11.17.05 Wednesday's rain pretty much dropped the last of the leaves. Foliage Season is come, peaked… gone! This year it was officially October 25th. Didn't seem that long ago, Scot Haney mentioning it was time to "cover the vegetables" to avoid the first frost… Sigh! The fenced-in garden is now the holding tank for the gathered leaves from raking. The remains of the harvest, or at least what is left after the deer came through, is blanketed beneath. It's all next year's mulch.

With the colder days and earlier nights, the woodburner is soon to become the norm. Last year we bought a new Yotul over at the the Trading Post. Money well spent. Have had a few minor fires these past weeks just to take the edge off the night, but the wood's stacked (early this year for a change) and ready.

11.18.05 Took the ride up to Kent today. Had to drop off a mailing for the Land Trust. Everything already seems to have that Holiday Hurry. I despise that, and the Snoopy snowfall thing in CVS. So, to help put on some brakes (and possibly get over my Snoopy anxiety) I took the day off from work. It seemed like a smart move. Once there are not enough hours in the day, and the fireball in the sky goes down before you've finished what you wanted to do, and the only thought is that "all this" is becoming way too much to handle... it's worthy to take some time for oneself.

Driving up Rte. 7 from New Milford everything seemed a little calmer. There was ice on some of the ponds. Hardly any traffic. A crispness of Autumn that demanded the window on the Caravan stay down - though it was cold. "Damned cold," I thought to myself - but the window stayed down.

The stop at the Post Office was refreshing. I guess I mention it only because it was unexpected, not anticipated. The mission was to deliver the mailing to the Post Office. Enjoying it was the surprise. It seemed to compliment the drive there - it matched the pace I was looking for. Unhurried. With time to just talk. Time to just watch other people doing their work. And, they were busy doing their Postal things. I had the time to wait until they could get to my concerns. It was perfect. A co-worker of my dad from his early real estate days is now a carrier there and it was good to see her.

I stopped at Patco on the way out of town to get a pack of cigarettes, and decided on the left-turn back home. The South Kent way. Sure enough, I landed behind a gravel truck. We were ticking along around 20 mph. Even less along the curves. Not that there really are too many on that road. The truck guy kept waving me to pass. I laughed to myself, "No way! This is the speed of life." Driving for the pure joy of travel - and in no hurry to be anywhere.

Watching which side of the road the railroad tracks were on became "something to think about." I missed where they crossed the road. "How else could the tracks be on the other side now?" I puzzled. The beauty of it all… the railroad tracks and the scenery were all that was important.

Once I got home I brought some wood in for the fire. "It's cold enough," I assured myself. And, once the fire was right, it was to the keyboard for some overdue webWork. But, first… I had to made a few notes of the day.

slupatchuk

Sidebar. We've been handling the annual mailing for the Kent Land Trust for well over a decade now. It was while preparing for it this year that I realized that it was a fair sport, and something we're actually pretty decent at. The usual train of events started rumbling by, and I decided that we should again offer it as a service to small businesses and organizations that need a hand with such things.

The game has changed a bit throughout these years. The Postal Regulations have become more numerous, but they fall into a relatively simple and efficient scheme of things. In the New Year we will be promoting the service for smaller mailings, less than 2,000 piece mailings. Along with the mail-prep services, we will be offering mailing list (database) maintenance services. If you have a need for such a service, send an email or give a call.