As you read this, I am in San Jose at Book Group Expo, a weekend where I will be meeting book club members, seeing old author friends and meeting new ones. As I made my way across the country yet again (I am pretty close to earning GOLD status on Continental with six cross-country trips this year), I waved to Nebraska. If you live there, I hope you saw it. I tried to get the captain to dip his wings, but I figured since 9/11 that might be interpreted as some terrorist act!

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.