{P,F,H,R} 4--Fall is here!

Linking up with Like Mother, Like Daughter!

Pretty

The pumpkin display outside one of the local Whole Foods stores. How many pies do you think we'd get out of all these? I also love the little basket of squash. 

I really love fall. I'm not a huge pumpkin fan, though, but these were just so pretty, all arranged together outside the store on a lovely First Day of Fall! 

Funny

Guys, this is just SO funny, and since I'm distantly related to Cardinal Wuerl, I can use this for my funny, right? I geek out whenever a pope comes to D.C. now because it's total Distant Cousin Mania time!

Happy

This is our CCD classroom door this year. Sr. Paulina, who came to the US from Poland a few months ago, has been helping in our class (partially to help improve her English), and she is greatly gifted with a laminator and some construction paper! I love what she did to our door. 

(I don't know why the little guy looks so oddly squished--but take my word for it, he doesn't look like that!)

This is one of my few fall decorations. While my mom is the Queen of All Household Decorating Things--you should see the house at Christmas!--I don't have as many decorations. I did, however, pick this guy up at Hallmark as part of their 12 months of ornaments series, along with this guy: 

See the little kitty? And I have my Seasonal Angel, too, who's out in her full glory. 

The next ornament in the series is a Turkey--they're all designed to look like cupcakes. The first one, for August, was a crab on sand, which was adorable. 

Real

This is part of the Radiology Department at "The Resort"--aka, my hospital. Since the new addition was built, there is a fancy new "imaging" department, which has taken over most of the traffic that used to come here, when this was Main Radiology for clinics, the ER, inpatients, you name it. I have spent a lot of time in these hallways--sometimes in a bed, sometimes in a wheelchair, sometimes under my own power. After transplant, I came down here every morning around 6 AM for a chest x-ray. It was hard to walk back then--I needed breaks. Can you imagine needing breaks to walk a few feet? It's sort of unbelievable now. 

The only things down here anymore are the regular radiology rooms, and the bone density scanner. The CT scans and nuclear medicine have been moved to the new digs. But this part of the hospital is still a part of my life, because this is where I go for my chest x-rays now before my transplant clinic appointments. 

So I'm probably never going to escape these walls, or that tile pattern--but at least when I'm down here now, it's not an emergency. It's routine. 

Seven Quick Takes No. 84

I. 

Another Friday, another Quick Takes! Here's what I've been writing about this week:Persuasion: The Last Entry in the Jane Re-Read; Sort of Knitting; Daybook with a Side of Sinus Trouble; Why I'm a Dominican; and  my August Real Housekeeping piece went live!

II.

To follow up on that last one--the sinuses are getting better. I think. Since I caught it early I didn't really have a lot of symptoms, per se. Only things that I, with my crazy knowledge and Spidey Sense, really picked up on. But it's always better to be early than late, when it comes to this sort of stuff. I felt sort of off yesterday so I took it easy, catching up on Netflix and reading. I'm on the second to last Pink Carnation novel and I'm still reading What Matters In Jane Austen and Middlemarch, but I've also started A God In Ruins. 

III. 

CCD starts this week, which I can't really believe. We used to start in September, so we are starting earlier than usual, but really, it's almost September? Most of the kids have gone back to school here already; in fact, I think they all have. I can't think of any districts that wait to start until next week. I think the football season starts next week, though I'm not sure, because I no longer have siblings in band. Your schedule was basically determined by the band performance/travel/practice/competition/Band Camp schedule. My high school's band was pretty good. I wasn't in it, but my brother and sister were, and they performed in the Macy's, Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Rose Bowl, and other parades I'm probably forgetting. Even though I took clarinet lessons as a kid, I was always much more of an indoor girl. (Seriously--marching in rain, snow, wet? NO THANK YOU.)

IV. 

One of the movies in my Netflix queue was Apocalypse Now, which I'd never seen, so naturally I had to watch it. It was intriguing; the end, especially, at Kurtz's compound, was really well done. I wasn't over or underwhelmed. It sort of fit the expectations that I had for it. Martin Sheen did a great job. I also started watching Cleopatra. What was it with these epics in the 50s and 60s, that they feel the need to start with Tedious Narration, and have all these long, drawn-out sequences? People! Come on! No wonder the movie was so expensive to make. I didn't finish it yet, though, so I should probably withhold judgment. I've also got Three Coins in a Fountain, Cinema Paradiso, and From Here to Eternity in the queue. 

V. 

I have bought, officially, one Christmas present for the upcoming season. I always get my dad more or less the same sorts of things, and my brother and sister have birthdays in the fall, so I don't get their Christmas gifts until after their birthdays. Since my sister lives in Texas, anything I get her for Christmas has to be easy to fit in her luggage, if she comes home, or easily mailable, if she can't come home (she's a nurse, so her schedule isn't exactly at her disposal, and she makes more money if she works the holidays, so she doesn't really mind working them, if she can't get out of them.). Gifts for my friends are a whole other story. 

I really love Christmas, so I don't mind thinking about it early. 

VI. 

I'm ready for Fall. Since I was about 16, I guess, I've been ready for fall by the middle of August. I don't know why, in particular. But I got the September Southern Living today, and Reese Witherspoon is in it, wearing all sorts o adorable fall clothes, and I just wanted it to be fall. Football! Hockey! Leaves! Sweaters! My fireplace! Candles! All that stuff! 

(And no, I'm not a pumpkin freak, like so many other people are. I mean, I like them, but not in my coffee or my doughnuts or in my candles....)

I mean, look at these clothes!

Seriously? (And I can't get rid of the "ad" at the bottom, but come on, these clothes, people) I ooooove that cardigan in the bottom right photo. I'm sort of a cardigan freak. And the blue sweater in the cover photo? To die for. Blue, in case you haven't noticed from the design around here, is my favorite color. As another Southern Belle, Shelby, said in Steel Magnolias, "Pink is my signature color." Well, here it's not pink. It's blue. 

(Yes, shades of Sleeping Beauty, right?) 

I love this photo I took at Disney World. This is what goes along with it: 

VII. 

And finally....

I have an audition tonight. Hope it goes well!