Autumn is in full swing here in the Northeast. The mornings are brisk but refreshing, and the amount of daylight wanes earlier with each passing evening. I wake up in the dark, and the sun is not shining in my office at 6:30AM like I have been enjoying the last few months; by 7PM it's really dark, making me feel a lot more tired than I should be. Remember the hour we lost for Daylight Savings Time last March? I am ready to get it back. Right now! But I have two more weeks to wait. I find myself snuggling in bed a few extra minutes each morning reading before I get myself going. Instead of just reading before bed, I am reading when I wake up. My book eases me into the darkness of morning.

The leaves are falling on the front lawn, making it look like a very colorful carpet. Doesn't that line sound like it belongs in a book? Of course that very colorful carpet needs to get raked up or blown away at some point, which definitely kills the lovely feeling pretty quickly!

I drove down to Baltimore for Bouchercon on Wednesday night. I love long car drives --- always have. As I got in the car I felt like I was doing a flight check as I plugged in my iPod, check... BlackBerry, check... phone, check... headset, check... Tom Tom GPS, check. The sound system in the car rocks (okay I sound 16, but I tell you, I feel 16 driving with music cranked up). I opened the sunroof and loved that drive. Funny thing; I just learned last weekend that the car does not have a six-CD changer. It has a single CD slot and then I can play a CD in the DVD. I still have XM, which I love, and I now can program 36 channels and it has a handy dandy iPod hookup. All is taking some adapting and programming. I am glad that the boys get a charge out of figuring this stuff out. I would prefer that everything just stayed the same, but I know life is not like that.