I think I know why. Despite the attractions of spring and summer, autumn is really one of the busiest times of year, and they aren't. Not simply at a school (though we're busier here now than any other time of year) but everywhere. You get to play hard all spring and summer, and you need that day of Spring Cleaning and certainly there are things to do all the time, but in the autumn you're settling into a new cycle. As the cycle of seasons draws to a close and the leaves turn and fall and the countryside settles into sleep, we have to prepare for that sleep, and we don't get to put it off. There are a thousand tasks we need to do to get ready for the winter months, when we settle in against the cold and wait for the spring to return.

My friend Kate is buried under dissertations and work. My friend John is buried under home improvements that won't wait. My parents are winterizing boats. The school is winterizing buildings.

And we're all busy. My good writing time is first thing in the morning, but that's not doable when I've got nine things on the fire when I walk in the door. Things they pay me for. So this journal takes a bit of a holiday now and again. Others go on hiatus.

The winter will come, and we will find ourselves writing more. Then, with the burst and flush of the spring, we will find ourselves jubulent and excited and writing heartily once again.

I'll miss that journal a great deal. And in compensation, I'll work hard at writing this one on a more regular basis.

It was in general a very nice weekend, filled with very nice weekend things. First on Friday came Dominic and Annie, my ex-Housemate in Seattle and his girlfriend of [forever-1]. Annie was lovely as always, and in her usual cheerful mood. Dominic was great -- I have a lot of fun with him, and miss 'hang-out' time with him especially. However, once again Dominic's hair has gone goofy. Last time he showed up with very short hair, so that with his glasses he looked liked a really cool accountant, which I admit is a contradiction in terms. This time, the top of his hair has poofed out considerably, causing Dominic to look like....

Well, there's no other way of saying it. He got Lyle Lovett's pompadour. What the Hell's goin' on out in Seattle. This can't be right.

We drove down to Portsmouth and wandered around stores, where Annie bought stuff and Dominic and I mocked stuff, with the stuff Annie was buying often being the stuff we were mocking. We had a late lunch and beer at the British Arms Pub -- authentic British food, which meant it was soaked in fat and likely to kill us at an early age.

A warning -- if a meal says "sausage on side," they don't mean a happy pattie or a link of sausage. They mean a bratwurst sized chunk of ground pork inside intestines. Tasty, yes, but that stuff'll kill you faster than you could say Jack Robinson.

While in a toy store, Dominic and I also found a boxed set containing an exact scale model reproduction of the Red Tomato -- which for those of you not Dominic's age or younger was the red car with the white stripe driven by and used on Starsky and Hutch. The set also includes Starsky and Hutch action figures, which I assume means you can roll them across the hood of the car dramatically, that being the way that show went.

In another store, they had a "desk top feng shui Japanese rock garden." It was a five inch by seven inch shallow trough, with sand and a few pebbles in it, and it had a miniature rake with which to make soothing balanced zen patterns, what for you can achieve a certain peace in between phone calls, I guess. It seemed ridiculous to me. It didn't stop me from buying a Bonsai tree, though. A Juniper I've named "shrub."

I got nostalgic/homesick (if that's the word) for Seattle while they were here. Seattle is the most dynamic city on the face of the Earth. Excitement runs under it like a paper cut. I deeply enjoy it and look forward to the next time I visit -- hopefully within the next six months. I missed the people there while hearing about them. I made the right choice in leaving, but it was a significant part of my life, and the echoes of it still play in me.

Really, my life breaks down into five 'eras' since I graduated from High School. There's a temptation to Pentad them, which I will resist.

First, there was Boston. Also known as Boston University, but it extended beyond when I went to school there. My first time away from home. My first time in 'the big city.' My first failures and successes. I had a very tight group of friends there -- Andy, Robin, Matt, Charlie, Ernestine, Andrew, Abbe (yes, even Abbe), Julie, Mike that first year (and what the Hell ever happened to him?) and so on....

Then came Ithaca. Real life, in its most poverty stricken and in ways happiest. Apartments and late night walkings and Temporary Work and Renaissance Festivals. Frank and Karen and John and John (intentionally repeated) and Becky and Becca and Christie and Susanne and Kevin and Bill and many more ands. I was there until I realized I was ready to go back to college, which brought us back to....

Fort Kent. Back to my birthplace, and college. My folks as friends instead of overlords. Andrew, seeking the same stuff I was. Corey and Aaron, and the whole theater crowd. Instructors, especially Doctor Willan and Hedeen and Wendy, who had been a part of my entire life, but now gave me poetry and an eye for meter. And my Dad, mentioned again for being the best damn English professor who ever drank tea. Academic success and the flush of pride, and a degree....

Seattle. After a return to Ithaca and a need to break stuff off and move into life as a whole, Seattle was a purging. A rebirth. A new stage of adulthood. Seattle was Kinko's and music and espresso. Seattle was Bill, Dominic, T, Annie, Tamara, Rebecca, Dottie, Nancy, Doug, Mike, Forrest.... Seattle was Kinko's and graphic design and desktop publishing and networking. Seattle was two a.m. Italian Food and three a.m. five dollar hamburgers and four a.m. twelve egg omelets. Seattle was combination nightclubs/coffee bars/laundromats. Seattle was adulthood in success.

New England. Standish, Maine and Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. I am here. The people you read about in this journal are with me. And I am content, mostly. For this iteration of the evolution, at least.

Mason and I spent the weekend together, more or less, with Van joining in as appropriate. We hit Portsmouth in an effort to do stuff. I needed a 'mister' for Shrub, also called a spray bottle. (You have to treat Bonsai with about double the care you do a baby, though the Bonsai never grows up and develops its own income and self-sufficiency. It can, however, outlive you.) We ate a late dinner at a place called Blakes. ("We're overworked comfort food slingers.") And then we settled in for the 9:40 showing of The Sixth Sense.

It takes twenty minutes to get through all the promos and commercials. So call it ten when the film came on... opening credits, followed by an attractive woman in an evening gown descending into a wine cellar, to select wine....

And the film melted. Literally. Thirty seconds in, the picture froze on a frame, and we watched that frame melt into nonexistence. It was surreal. For five minutes or so, the frame remained, suspended in its burnt, molten death. Then, we expect, someone told an Usher that the film had died, and they went in to fix it, bringing up the lights and music and the crappy promotional slide show.

At twenty after ten, Mason and I got sick of waiting. We got our money back and went home. Somehow, I think I got more enjoyment out of the destruction of the film than I would the film itself.

Monday evening, my friend Gary came in from out of town. He had been in Connecticut at a Halloween party (the same party that Dominic and Annie were in the area for), then thought he'd drive up to see me for a few days.

It was great. Gary is extremely tall and heaps of fun. Mason and Van went out with us one night, and got to hear Gary and I sing the Wild Rebels Breakfast cereal song. That's when they knew they were in trouble. But they could do nothing. Gary was very tall, you see.

He did most of the driving, which is itself entertaining. Gary is the sort of person you can warn about a traffic change -- say, a left hand turn -- before we reach it. Remind him as you reach it. Remind him again as he goes through it. Then watch him turn in the opposite direction and drive away from where you want to go. I've seen this several times in several cars now, and this trip was no exception.

At one point we were begging him to pull into a parking lot and turn around, to go back and pick up a mixed turn. He finally did, mystifyed, and said "wait -- you guys weren't kidding?"

I took Tuesday off and Gary and I did Maine and saw the parents, who had a lot of fun with Gary. Buddy loved Gary, and was content to lean on him and let Gary scratch his neck and ears for hours at a time, it seemed.

There's more, but I'm exhausted. Catch me tomorrow.