Fall

Pictured: Part of the Penn State Abington campus during a Philly.NET code camp I attended a number of years back.

This is my favorite time of the year, but where does the time go? I couldn't believe, when I looked at the date a few days ago, that we were already in mid-September. I feel like I look forward to fall every year, but never really stop to enjoy it, usually due to whatever else is going on at the time. It also seems like it doesn't start getting cooler as earlier as it used to.

The cooler weather is part of what I appreciate about fall. That, and the leaves changing color. I remember both from being a little kid, rolling around in piles of leaves in the brisk weather. It was later, when I was in high school, that I gained an even greater appreciation for it, when my 10th grade biology teacher gave us all an assignment to collect 10 different kinds of leaves and use clear contact paper to collect them into a book of sorts. As I just typed that sentence, it sounded boring! But the exercise of doing that assignment, wandering around in the autumn weather looking for those leaves, is one that I'll always appreciate. Oh, and as a side-note: None of us could find 10. I think we all maxed out at 9. Maybe we don't have that many different types of trees in this area.

I have a lot of good, fall memories. In addition to the ones I just mentioned, some memories that mean a lot to me are of my years following high school, but before starting my career. A friend and I would hang around the local area, splitting our time between a pool hall, a local arcade, a mall, and any number of "not the best" local diners. A few years back I mentioned this all to him, and he told me that he hates fall because of the cold weather. I could never tell. The two of us also spent a couple seasons working at a local haunted hay ride. That experience deserves its own blog post.

"Haunted Hay Ride" leads me to, of course, Halloween. I love Halloween. I remember the grade school Halloween parties, the cardboard cut-out decorations, and the candy corn that was a perennial (I only recently learned that some people hate it, which surprised me, as it's a favorite of mine). I was only able to go Trick-Or-Treating a handful of times, as the TV preachers my mother would listen to eventually convinced her it was all evil. The imagery of the old Universal Monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein, etc.) was everywhere, despite those movies already being several decades old. These days, I try to watch a few of those old movies every Halloween season.

And then there's football. Monday, Thursday, Sunday. Sundays especially are like min-holidays in fall with football.

I'm glad fall's here again. I'll try to notice it more this year.