the smell of winter approaching

Today is such a "classic" November day.

I'm sitting at home, watching it snow, and listening to the guys cut up deer in the porch. They're laughing and chatting, and stuffing sausage. They're still wearing camo & green and they smell like hunting. They've singlehandedly downed 3 pots of coffee, and are working on a fourth.

It brings back so many memories of being a child, and running through my grandparents' basement while my mom and my aunt wrapped meat in brown butcher paper. My grandpa used to be in charge of sausage making -- he'd mix pounds and pounds of meat on a big white table covered in plastic, adding spices and tasting the raw meat until it was right. He used to dangerously stuff his hand into the grinder to feed more meat down into the sausage casing, and my dad would come down the stairs with plastic spatulas so that he wouldn't accidentally get his fingers caught. (I think he did, one day.)

Ah, yes. What a day. Meat into hamburger, into roasts, into sausage, into packages of stew meat.

It smells like the coming of winter. Pre-winter has a smell. (I don't know if you knew that already.) It's different than the smell of cold. Pre-winter involves the cold smell of living in the country - the dead smell of leaves & the smell of truck exhaust. It also smells like gun powder and raw meat.

(wow. I think that makes me a hick.
anyway.)

The porch smells good to me. It smells like good times, and family.
And the coming of winter.

this is me

taking back what I said about greenery.

not so sure about this "greenery"

I'm not so sure I like this "greenery", but it's a work in progress.

We'll see what happens here in the next little bit.

yikes

this is my 75th attempt to kickstart this blog again....

It's just something that gets ignored.

maybe it's time for a change.

put to shame....

I was reading Amy's blog today, and Jay had been commenting that she had stopped blogging regularly.

And that got me to thinking about my dreadful blogging habits...

Let's remedy this....

It's fall, and it's cold, but it's also really beautiful. Last week, there was an emergency on the LRT, and I ended up walking across the river to the University from the Legistlature. It was SO beautiful -- I could have stopped on the middle of the bridge, and watched the mist rise off the river for hours! All the trees are turning colors, and the brilliant yellows and reds look best in the morning.
It was a really neat God-send ... I'd been thinking for a long time that I needed to spend some time outside. And then I had a chance. (or rather, I was forced...)

A day before that, I fell down the stairs at the University. It was a rather humbling experience, because I fell pretty hard and a lot of people saw it. It was painful and left me with lots of bruises on my legs (that are only NOW starting to disappear...)

And now, it's Thanksgiving, and I'm just enjoying the colors of fall. (while I wear my winter coat, of course....)