers. I'm still praying that the patio is mostly unoccupied that night before we get there. I myself plan on doing eight freakin' pumpkins for myself, and I'm sure I'll be throwing in some help lobotomizing some of the other pumpkins.

I've blown through some serious knitting here in the last couple of weeks as well. Hibernation setting in. I finished something (still no clue what it was) and then moved on to another scarf for a friend, finished all eight feet of that monster and now just have to cut and weave, and I've moved through two skeins of my natural colored silk and wool scarf. It's another Noro scarf, but I'm already in love with it. And my red socks are just a day's worth of knitting away from being finished. Next I need to finish my orange and brown Fall scarf from last year and weave in those freakin' ends. Then it's on to Christmas projects and a couple of side pieces for some other friends. So much to do!

Well, I'm pretty much out of stuff to talk about at this point. Besides the daily grind of work, the trips to the gym to look sexy, and the random outings into the world beyond Littleton, not much else is happening at the moment. Doesn't mean there won't be something amazing and fantastic happening tomorrow, but if it does, I promise I'll get around to writing about it... eventually. 'Til next time.