Like flicking a light switch, Mother Nature changed the seasons on Saturday morning.  Gone is last week’s sunny and balmy, 75 °F, Indian summer weather.  By Saturday afternoon November had assumed its true form, cold windy and grey.  It was good while it lasted though.  Running around in shorts, t-shirt and Tevas on Veterans Day did feel nice.  It is about time though.  In little more than a week Thanksgiving will be upon us and then the Christmas rush not too far behind it.  The march of the calendar has not slackened with this breath of warm weather.  It is time for the seasons to play catch-up.

In little over a week’s time, Anne and I will be driving to Ann Arbor for the Thanksgiving holiday.  Most of the Rain-Charms (Carl, Jay and Rey) will already be there when we arrive.  Dave will fly-in just in time for turkey day.  KW, Mr. Bill and Mouse will join us for the feast.  This will bring the dinner party up to twelve people.  I hope that Bugs and Horsey are up to the task.  On the left coast, Dan will be driving up to San Francisco to visit with his cousin Liz.  What about Ashlan?  She is in Canada and has already celebrated her Thanksgiving.

Dave is busy filling out graduate school application forms for next fall’s enrollment.  Last year he applied to only a few, select schools and didn’t get accepted at any of them.  This year he is casting a much wider net and is applying to eleven different schools: Duke, Purdue, Northwestern, Arizona State, Utah, Drexel (Philly), Rochester, Georgia Tech, Brown, BU (Boston) and Pitt (Pittsburgh).  The hope is that with his actually having already graduated from Rochester, his NIH internship and the graduate level classes that he is taking this year, his chances for acceptance should be significantly improved.