I suppose if I browsed the snack aisle, I would have long ago noticed this version of “an old favorite” (not mine though). Instead, it was only today when I browsed the small display at the Helmer Grocery that I noticed this lovely oxymoron: Natural Cheetos. Give me a break!

The story here is the guy on the right. He’s 91. And a bit stubborn.

And he was up there pruning the tree. With a hand saw. [You go, Dad!]

BTW, this fellow never went to the gym. He did lots of hand work in the garden—still does—and walked. Sometimes just took off across country, like north of Seney, where there still aren’t many roads.

Without a doubt, the glorious red of an autumnal maple is iconic. I also find fields of harvest-ready crops a comforting seasonal stereotype.

Are you amaized? [hardy-har-har]

I took this photo today. You can tell I wasn’t in Atlanta, because there the lines are quite long at the very few stations with gas, and nobody’s apologizing about what grade they manage to get.

I keep forgetting to mention that being a builder means you get lovely opportunities to expend your aggressions. Here DW separates our old sink fixture from the old sink that it had fused to. This way we can reuse it (cross your fingers).

Recipe alert: fast BBQ Tofu explained here.

Due to a flurry of emails and calls, we missed today’s (away) volleyball matches, so this image is from Tuesday’s home game.

What critter would you pick to be your school’s mascot if the school was named Paideia? A python, of course! And if you’re really cool, you’ll present the python entwined with a π symbol (that’s the off-white in the photo).

Somehow I’ve gotten a day late on noting reconstruction milestones. One of the plumbers installed fixtures yesterday. There were several snags, including that the new toilet tank leaked (drip, drip), and so he took it away with him. He did have the shower fixtures, so that when I step in there now it feels closer to normal—absent the door, of course!

Please note: the shower head looked relatively normal-sized in the manufacturer’s photos (both on web and in print catalogue), although in real life it seems, well, outsized. HOWEVER, I can’t wait to enjoy the whole new shower experience.

And I love the new built-in shelving that The Tile Guy made using pieces of bullnose. (The brown paper is protection installed by the painter and obviously will be removed—sometime soon.)

Forgot to post this yesterday: the chandelier (the one and only fancy fixture in this house) is back!

Now to find one matching tulip-shaped glass shade (not shown); only one was broken. All the bulbs came through fine, however.

Archive photo, New York state, January 2003 (borrowed footwear; my down coat).

Yes, today is the first day that I’ve considered digging up a sweater—just in time, eh?, as fall* begins just before noon….

Soon we’ll be making snow angels?

* In honor of the seasonal change, I scraped my wooden cutting board, so it’s ready for another year (or so).

Bot Garden conservatory, some years ago.

Although Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach (2007) is a slim volume (as the phrase goes), I have not yet finished it. Already, I have encountered some lovely imagery.

I am particularly taken, at this moment, with the phrase “self-dramatizing rhetoric” (p. 58). McEwan uses it to describe the tenor of activist meetings in Britain in the late 1950s, pairing it with “mournful rectitude” to describe the span of interaction modes. Still, I’m taken with the first characterization, and can say that I find distasteful the overwhelming trend toward self-dramatizing rhetoric that pervade many discussions regarding issues surrounding our upcoming presidential election.