It seems that as life happens, the time for blogging drops away.  I have several posts I have started over the past couple of months but they still sit in "draft".  I unconsciously took the summer off from blogging. Chairing a volunteer search committee took a good amount of time, though the required focus and organization to coordinating everything was a creative diversion that had a positive conclusion, not something I get much of from work. There also has been a chaotic pile of shit at work that has yet to settle out and the life of summer chores and activities just took over as a priority,  plus you just need the motivation and it wasn't there. We'll see if this motivation lasts long enough to get this post out. There just doesn't seem to be that much to blog about.  [it didn't last ....and I am back a week later to try again]

 

As it approaches fall, the temperature has dropped and last night we bounced round the freezing point. The row of  basil and a few tomatoes and the sunflowers are all that remain in our little garden. I'm taking no chances tonight and have been covering the whole thing on and off this week. I'm just not ready to harvest that much basil yet but today did make a double batch of pesto, which put a small dent in the crop.

The 4 tons of pellets have been delivered ready for winter. Now I need the motivation to haul it all in the garage a bag or 2 at a time. That will be a workout day. The stove is not completely ready for winter which I guess reflects my attitude as well.

Lack of motivation seems to be a common theme here and something I am trying to put some deep though into how to change things to increase it in general. Use to be that I could hit the road with some miles to offset the work stress but then I noticed that it wasn't working as well and increased the miles which resulted in some injuries that have forced me to drop the mileage significantly and work back very slowly with a good amount of time off between runs. It sucks but as I have talked with some coworkers, hurting feet and heels seem a common ailment. Which lead me back to figuring out how to change the source of the stress so that I am not feeling like I am washing up on shore by the end of the week.  Not easy given the area labor market and not wanting to just jump for the sake of jumping and not really having that luxury.  

A couple weeks ago we caught a taping of "Wait Wait don't tell" at Tanglewood.  It was our first time there this summer and up until a few hours before we weren't sure we were going. Thinking back then, it really wasn't apathy as it was that we were moving kids that week and came in from Boston just a couple hours before the show. It is cool to have such a venue 10 minutes from our house and it was a fun show to see taped and also hear everything that gets cut out in the final edits.We'd seen Prairie Home Companion taping a couple of times but the difference is that those are live shows that are taped for repeat broadcast whereas Wait Wait was almost a couple hours edited down to one. Sitting out under the stars, the big screen projectors gave a better view than some people had inside the shed.

This was one of the last events of the season at Tangelwood and the tourist level seems to have dropped off significantly, though I can't recall that the pickup was that significant, which I am sure has been my distraction.   As fall hits there will be a wave of weekend festivals before the season ends and winter starts to ease its way in. Hopefully I'll be back to my pre-summer running schedule and, even better the job situation will have changed positively.