I'm having a good day so far, it's been a not bad week actually.

Of course, it's been a short week for me since I took Monday off. It's been extremely busy though. I'm helping out with an event which is taking place in Toronto next weekend (on the 16th) and most folks are leaving their registration stuff until the last minute. This is generally par for the course so I'm not too surprised. What surprises me mostly is how quickly the days fly by. It feels like one moment, it's 8 a.m. and I'm sitting at my desk, checking my email and drinking my coffee, and the next moment, it's 4:10 p.m. and I'm starting to pack up. It's good busy though, not crazy-frustrating-pull-your-hair-out busy.

Today is very very sunny but very very cold. The weather has been uncharacteristically cold this month so far. I'm enjoying it though. It feels much better than all that hot sticky stuff we put up with this summer. It makes me feel healthier when the air is so crisp. We've been making a concentrated effort to eat better lately too. Not dieting necessarily (although some weight loss would be nice), just eating more healthy stuff. It's been a couple of weeks now and it's going okay. The main thing, I think, is to cut down on the number of times we eat out. Meals at home are just so much better, in terms of fresher ingredients, less salt, less fat (or at least more good fats and less of the bad stuff). Now that we have our bike back and can get into a regular exercise regime again, that will help too. I like how much better I feel when we're eating better food and being more active. I don't want to spend this winter on the sofa. I want to spend it getting the house sorted out and this new, healthier thing that we're doing will help with that. It all goes together. If I have more energy and feel better, I'll be better able to get the house organized and if I get things better organized, I'll feel better about the house. So basically, it's all good, so far.

The goodwill stuff is now at goodwill and the front entranceway of our house seems huge. It's quite nice actually. Mark doesn't mind the clutter but it does get me down sometimes and I'm trying to create a more calm, organized environment in our home. It's not that I'm a total clean freak or anything. I'm just really getting into simplifying our lives right now. Mark's being a very good sport about it, when we talked about it last night, he asked, in his best Homer voice "Do I have to do anything?" I'm being particularly brutal with my own stuff but I am sifting through his things as well. I always ask him if it's okay before I throw something out that belongs to him. I mean, I could throw whatever it is out and he'd probably never notice, but I couldn't do that sort of thing. I'm sure he thinks that it's kind of silly but I also think he knows that it's making me happy (and he is usually happy to see me happy).

I was thinking about my blog a little bit over the weekend. I was musing how neat it would be to actually have something "important" to say in this forum. I realized though that whatever anyone writes in a blog is important and relevant, to themselves at least. If it's in your head and you take the time to put it down here, it must have some significance for you.

My weekend was okay. I ended up taking yesterday off as a last minute vacation day to sort out our kitchen. Last weekend, we purchased some new cabinets so our kitchen needed to be totally cleaned and re-organized before we could finish installing them. It looks pretty good I think and I have two large boxes of stuff for Goodwill. Have you ever noticed that it seems like everyone has at least one hot-air popcorn popper but no one uses them anymore? I know that I took one to Goodwill when we moved into the house and now I'm taking the other one. I'm not sure why I hung onto it as long as I did. I'm sure someone will find a use for it. I also seem to have collected a rather large number of mixing bowls, vases and various tupperware items over the years which I no longer use. I'm also getting rid of a big, faux wooden, brown microwave / television cart. There's nothing wrong with it, we just don't have the room for it anymore. I'm getting into minimalism for our house. It's not a huge house, and we have a lot of stuff so between eBay and Goodwill, I'm paring things down. So far, so good.

I love the way the sunlight filters through the leaves on the trees right now. This morning, there was a little bit of haze and the sun was pouring through the clouds. Because some of the leaves have already fallen, and others are brightly coloured, the effect was stunning. The wind has picked up since then so the leaves are swirling and flying around everywhere.

Autumn has always been my favourite time of the year. I do get excited in the spring when the grass gets green again and the trees start to bud, but I find that the beauty of the fall colours never ceases to make me pause and drink it all in. It always takes my breath away. Fall rocks!

Hallowe'en was lots of fun. We didn't get as many kids at our door last night as we had last year. Just over 100 I thing. I was surprised too because it rained last year and last night it was actually quite nice out. The best costume of the night (or costumes as it happened) were the four "Stuarts" who arrived en masse and, when I asked if they'd do a trick, laughed with glee and proceeded to each do a "look what I can do" in my driveway. Very cool.