October Snow

It's looking rather nice out there this morning. The snow is falling gently, the air is cool and damp and all this will be gone by lunchtime. If you've seen my autumn photos before, you might notice the absence of the usual red and orange and then you might notice that the double-trunked tree in the foreground is bereft of leaves and this is because, sadly, the tree didn't bloom this year. I had mixed feelings about it because all summer long I enjoyed being able to see across the yard without peering through foliage, but now that it's Fall, I find myself missing the blaze of glorious color that this tree used to give us. I think we will leave it in place a year or two to see if it revives, but I fear it's given its last.

Life in the house is less stressful at present, so we are sailing along on a pretty even keel. This week I decided to learn how to 'mail merge' my Christmas card envelopes but I had to start by typing all my addresses into 'Entourage'. Having been a Mac user for several years and a Microsoft user only through necessity, I had never used Entourage and was surprised how similar it looks to the MobileMe homepage so it was easy. I haven't actually merged the mail yet, but I will do, soon. Last year I sent out very few cards at Christmas, and tried to send out letters afterwards. Even so I didn't get out as many letters as I wanted to and it was sometime in August when I finally removed the basket of still-unanswered letters from my desk. I am determined to have all my Christmas correspondence ready to be mailed by Thanksgiving this year and to avoid all the usual stress of doing everything at the same time as everybody else. There must be a way to get it all done AND to enjoy the festivities. Mind you, it makes me shudder to have to spend $70 on postage to send all the cards to the UK.

Now that we've seen the first snow, I have to decide on whether I should splurge on a new winter coat. I haven't had a proper winter coat in years because I was gaining weight and didn't want to waste money on a good coat that (hopefully) would soon be too big for me. I've lost 34lbs since this time last year, but that really isn't good enough for a new coat. I have, however, got a new hairstyle. I asked John at Scizzors to "modernize me"and so he did. It's shortish at the back, a bit longer at the front and to boot I've added a bright pink hair extension at the front in support of the National Breast Cancer Foundation. I've had it admired and I've seen a few people do a double take. I think it's a great idea because every cent of the $10 I paid for it will go to the cause and, to be honest, I'm tired of all the Susan G Komen pinkery everywhere. There can't be many right-minded people that think that having a pink mixer is doing much to support breast-cancer research, can there? For the $80 you might spend on this mixer, $7 goes to the cause. I think my $10 hair extension is better value.