Instant Winter - Just Add Wind

[akirlu]

Those trees I photographed last week are almost perfectly bare now. The odd orange leaf here or there still clings to its branch, but mostly, it's the mauve haze of a leafless canopy. All it took was a weekend of gusty winds and a few more rain storms. On the upside, the Olympics are snowclad again. They had been bare so late into the season that I was beginning to worry. But just to really confuse things, seasonally speaking, this morning I was buzzed by a hummingbird, busily gathering up the last of the nectar from the flowering shrubs behind Savery. It's been a weird old fall, it truly has.

Here at the office, half the staff and faculty seem to have pulled on the cranky pants this morning. The A/C in the server room crapped out and virtually every file we normally use is unavailable. Grump. Also, possibly finally getting to hold a search doesn't agree with us. It's so unfamiliar. Hell, even I had my share. I mean, yes, if you've got the candidate's first meeting of the morning, it's swell if you decide to pick him up at the hotel rather than meet in the office, but Jeeze Marie, could you *tell* me you're gonna do that? Just in case I'm maybe starting to panic because the guy is an hour late showing up at the main office? Yeah, thanks.