Rushing the season

I thought I'd better empty my brain out a bit before the procedure tomorrow...don't want random thoughts leaking out all over the doctor.

My cell phone company is doing a massive upgrade. I know this because I called them yesterday; my bill, which usually hits the inbox around the 20th, had not yet arrived. Apparently they are upgrading to improve "data transferability". Transferability to who - the NSA?

I went ahead and paid what I usually do anyway; payment is due by the 10th, regardless of system mishaps. The payment is showing on the account as a credit balance, so I should be fine when they finally post the bill.

Is August 1st too soon to begin putting out the autumn decorations? All the stores have been running back to school sales for two weeks, so this is a valid question. I love everything about fall, and there isn't much time to enjoy it between now and the inevitable beginning of the "holiday" season.

The strange, cool spring we had (yay for global warming!) means all the local farms are a bit behind in what is ripe and ready for picking. The sweet corn is just barely beginning to arrive at local farmer's markets. I'm already thinking ahead to apples, pumpkin, sweet potatoes and thick, bacon-topped potato soup.

All right, so the love of autumn may really be about the love of autumn food. The up side to this is inviting all sorts of folks over to enjoy that food with me. One-pot dishes like chili and beef stew, and big ol' hunks of meat like pork loin make it easy to feed a crowd with minimal last minute kitchen duty required.

Plus, if I entertain several weekends in a row, the house stays much cleaner in between events.

The plan for the weekend is to loll around reading, icing the incisions, dozing in front of movies and generally being a slacker. There may or may not be some hand sewing of labels to quilts (which should have been done two weeks ago), and may be a bit of actual sewing (if I can stand the noise level). There will be home made pancakes and soup.

Who knows, maybe I'll even sort through all the autumn decorations.