Day 264 - too nice a day to be in the office

 Today is the 5th day of the 38th week, the 21st day of the 9th month, the 264th day of 2023, and:

• Earth, Wind & Fire Day - in the popular 1978 song by the group,  "September" this date is mentioned in the lyric "Do you remember the 21st night of September?" Reference to this date has gained popularity due to the song's spread as an internet meme
• Escapology Day - celebrated since 1926 on the day 111 years ago when Houdini first presented his water torture cell trick  
• Free Queso Day
• Independence Day - Malta from the UK in 1964, Belize from the UK in 1981, and Armenia from the Soviet Union in 1991
• International Day of Listening - seems to me if everyone did a bit more of this, then we genuinely could have the following day....
• International Day of Peace
• Miniature Golf Day - AKA Putt-Putt hereabouts  
• National Chai Day - well this is a day that I find it easy to celebrate!  I have come to enjoy my daily chai [extra shot, no foam, no water, extra hot if I am ordering from Starbucks] and it is the only way that I can drink hot tea.  Always blamed my mother for that as her sovereign remedy for nausea when I was growing up was to serve up hot tea and dry toast, with the inevitable result that every time I try to drink hot tea I feel vaguely sick.  Ice tea is fine though.
• National Farm Safety Day for Kids - One of the things I have been reading a lot is the deplorable movement to relax child labor laws, claiming that young folks working is good for them.  The proponents always seem to evoke kids helping their parents on the farm by doing chores, ignoring the number of pickers driven into corporate fields far too young and those being utilized for industrial jobs that are dangerous.  
• National New York Day - the state not the city
• National PawPaw Day
• National Pecan Cookie Day - I am genuinely addicted to these
• National Surgical Technologists Day
• National Teach Ag Day
• Pause the World Day
• Play-doh Day - entertaining kids and presenting parents with messes to clean up since 1933
• World Alzheimer's Day
• World Gratitude Day
• and Voyager 1 is 22h 21m 27s of light travel time from Earth

On this day [in Middle-earth]:

Quote of the day:

"Autumn wins you best by this, its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay."

~ Robert Browning

There is a difference between saying "fall" [which is considered an Americanism, altho it too originated in Britain], and "autumn" is considered proper British English.  Apparently the former appellation is based on the fact that there is indeed a "fall of leaves" and showed up about three centuries after "autumn" arrived in English writings.   The meteorologists tend to divide the seasons evenly with three months in each, therefore meteorological fall starts on the 1st of September and ends on the 30th of November rather than following the astronomical arrival, which is shaped by the Earth's elliptical shaped orbit about the sun and arrives less regularly.  And, of course, the semi-annual madness of changing the clocks for Daylight Savings Time has always abided by the axiom that you "spring forward and fall back".   For now, most of us use the two terms interchangeably [at least hereabouts, partially I suspect because it is easier to spell and quicker to type] and don't think about it much.  I did recently read an amusing post online somewhere that basically claimed "fall" is actually a season apart as it spanned the days between the meteorological date of September 1st to the astronomical date between September 21st to 23rd after which it is "autumn".  

While I am totally captivated by the concept of the Margaritaville lifestyle, I really am neither a beach nor a summer person.  I can wistfully appreciate the thought of lounging in my hammock under palm trees and sipping tropical drinks while reading or lazily watching the world go by.  Indeed, I always have just such a landscape in world where I chill out regularly.  Of course, beladona never has to worry about sunburn or mosquitoes and doesn't have to work for a living .... 

Notwithstanding the allure of the beach bum life, this is the time of year I love the best, as the heat and humidity subside, the leaves acquire that woodsy fragrance, and I can open my windows to the fresh air and let it flow through my abode [well at least until one of my neighbors decide to smoke on their balcony].  And there is the building excitement as we rush into the holidays and federally mandated days off and the Christmas rush....

By the way, once we get below 90 shopping days left, I stop reminding you because the multitude of ads will take care of that.