October is my favorite month of the year. The weather starts to cool off (in theory). The sky almost always seems to be an impossible shade of blue. I have fond memories of Sundays in fall at my parents' house. It always seemed to be sunny on sundays. With the crunch of the leaves, and that wonderful smell (you know, the smell of fall), a nap in the hammock always did the trick. It'd be breezy, so the hammock would sway, but it was sunny, so you didn't freeze. It was wonderful. These days, since we don't have anything to nap in in our yard, I open the living room windows and the back porch windows, and I just enjoy the cross-breeze.

It seems like fall is taking a long time to get here. I have a pile of freshly knit hats, shawls, and even two sweaters, just dying to be worn. I got to wear my most recently knit sweater, a gray one, when Chris and I went apple picking, but it's been too warm since then to even consider it. This has made me realize that my hobby and the weather are not friends. But at least I have this awesome sweater!

Speaking of apple picking, I finally got to do that for the first time (if mom and dad took me, I don't remember. Amy's class went, but mine didn't.). Chris and I went up to Skytop in Flat Rock, NC, the first weekend of October. It was chilly and awesome, because I got to wear that sweater. We've been eating fresh apples ever since, and there has been apple pie and apple cobbler. Hopefully, some of the grannys will keep until time to make pie for thanksgiving. Chris kindly modeled our apples for me.

 

Then a kind lady took a picture that has BOTH of us in it! Yay! This may very well end up on our Christmas card, for lack of other picture.

All this talk of fall, combined with the beautiful weather outside, has me daydreaming about hiking Mt. Pisgah. So nice up there. Chris has never been. Note to self: must go to Pisgah.

But not this weekend! This weekend, we're going to Charleston. Chris' former roommate is getting married on Sunday. Since we'll already have to take Monday off (conveniently, it's fall break at Clemson), we decided to make a vacation out of it and leave on Saturday. We're going to be super touristy and see things like Ft. Sumter. AND, we get to see some old friends, which is always a nice treat. Oddly enough, Chris' family will be down there for the weekend, so we're having dinner with them on Saturday night.

In other news, Chris is still autocrossing. And enjoying it thoroughly. If you want to know something about autocross, you'll have to ask him at Christmas.

We have a pecan tree in our yard that is so close to ripe, but not quite yet. Chris has to park elsewhere, because they keep dropping on his car.

We have officially joined that new small group I mentioned last time. We're enjoying the fellowship with other couples our age.

Remember the creepy bugs I talked about last time? I googled them. They're earwigs. Apples to Apples will never be the same.

Clemson football is having a good year. We're winning and stuff. I've never been the fan of a winning team before. This is quite fun. The Greenville contingency will be going to a game in November. We even have a parking space, which is a big deal.

I finished our Christmas stockings, so we can start the holidays whenever. I'm ready. Ozaria helped me pick up pinecones the other day. I'm thinking we'll be spray painting them gold or silver. And decorating with them. Obviously. Martha would be so proud.

Speaking of Ozaria, she is doing well in school. Remembering what she learned in school is another story. She recently told me Marco Polo is from New Jersey. I have no idea where that started. Also, nearly every week, she discusses what she would do if Justin Bieber were here. It usually involves tears.

Progress with the mentor program revival is slow, but steady. We're going to be kicking-off recruitment next month. It's exciting. I just hope we can find enough mentors to match the demand for mentors.

I've discovered something lately. If you really want to know how important something really is in your life, just try to go cold turkey. I quit drinking sodas at all, some time ago. Recently, I've allowed myself the new Dr. Pepper Ten, despite their motto ("it's not for women"). I honestly think I could be fine without sodas at any time. For a while, there was the occasional craving for a Dr. Pepper, but now I find myself indifferent. I also have put myself on a yarn ban. I can knit what I have. But I can't buy yarn until Halloween. I've been under this ban for over a month already. Turns out, though frustrating, it has allowed me to really contemplate which projects I do and don't care to knit. I have several lovely sweaters lined up as soon as halloween comes along. I've been able to prioritize my projects and not buy yarn for the sake of buying yarn.

