Ah, Autumn

I was, I guess, one of those weird kids who liked school -- at least, I liked grade school. By junior high, the social aspects of our public school system rained down on me hard enough that I hated it like just about everyone else. Like the man said, nothing can destroy a person's desire to learn like school.

But anyway... I liked school as a young kid. I liked getting new school supplies in the fall for the new school year. I liked sharp new pencils, unused notebooks, and all that kind of thing. I liked the feeling of limitless potential each new school year brought with it -- classes, teachers, friends, and so on. I got to see my friends more during the school year than during summer, because we lived outside of town.

As a kid I used to get excited by the new fall TV shows (particularly the new cartoons on Saturday morning). To a small extent, I still kinda do.* And, now that I think about it, pretty much every romantic relationship I've been in has started in the autumn.

So still today, I like autumn. The fall feels like a time of beginning to me, not -- as would be expected -- a time of endings.

Around here, right about now is when most of the leaves change colors. It's beautiful. And, unlike most people, I actually like the shorter days more than the longer days of spring and summer. (I seem to get more things done at night than during the day.) I like the cooler weather rather than the warmer summer months, but I don't like the cold of winter. And -- very important living here in Seattle -- I don't mind the rain.

I like looking forward to the holidays. There's a feeling of anticipation for me about fall.

I just like autumn.

*If you're not watching the new show Lost, you're missing out. It's really, really good. However, despite what I said earlier this year about enjoying the West Wing, I can no longer recommend it. It went from being perhaps the best show on television ever in its first four seasons, to being a mediocre TV drama in the fifth season (all of which we watched on DVD or in reruns this summer on Bravo), to being just awful and -- worst of all -- boring in the current season. We never watched the show before this spring on DVD, and then managed to watch every single episode to get caught up to the new season. Now we've stopped watching that new season because it's so terrible. Given the short time frame, the downturn in quality felt particularly dramatic to us. And some people still don't think that writing matters in TV shows or movies.