The trees have all turned over the past week. We have four maples in our yard, and it's so *pretty* that I have no motivation to rake the leaves yet, so the whole yard is the approximate colors of this icon. I have this image in my head of Arisia and Hal Jordan under a green pavilion, the roof covered with red and orange and purple maple leaves, the yellow ones drifting through and around them like sakura petals in anime ... alas that my art skills could not do it justice.

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I signed up for yuletide t'other day; wish me luck. I'm just waiting anxiously for my assignment. Cryptic doublespeak and random enthusiasm and terrified burbling: Yuletide is like a chance to suddenly get more of all the books I loved as a kid, without having to write it myself; whlie at the same time I get to write the same thing for somebody else, only in fandoms that aren't so dear to me that I can't write them. Whee! Only now, I'm afraid that I volunteered for a few that I won't be qualified to write, o alas! Everybody is posting their proclamations about what you *must* be willing to do ion orer to volunteer for a fandom. Me? While I'd be overjoyed if somebody wrote a perfect story tailored to my tastes, personal history, and corpus of work, these are fandoms that are mostly virgin territory for fic, and I'm satisfied with anything that mostly fulfills the request and is well-written. If I get actual Lucky Starr fic or Riddle-master fic? I'm happy, man.

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I found it interesting that when we went to see Serenity, all of the previews, and the movie, were about a scrappy band of rebels trying to overthrow a supposedly beneficial tyrrany which maintains power through lies and propaganda. Well, all of them except Narnia, and I don't actually remember how the White Witch kept power, althought the revolution theme is the same. It's an interesting trend, after a stretch where most of the big SF epics were about either maintaining the status quo or fighting off an outside evil.

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We've just got home from a visit to my aunt and uncle's to play with my little cousins, the Duchess and the Kangaroo . If I'd stayed home, I would have gone outside to play in the leaves, so instead I went out in my uncle's yard with the Duchess. We played with leaves and jumped and looked at trees and pulled apart acorns (I have been noticing acorns a lot more this year. The road behind the train station is covered with bright orange scars from acorns being crushed; it looks like pumpkin meat. I tempted to try acorn flour someday) and picked up an entire skirtful of pinecones, which Grandma put in a plastic bag to take home. We also looked at a big Marbled Orb Weaver. The Duchess had an eww response but when I refused to act scared she came up and looked at him a little. She wouldn't sing Eensy Weensy spider with us, though. Or I'm a Little Teapot. ( And I got to meet the Kangaroo for the first time! )

Speaking of that, I need to stop being a coward and accept one of the many special-ed sub calls I get every night. But I just want to get in a few standard jobs first. I have another one at a high school tomorrow, which means getting up at o-dark-hundred again. I should post a subbing update tomorrow afternoon, if I survive.