Whenever I write a new blog post, I read the most recent post, then I make a list. Good news: I'm almost done with the list for today.

One last thing. My new project at work is on scintillators. Essentially, radiation detectors. They are used in two major fields. One is medical: CT and PET scanners. The other is security: shipment scanning at borders. Now you know!

Have a good fall, y'all!

Back To School

It's time for back to school. In my world, it means that the days at the lab grow longer and quieter. I'm actually the only one here right now. I also find myself daydreaming about fresh school supplies. I'm a post-it junkie. I also like new pens, graph paper, fresh spiral notebooks and sharpies that still have their points. I have a plethora of school supplies and no need for new ones. Usually, I still end up with new school supplies. This year, I (gasp!) organized what I had and chose from that stash.

Enough about school supplies. It's an interesting year. I'm the chief of staff for graduate student government. This means I sit there and look pretty. I am also on the library committee. This exciting committee meets once a year. The job also includes legal aid, meaning I hand out forms to the handful of students who request legal aid each year. And then I sit in senate meetings and cabinet meetings and steering meetings. For the record, I get paid for this glamorous job. On paper, my primary job is to keep Erin sane. Have to earn my keep somehow, right?

My research is moving forward nicely. I'm at a bit of a turning point, where I'm no longer working toward the same outcome as before. Same materials, different goal. If you want the whole story, let me know and I'll explain it as soon as I understand it myself. I swear I've been reading the same page for days. But the quiet at the lab is killing me. The summer students are gone. The undergrads are back in classes and only here two days a week. Courtney is working every other day at Tetramer. Tiffany is writing at home. Alex is in classes. Steph is here most days, but is fostering a dog who requires attention, so I am actually completely alone today.

I've turned into the local go-to poster child for "took medication for my ADD and I turned out fine". Mom works with a lady who asked to talk to me about my experience with it. Apparently, this worked out so well for her that she told friends about it and they want to meet with me too. I've come to a conclusion that this is for the kids, and someone who knows (ie: not Tom Cruise) should share what they can. It doesn't mean I've got the right answer or the wrong answer. It just means that I'm not crazy and talking about things I don't know anything about. I've actually got the experience with it and want to help the kids. I'm such a sucker for kids.

Speaking of kids, I'm still mentoring Ozaria, who will be starting 4th grade this year, hopefully at a new school where she can be better understood. I'm also working with a team to revive the mentor program at church and hopefully get more of the kids in her neighborhood connected with their own mentors. It's going to be a lot of work, but we have a team of four who all care deeply about those kids. Can't wait to see things moving forward!

Our house is like home base for every sort of strange bug known to mankind. We had the war on the black widows. Then there are these two enormous writing spiders in the bushes. I like those. Scratch that, I TOLERATE those. They are both interesting and docile, so I let them make their home in my bushes. Their full width (legs and all) probably is the size of my hand. They are both named Charlotte. Yesterday, a boatload of ants made it into my kitchen. I never figured out what drew them there, but I found where they came in outside, so they're all taken care of. Then there are these long skinny bugs that I've been calling devil bugs because their tails look like forked tongues. Creepy bugs. We also have animals. Bunnies like the cherries in our yard. So they're always out there. The squirrels like them too. And the birds. There was a dog who sleeps on our porch every once in a while. And I saw a garden snake once. On another note, we have a pecan tree in our yard. I hope our neighbors don't get any ideas. They're already creepy enough without them walking around in our yard stealing pecans. Plus. I have every intention of picking them up myself. We're gonna have a bucket.

Chris is working hard, as always. Harder than ever, in fact. He's got added hours so he's been getting home later. And more tired. We've decided to change small groups. The group we're in is intended for young singles, so we decided to visit a few other groups and see what comes of it. Tonight we're visiting a group whose leader Chris has played softball with for years.

