I stepped outside yesterday, into the beautiful sunshine of autumn, finally dimmed to tolerable levels. No cloud cover, just...fall. Like the sun has a thermostat that leaves the brightness alone, and someone has turned the temperature down. And it finally smelled like fall: this gorgeous wetness in the air, of moldering leaves and humus and cold rain puddled in inconvenient places on the paths in the woods. And mud. And we're due for our first big "winter" storm. The rains have come to make me happy: "Northern California has not received any appreciable rainfall since last May".

It's been a remarkable non-day. I hung out at Mona's for a few hours, and we finally got tres leches cake, one of the few Mexican bakery items that isn't bone-dry and crumbly. I did a bare minimum of work for UCSB, I acknowledged the two or three new jobs that have cropped up, and I failed to educate myself for the election tomorrow (thankfully I have until late evening to do that). I got around to picking up some glucosamine to help my joints--I'm hoping it helps with my shoulders, which are starting to seem like pinched nerves of some sort. And now the day is almost over, it's 2221, and I'm getting very sleepy; but if I sleep now I'll just do what I did rather insensibly this morning and wake up at 0530 for no particular reason.

A friend offered to contact people he knows at different companies that are hiring, if they have anything I'm suited for. Which they do, so that process is in motion, and I'm guessing should play out in about three weeks, except for one company with a notoriously flaky and obnoxious hiring process--they took nearly two weeks to get a fifteen-minute phone screen scheduled, and another week after that to tell me they wanted someone with a couple more years' experience. I wish people would fucking read my resume beforehand and figure out that they want more experience before wasting my time getting me thinking they're actually interested. Although in this market it's encouraging just to be sneezed at, kind of like "it's an honor just to be nominated" for the Academy Awards. It's also similar to winning $20 in the lottery, inasfar as it keeps you trying.

I got lost in Rock Ridge today and ended up driving down a street where the leaves were falling off the trees. Such a rare thing here, and I associate it with a lot of peaceful things...it could be that the greatest gift I have from Western Massachusetts is that I never had to try and earn a living there. *grin* It's easy to imagine that it's a nicer place to be, since I have trouble being happy wherever I am; but in fact it's cold and snowy there, and except for my family I don't know anybody, and as far as I can tell tech jobs are even harder to find than here. But it's where I came from, and if you let yourself bond to a place--and while I was never hugely fond of Springfield, where I grew up, I've always liked the region--it becomes a sort of refresher, a place where you can go and leave feeling better for the visit. Bonus points if it's somehow distant from the problems of your everyday life.