yep yep yep

1. You know all that stuff you read in the media about the disconnect between generations? How the world has moved on and those of us who were adults before Al Gore invented the internet are dinosaurs? Yeah, that stuff. Definitely feeling it today. Me and the allosaurus.

2. We got our first snow last night--just enough so that everything looked like it was dusted with powdered sugar this morning. I missed seeing it come down. That's about the only time I like snow, when it is falling. It was gone by mid-morning, but I'm sure there is more to come.

3. By the end of the summer, the chickens were down to just laying one egg per day, or occasionally two. At least, that's how many were in the henhouse. Sometimes we would discover a cache of eggs somewhere else-- I found eight under the deck one day, and MadMax found six in the garage in mid-August. But now it's getting colder and the henhouse is nice and warm-- it was fifty degrees in there this morning when I went to let them out, and probably about 30 outside.  So they're laying in the henhouse again. There have been three eggs for the past two days. My egg holder overflowed this morning for the first time since last spring. More egg recipes coming soon.

4. We went to see Gravity Sunday night. It's good. The cinematography was spectacular--there are several truly breathtaking moments. But it had a 97% percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and I had heard nothing but raves about it, so I was expecting awe-inspiring. I was expecting to be blown away. So I actually ended up being a bit disappointed. It's sort of a cross between Apollo 13 and Castaway. Sandra Bullock is terrific, but then... Sandra Bullock is great in everything (BBT quote, thank you, Raj). Well worth seeing, but I would have been much more impressed if I'd gone into it thinking it was mediocre.

5. While we're on the subject of movies. (films. I know, I know. But I'm about to talk about Ironman.) Since I have a teenage boy, it's a great excuse to go see all the teenage boy movies. But I was surprisingly impressed with Ironman 3. Again, it's that expectations thing. I went into it thinking it would be awful, because Transformers3 was awful, and they're sort of similar. So maybe because I wasn't expecting much, it seemed pretty good. They did some interesting things with Gwyneth Paltrow's character, which set them up to do really interesting things with her if they do another sequel, so we'll see. Since the makers of action movies aren't known for doing interesting things with female characters, it probably won't go anywhere, but there's at least the potential.

6. I've been a restless reader this year. It's been so long since I've read a really good book. (Hmmmm, it's occurring to me that expectations might be playing into this, too. Hadn't thought of that.) As you know, I spent my free time in grad school reading romance novels, partly because they're fun to read (well, the good ones are), and partly because it was such a lovely, ironic way to thumb my nose at the whole grad school schtick. But even those have been failing me for quite awhile now. But--News Flash! suddenly I've read some good stuff recently. Will report back soon.

7. It's Halloween night as I'm typing this. One of the very few things that I miss about our old house is Halloween. We don't get any trick-or-treaters here, and we used to get 35 or 40. I love handing out candy on Halloween night, all those adorable little kids all dressed up and so excited. We do have half a dozen teenage boys here, all of them piled onto the couch downstairs while two of them play xbox. I don't get the fascination. I sort of get video games, but sitting and watching someone else play video games? No. Dinosaur, remember? But they seem to be enjoying it. They're not quite old enough to stay home and ignore the fact that it's Halloween, but they're way too cool to do anything lame like dress up in costumes and go out trick-or-treating. Interesting age. They are certainly eating a lot. :-)

So if I did the scheduling thing right, you will be reading it on Friday, November 1st. I'm taking weekends off, but (I hope) I'll be posting every weekday in November. I don't promise to have anything interesting to say. Next week I'm (finally) going to post the rest of the Good-Bye Grad School posts--the "one more post" I promised you several months ago turned into three. You've been warned, so if the grad school posts always bored you, tune out next week. I can't tell you how thankful I am that I never gave in to the impulse to give my blog address to any grad school people, because now I can opine shallowly and at length and no one except you guys will be the wiser.Also, I will be scheduling them in advance since I'll be in Texas visiting my mom for most of the week. Barring technical disaster, it should work.