The cold I complained about last week is in the rearview, mostly, though I’ve been using it as an excuse to baby myself a bit this week. Summer, too, is almost out the door. It’s dark when I wake up at five-ish, and I’m finding that strangely welcome. I love everything about autumn here on the West Coast: the rainstorms and the gusting wind, the way the rain pounds the color out of fallen leaves, stamping their images onto the pavement. I love the way the orb weaver spiders kick into high gear… even though it means sometimes watching where you walk if you don’t want an arachnid on your face. At this time of year, we can play ‘count the spiders’ on our walk along the Cut, and marvel at how enormous some of them get.
I’m less enchanted with the big honking moths of fall, but as long as they’re on the other side of a thick pane of glass, I can appreciate how marvelously they’re put together.
Another sign of autumn is Vancouver’s SF convention, VCon, and I will be reading with DD Barant, Mary Choo, and Julie McGalliardon on Friday September 30th, as well as doing the writers workshop on Saturday. Are any of you going to be there? Look me up.
Turning to TV: 
Kelly and I managed to watch ten minutes of the Charlie’s Angels
. He gives you the images without saying, specifically “there’s a desk here, a candle there.” Your imagination paints in the corridor easily, given the basic set pieces–staircase, desks, firelight and the boys. You get that first day of school anxiety, too, and in the broken fuse, a sense of something already gone wrong.