Autumn Colors

On Sunday, I took a walk at Bruckner Nature Center in order to enjoy the autumnal colors. Not a lot of red this season (too dry, perhaps?), but the oranges, yellows, and browns were out in force. It was a pleasant temperature. Every man and his brother was out, but thankfully we spaced ourselves far enough away for the most part. Here are some of the photos which I took during the outing.

Autumn Colors
Autumn Colors
My favorite photo of the day. When scrolling through the images, this one made me pause.

Autumn Flowers
Autumn Flowers
Flowers still showing off in autumn.

Squirrel Overpass<
Squirrel Overpass
This tree was over the path and I watched a squirrel run over it to avoid running on the path. Clever squirrels to install a path overpass.

Sea of Trees<
Sea of Trees
Bruckner is a sea of trees – and currently a sea of orange trees, for the most part. (Soon to be bare trees. Then snowy trees.)

Don't Look Down!
Don’t Look Down!
The path I took this time had a stairway at the end. I much preferred going down the stairs than I would have going up.

Beaver Shack?<
Beaver Shack?
Not sure who or what built this little shack, but it’s cute (even if it isn’t one of my better photos).

More Colorful Trees
More Colorful Trees
And a final colorful shot from the nature center.

Festival Season Continues

Autumn is my favorite season. I love the cooler weather, the changing leaves, the holidays, and the festivals. The past several weekends have seen me out with the parental units going to various festivals. The Fort Loramie Lake Festival, Minster’s Oktoberfest, the farm festival which was just across the street from the Lost Creek Garden & Antique Show (which was where we were today). Lots of fun and often yummy food. (Mmmm, brats mit kraut from Oktoberfest!)

The weather’s been absolutely lovely the past several weeks. Apart from a couple of days of rain, the majority of the weather has been Open Window Weather. Today was downright hot with temps in the mid 80s F. Tomorrow will be too. Mom’s taken to saying “Another day in paradise!” which she’s been saying pretty regularly since May. Anyhoo, the kitties and I love Open Window Weather. Especially when the morning is chilly and the comforter is comfy and the cats are draped over me AND we get to sleep in. (Like, say, this morning.)

I’ve had a pleasant time of late with my reading. Thanks to recommendations from friends on LJ and Twitter, I discovered the Hunger Games trilogy. I finished the final book last weekend. When the series goes to paperback, I’ll probably buy it for keeps. (Yay for libraries!)

The New Building Issues at work have been getting solved. My projector finally shows all of the colors (which it had never done) when projecting the computer image. Considering I do my classroom notes using the interactive whiteboard, this lack of complete colors was annoying. But I finally have Red and Green to go along with black, blue, and yellow.

I’m still arguing with the interactive whiteboard software. It’s not what I’d been using last year (in order to equip everyone with interactive smartboards, the school had to go the more economical route of Eno boards instead of Smart boards. But Smart’s software is a hell of a lot better than Eno’s or the RM Easiteach which we have), but I’m making it work. Easiteach, which is closest to Smart’s Notebook software, does have a new version, but it went about 10 steps backward and 2 steps forward. Looks like the upcoming patch will help some of it, but I’m using the older version until it works. (And thankfully we found out the problem which was causing my handwritten notes to turn to gibberish if I switched to another page of notes…)

If I could just get over the inertia I seem to have acquired – I just can’t seem to start any new projects or finish any current projects. I’m sure it’s a mild bout of depression, but I’m trying to battle it out. I was quite pleased with myself when I actually bought ingredients to make chicken noodle soup today (my first attempt) AND actually cooked the soup! Tastes pretty yummy too! Got 8 more servings left, five are freezing, the other 3 in the fridge. Who knows – maybe tomorrow I’ll sand my front door (which has been on my To Do list for months now).

Hope y’all are having some good weather and nice times! Viva Autumn! (Or for you upside-down continents, Viva Spring!)

(PS, I accomplished another task! I wrote an LJ entry! Woot!)