Sweatshirt Weather

 

 Today was a beautiful fall day.  The sky was blue and painted with wisps of clouds.  The autumn sun shone in a shade of gold we only see in the fall.  The air was crisp, a word we seem to only use in the fall, with the temperatures in the low 50s and a nice breeze.  It was a perfect kind of fall day.  It was the first really nice fall kind of day.  It was sweatshirt weather. 

I did not set out to take a long walk, hike, or bike ride.  There was no plan to smoke a cigar or have lunch outside.  I had a fair amount of schoolwork to attend to.  I only went outside when I ran some errands that I needed to do today.  I do believe when one is really busy, a little break to enjoy to outdoors is even more meaningful, more special, than if had spent the whole day outside.

While in the center of town, I took some photos.  It was hard to find scenes with vibrant colors for the photos.  Most of the trees still had green leaves.  I remember hearing a news report back in September that predicted the fall colors were going to be muted this year because the cool down was going to gradual.  We would miss the vibrant reds and oranges.  The transition would be slow from green to muted yellow to brown.  That is exactly what happened.

 

 

  

 

Historically, before the reality of climate change, by Halloween, all the leaves would have fallen.  That has not been for case for, I want to say, the past ten years.  The winters in the past several years have been temperate as well.  Oddly, the prediction for winter is for a colder and snowier one because a La Niña weather pattern is expected.  Google’s AI summary is for a “potentially very cold and snowy, with forecasts for a stormy season featuring multiple large snowfalls” for Chicagoland.  I know I in the minority on this, but I would love to see an old fashioned winter with some below zero cold spells and a few blizzards that results a snow day or two.

Winter will be what it will be.  I sure did enjoy this lovely fall day.

 

Postscript:  Well… I had this post three-quarters done when Microsoft informed that there was an update to Word.  I saved the document, closed Word, and restarted as is the protocol for an update.  Much to my surprise, everything I had typed was gone.  All that remained was the title.  I am not sure what I did or didn’t do but it gone.  I have to assume it was my fault.  It has been a long while since that kind of boneheaded thing has happened.

It is also clear that I had not used AI to write the post.  If I had I could have simply copy and pasted the content again, or if I had signed out, I could simply reenter the prompt and have a brand new version to cut and paste.  My only options were to rewrite it or forget about it entirely and live to blog another day.  I opted for re-writing it.