Glorious Fall

If I won the lottery, and I could afford a dozen houses all over the country and world, I would have one in North Carolina so I could visit in the fall. Autumn is the most spectacular time here. The weather has cooled off, the humidity is gone, and of course the leaves change color. The beauty of fall foliage is not a new topic on this blog, and you may be tiring of my endless photos of it. And I'll even admit that they're all starting to look rather similar. But I can't help snapping more because the sight it is just so amazing. I took these on the way to work the other morning:

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Last weekend I went to the Pittsboro Street Fair again with my parents.


There was a caricature artist there and I'd always wanted to get one done. So my mom and I posed in the gusty wind while the lady sketched cartoon versions of us with our pets.

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Sunday afternoon I had to drive to Asheville for a marathon training day on Monday. This was the second weekend in a row when my Sunday was not my own. :( At least the mountains were beautiful, of course, and it was not too cold yet.

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I got a new cell phone a couple weeks ago, the Motorola 325. I chose it because the salesperson recommended it for its good reception quality. It did seem to work fine in my apartment (the same as, if not slightly better than, my previous model) but it did not work at all at my office. My boss sends out at least two or three test messages a day, and my phone just was not ringing. It would show three bars, then zero, then back to three again, then back to zero, all within 20 seconds. This was not acceptable to me, and thankfully Verizon has a 15-day satisfaction guarantee so I exchanged it for a Nokia 6315i. I really like it. It's not as bulky as the Motorola, and it has great reception. The sales rep said that contrary to what you'd think, sometimes a pure digital phone (like the Nokia) works better than a tri-band phone (like the Motorola).

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My Weekend of Cleaning was quite productive. The apartment looks much better, and I feel better when I look at it. I finally got around to filing all my bills, etc., which I had not done since I moved in (yikes!) and I sorted through the piles and piles of mail that had accumulated over the past couple months. Ninety percent of it ended up in the recycle bin, but I did come across my Wake County voter card, which will come in handy on Tuesday. I have to vote before work, because I have a 2 pm flight to Houston. Yep, I'm goin' to Texas. Galveston, to be precise. It's on an island in the Gulf of Mexico, so it should be pretty.