We went to Asheville on Saturday. I bought yarn for our Christmas stockings and am already 2/3 done with Chris'. I may have also bought some red cashmere for myself. I'm thinking gloves. I'm working on a gray sweater that will be so comfy when it's done. And I'm almost done with Christmas presents. Also managed to make myself a blue shawl and finish my purple sweater in there too. I just have to finish Amy's (and yes, it will be finished this year).

This weekend is the first Clemson game. Chris has an autocross that day, so I'm going up to Greenville to watch the game on the enormous screen at Chateau Burka. Apparently Mo will be there too, so it's a party!

And that's all the news that's fit to print!

Harry Potter

For the lone person who hasn't heard, I'm a bit of a Harry Potter fan(atic). With the release of the final movie this week, I've been thinking a lot about the influence the books and movies have had on my life.

Harry and his world have been a part of my life since July 25th, 1999. I received the second book in the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, as a birthday present. Mom had read the first book and liked it, so she bought me the second one, not realizing that they were a continuous story. That was the summer I turned 13. We visited Dad in Philly, then hopped in the car and brought him home, by way of several major American landmarks. And I read Harry Potter the whole way. I can still see Amy and I on either end of the backseat, listening to Backstreet Boys cds and swapping them out every once in a while, all while I was reading this book. It was a long trip home, with stops at Hershey Park, Monticello, and Gettysburg (not to mention all the sights in Philly). We were still in Virginia when I finished the book. I remember this clearly, as I begged my parents to stop and buy me the first one. My wonderful parents, always willing to encourage my ravenous reading habit, managed to find a Borders in a day and age when your cell phone, if you had one, couldn't possibly tell you where the nearest ANYTHING was, let alone hold the e-book. And the rest is history.

Since then, I've celebrated nearly every birthday in conjunction with the release of a Harry Potter book and/or movie. The books always came out right before Amy's birthday, so she'd get a copy and I'd have to wait the week and a half until I got my own copy. I remember going to The Open Book with my mother at 7am the day the book came out to get our books, which she had them gift-wrap. I could touch it, but I wasn't allowed to read it. We even picked up the British editions when we went to London. It was a feat to find copies a few times, with my parents driving to Easley and back the summer after my freshman year of college. They'd come for dinner on my birthday and hadn't produced a copy of the book, so I was sadly without reading material that night. Until they showed back up later that night with a copy. I finished it at 5am. All of the books were overnight reads. I couldn't possibly be prevailed upon to put it down.

J.K. Rowling fed my imagination like no other author before or since has been able to do. When the first movies came out, I was worried. I was afraid they would take away my ability to imagine that world, just the way I wanted it to be. Instead, it was a wonderful supplement to my imagination. The movies started coming out in 2001. On Thursday night, I'll be in line by 10pm to see the final movie. Many folks immediately start looking for the differences between the book and the movie. All I've ever wanted to do is savor every last minute of it.

If there's one thing that can be said about Harry Potter fans, it's that we're loyal. Most of us grew up right alongside these characters. They're in our hearts and part of our lives. I commented to Chris that I don't know what to do when it all ends. There's no more books, no more movies, never anything new again. It's not likely that I'll spiral into an emotional pit. More likely, I'll look for something to replace it. But there's nothing out there. From the intellectual standpoint, Harry Potter is incredibly well-written, with wonderfully researched characters. Many of the peripheral characters draw their names from myth, folklore, etc. It's a kind of creativity I envy. J.K. Rowling has talked in interviews about the fact that she's known how it would end since the first book. She's had these major plotlines all stored up in her head, just waiting to be put to paper.

So. Instead of lamenting the end of a long 12 years with Harry Potter, I'm going to appreciate the impact it has had on my life, helping to make me the reader I am today. It's been with me all these years, and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Jo Rowling herself put it quite eloquently at the premiere of this final movie: "the stories we love best do live in us forever...Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home."

No, Darth Vader isn't relevant, but it's a fantastic picture.