Okay. No one else here seems alarmed, but I am seriously getting wierded out. Like in a I-just-caught-a three-eyed-fish sort of way.

WHAT is with the LEAVES in this city? Four or five days ago, when it was still distinctly, oh, I don't know, AUGUST (the hottest month in Ontario! Bugs bursting into flame in mid-air from the friction in their wings!), I noticed something rather disconcerting: the leaves in the big deciduous in front of my house were tinged rather yellowish. Looking at the lawn, I realized the crispy brown and yellow things were not litter, but fallen leaves. You know, the things that are emblematic of AUTUMN. Morbid signs that plantlife knows that winter is coming and its leaves decide they would rather commit suicide than face the cold ahead.

AUGUST is not AUTUMN. August should be a time of inappropriately short shorts and softserve icecream dipped in waxy chocolate and lying on the kitchen floor fanning yourself -- and then getting up and feeling your back peel away from the linoleum tile like a piece of prcessed cheese from its plastic sleeve because everything is sticky and hot and it is GLORIOUS. I should *not* be looking critically over my wardrobe and wondering is I have enough sweaters and long underwear. The thought of sweaters should make me feel like I can't breathe for the heat, not snuggly! I should not have this burning desire for hot chocolate and fuzzy slippers! Gah.

I hate being sick. I very rarely get *really* sick, but tend to stay *kinda* sick for an inordinately long time (if I don't fight it off overnight). I hate feeling just fainly like suck. See? See what happens when autumn comes in august? The whole balance of the universe is thrown off over here. Soon it'll be getting dark by 3pm again and spend all day in the bathtub eating oreo cookies and wishing I was in Mexico.

Also, decent knives are ex-fucking-spensive. My first, crappy knife block is rapidly disintegrating (one of the knoves literally fell apart, which can't be a good sign), but finding replacements that aren't crap is starting to seem like a spooky prospect. I saw a $90 chef's utility knofe and was pleased to find one so cheap, then smacked myself for thinking a $90 KITCHEN KNIFE was reasonable.

See how distressed I am? I have no control over capitalization any more.

My meeting with professor X went extremely well. He won't be chaining me to an oar or anything, and the work sounds inglorious but on terribly interesting topics. I am also feeling rather better about the big "What To Do After This Year" question that's been haunting me. That, and as always happens after a meeting with X, I have a list of several dozen more books I really ought to write. Talking to him is scary, because it's wonderful and exhausting and hilarious and great ideas are bandied about, but then you have all this Conversation Homework to do afterwards. Devious, he is.

You know those giant foam fingers sold at spoting events? Anyone know where I can get blank ones?

Only 11 months til Thailand. Coconuts and green geckos and huts on the beach. I might never come back.