Neighborhood Color

There are all these bushes around my neighborhood that are stunning right now!  Their leaves change to crimson as the season turns and are now gradually falling off, and it seems they often fall off the tops of the bushes first, leaving this awesome combination of slate grey sticks and brilliant magenta color.  They're all over the ground and it looks like the sidewalks are strewn with rose petals!  I googled around to find out what it is, and I think it might be a Euonymus alata, commonly called the "burning bush" shrub.  Cool, huh?

Clumsy Goodness

The past month has been swept away before my eyes and I have no idea where it went!  I've gotten lost in Lexington life, I suppose.  Here are some highlights:  Beautiful weather with a new crispness in the air, apartment rearranging, decorating, and cleaning, turning a 10 lb pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern, and subsequently into pies, curry, and granola, the last paper of the semester completed, new places in Lexington explored, and many daydreams about the year ahead.  Also, on the family front, Trish and Justin are moving to Egypt! - more stories about that soon.  School's schedule has calmed down a little bit lately in the lull before finals, and I've had more time for pleasure reading, letter-writing, and small projects.  This just makes me wish I was out of school again, but those days will come soon enough, at which point I'm sure I will bemoan the fact that I no longer belong to an academic institution.

The name of the game around here is still about budget-friendly living.  However, it's not as dire as the previous months, for which I am very grateful.  I get paid regularly now, resulting in a reason to celebrate every two weeks.  Others feel the same - After my last theory exam, the professor announced, "Since we had an exam today and payday is this week, you can count on our next class being Donut Day."  Excellent.  My first paycheck was also commemorated with extravagant baked goods - not one, but two kinds of cookies.  Peanut butter for the first, which you have to make in Lexington because the Jiff factory is down the street and it often smells like a giant bakery that wafts the smell of peanut butter over the city.  The second - brown butter sea salt nutella stuffed chocolate chip.  GOOD GRIEF.  Can you imagine such a cookie?  Here's the recipe if you wish to make your dream a reality. 

That was obviously a delicious celebration, but there was also much brainstorming about what my first paycheck purchase in Lexington should be.  A bottle of whiskey?  A small piece of furniture?  A trip to a new restaurant?  I thought about all this while biking home, where I came to a halt outside my gate, swung my leg over, and was surprised when one of the gigantic holes in my pants got caught (?) on the bike seat.  I tried to recover with an odd, small hopping motion, but alas, my middle name is some combination of clumsy and accident-prone; my bike and I slowly went down together in a loving, yet awkward embrace.  Ergh.  It was then, lying on the ground, that I suddenly knew what I was going to buy... :)

ps:  This post was written while wearing my new jeans.