Autumn Days

Last week I rented a car for the 985th week in a row. This time, my co-worker and I were driving for an hour as it was getting darker and darker and we couldn't figure out how to turn the lights on. We could either have Brights on or darkness. Don't worry, she consulted the manual.

Then, when I stopped for gas I accidentally popped the hood rather than the gas tank. I'm thinking of working in a garage for my next job because I'm such a natural. I clearly have bad rental car karma after venting in my last post.

I've taken a ton of fall shots around Madison - and wanted to share them in this post. Also, recently I read Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower and saw the movie (directed by Chbosky.) I loved both. Obviously, the book more. But the movie included Emma Watson and Pittsburgh so I definitely enjoyed it too!

I love reading -- and have posted a few times about books I've read [here and here and here and here]. But this is my favorite in a while, and I kind of talk about it/recommend it non-stop. So I'm soaring to new levels of annoying! Go me.

I decided to disperse fall pictures with quotes from the book. My English major self may secretly miss writing essays (sorry the below aren't in parenthetical citations or footnotes.) Enjoy :)

"And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."

"Maybe these are my glory days, and I'm not even realizing it because they don't involve a ball."

"I am very interested and fascinated by how everyone loves each other, but no one really likes each other." [on families]

"It’s much easier not to know things sometimes. And to have French fries with your mom be enough."

"You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things."

"It’s like when you are excited about a girl and you see a couple holding hands, and you feel so happy for them. And other times you see the same couple, and they make you so mad. And all you want is to always feel happy for them because you know that if you do, then it means you’re happy, too."



The pictures above are from a few places -- the tree in front of the brick building (my little sister's dorm!) is from Grove City College, the apples and pumpkins are from a farm in my home town near Pittsburgh, and the rest are from Madison.

I'm torn between whether fall or spring is my favorite season. There's something both depressing and promising about fall, which is probably why I like it so much. On the one hand, it's getting colder, summer's over, and, quite literally, everything is dying. On the other hand, hoodies and scarves become appropriate, the air is brisk, it's my birth-season (is that a stretch? I use birth-week and birth-month all the time, because I'm secretly 5, but can I start using birth-season, too?), and the holidays are approaching! Also, when I look at the colorful trees and the leaves falling as I walk around down town, I don't think of them as dying. I think of how beautiful change can be.