This past weekend was the annual autumn celebration over at Hasufin and Mika's place, a get-together in which we get together to enjoy the coming of fall.. or whatever passes for it in the DC metroplex. Unlike Pennsylvania, in which Halloween costumes are often designed with wet weather insulation in mind, autumn doesn't actually arrive until the final week of October or therabouts. It tends to stay pretty warm down here right up until the end.

In other words, temperatures in the 70's and 80's right up until Samhain, which is usually in the neighborhood of thirty degrees Fahrenheit, where …

Time's getting down to the wire and there's no escaping it. The wedding is now two solid months away and Lyssa and I are scrambling to get our plans in motion. Last week the invitations came back from the printer, the directory of local hotels came back from Kinko's (I'll mirror them here to make it easier), and the custom printed stamps that my mother had made up for were put to use. Last week, parts of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were spent writing names and addresses, stuffing envelopes, and sticking things together. I spent a goodly amount of Friday …

Contrary to most years, my Fourth of July weekend was far lower in impact and more relaxing this time around than it usually is. I've been running short on sleep for a while now and made up for all of that by sleeping as long as I possibly could, over thirty hours in total spread over three days (plus a two hour power doze (like a power nap, only I never actually fell asleep but instead elfnapped, the way I do when I'm on the road) on Saturday afternoon). I actually feel refreshed and clear-headed for the first time in …

Late on Friday afternoon, Lyssa and I hurriedly packed our bags, jumped into the TARDIS, and set course northward once again for southwestern Pennsylvania and the general direction of home. As I've alluded to a few times, we're getting married in October and thus there are many plans to make, things to get, and arrangements to hammer out. In the early twenty-first century we can do many of these things over the net or on the telephone, but sometimes matters require the up close and personal touch. Things like tasting samples of wedding cake and taking recon photographs of the …

For the past couple of weeks, my weekends have been busy enough that there hasn't been much of interest to write about. Not that they weren't interesting interesting, but to be frank talking about driving around all over the place running errands, going to appointments, and things like that doesn't make for terribly gripping reading. This weekend, however, stands out in memory because it was the first really laid back weekend that we'd had in a long while.

On Friday night Lyssa and I went shopping to get the stuff to make a lamb stew, some of which we'd be …