The Strawberry Imposter: Lily continues to be much too enraptured by autumn

I recently discovered that wily Fairfax sent a postcard (using my stamps, I might add!) to his twin requesting apples, claiming that I wasn’t giving him enough to eat! This is patently untrue! You can see the evidence for yourselves!

my duplicitous hedgehog

It’s October, everybody! And you know what that means! FALL!! And Halloween! And Clara’s birthday! Clearly this is an excellent month. The weather the last few days has been completely glorious. It’s been sunny and warm (just take moment to notice that Lily—this Arizona child—is saying that it’s “warm” when the high is seventy) with this amazing chilly breeze, and the trees are just starting to turn. And some days, the wind is incredibly gusty, roaring past the windows and through the trees and making the windmill try to take off. It is so glorious, and so enlivening. Some days I’m just so in love with fall that I can’t help but skip, or do a few dancing, running steps as I walk to class. This is such an exuberant and melancholy season and I love it so much. When I first realized—I mean really realized, and thought about it—that Mac was in Minnesota, I was pretty worried and disappointed, but right now, I’m incredibly glad. It’s such an adventure to live here, and a chance to spend some time in the Midwest, which I’ve never really done before. And to experience the gusty, blustery fall! It’s incredible. The other day, I went out to take pictures because I just couldn’t bear to be inside or to be outside without my camera in my hand. I took a tour of the campus, starting at my dorm and walking around one side (and taking many zillions of pictures!), but before I could make it all the way around, my battery died. It was extremely upsetting, but I went out again the next day and took lots more pictures. Here is a subset, but I can’t post too many (even though I really, really want to) because blogspot will be cranky!

pictures of fall at Mac

Even more excellently fall-related, I got to go apple picking yesterday! It was incredibly lovely and exciting and Midwestern-ish and autumn-y and wonderful! Mac bought a bunch of tickets (another example of the adorability of this place) and we could sign up (first come, first served) for them. The orchard was surprisingly far away—the trip took maybe an hour and a half, although we did get lost three times, one of which took us into Wisconsin! I’m not even kidding—we went to the apple orchard by way of an entirely different state! Anyway, once we were there, we got our hands stamped:

it’s like being a kid again! I love hand stamps!

and got to choose between apple picking (the red cow) and the corn maze (the black mummy). Keo and I went to the apples first, and had a lovely time picking all different kinds of apples. I think I ended up buying maybe four types?

many splendid apples of happiness (with Keo)!

Then, after a walk around the orchard, which was filled with children and parents and several pumpkin patches and a hayride and this adorable cow train:

adorable cow train!!

we stood in line to buy our apples, at which point we realized that there was also raspberry picking! So we took turns waiting in line and picking raspberries. I didn’t have time to get very many, but I enjoyed the process immensely.

raspberries are the prettiest fruit!

After that, we took a break to munch upon our newly acquired apples and then headed off to the corn maze! Before venturing into its (surprisingly tall and labyrinth-like) turns, we paused to buy an apple donut each (covered in cinnamon sugar and surprisingly delicious):

and then we bravely entered the maze! We had to pick the easy section (there were three different areas, but the times ranged from twenty minutes to an hour and a half, and we only had about half an hour before the buses were to leave), unfortunately, but it was still rather exciting. It really was an easy maze—it took us the prescribed twenty minutes, and only one wrong turn, I think—but the wonderful part was just being surrounded by the tall, rustling corn and being able to look at its lovely golden color against the blueblue sky.

“the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye, and it looks like it’s climbing straight up to the sky!”

Afterwards, we rode home on a silly yellow bus, with the cold wind and afternoon sunlight blowing in through the window, and dozed. I have a great deal of fondness for school buses (I’ve had some lovely long drives home in them, especially after badminton games) and it was such a perfect, sleepy afternoon time. I’m so glad that I went (and signed up early enough for a ticket!) and that Mac made it possible for us.

Oh! And I almost forgot! As suggested by Clara (who knows about Fairfax’s love of apples), Fairfax came with us.

I forgot to take pictures of him picking apples (he was dashing all about), but I did take a picture of him at the corn maze.

he pretended to be cool and calm, but actually he was a little nervous about the maze

Also, my friend Keo bought some apple cider, which she was kind enough to share with me. I’m drinking it right now and it tastes like fall and cold weather and holidays.

and it’s pretty!

As previously mentioned, October is also the month for Halloween, which means that I’m getting way too excited for my costume. As many of you know, I’m going to be a character from my favorite television show (the Doctor, from Doctor Who) for Halloween, which is basically the most exciting thing ever. Unfortunately (or possibly fortunately? I’m not sure.) this has also meant that I’ve recently become even more obsessed with Doctor Who. I re-watched some old episodes from when my doctor was around (Quick plot summary: The show is about a 907 year-old Time Lord (alien) from the planet Gallifrey who flies around saving the universe from destruction and generally being awesome. When he is dying (assuming it’s not an instantaneous sort of death), he is able to regenerate, which means that he disappears and re-appears (although it is of course much more dramatic than that) as a new person with the same memories. To all of you who are thinking, “Well, that’s an obvious plot device.” it is, but it’s also not a cheat. The brilliant thing is that the new regeneration has a totally different personality, so it still feels like a terrible loss when one doctor dies and is replaced by the next.) and now I can’t stop thinking about the show. The other night, after my Wednesday night class, I was invited to watch one of my favorite episodes (“Blink”) with some friends. My better half kept saying, “You need to get some sleep!!!” but my other half (the one that proudly wears a shirt that reads, “I <3 Doctor Who!”) insisted I go. It was incredibly fun, and then afterwards we geeked out about our favorite episodes and plot twists for a while. Yesterday, some friends and I had another party to watch the season finale (which was absolutely terrible). Afterwards, we were feeling so nostalgic for the old, wonderful Who, we decided to watch that, after drawing a TARDIS on their whiteboard.

our beautiful illustration (words and outline by Cassidy, coloring-in by Lily (notice the subtlety of the blue whiteboard marker’s shading))

We had just started the episode though, when a whole group of other Whovians (brought by another friend) came trouping in to meet us, after which we had an impromptu hanging-out session chatting about life and Doctor Who. By the time everybody left, it was ridiculously late, but we still had to finish the episode, which we did, and then I stumbled back to my room to sleep! It was an excellent (and rather collegiate) Saturday evening.

Worse than all the time I’m spending on Doctor Who, though, is that I’m starting to associate random things with the show (for those of you with no knowledge of the show, you may want to skip this last bit). For example, when my art history professor was talking about the city of Punt, I was sure for a moment that she’d said The Lost Moon of Pooche. And when I watched La Grande Illusion for French, and one of the commanders was wearing a really elaborate neck brace, I thought for a moment that he was Soltaran. The sqeaking of the flagpole on windy days sounds like the music behind “Blink” when the angels are coming, Sethos’s title (from the Amelia Peabody books by Elizabeth Peters)—the Master—makes me think he’s an evil time lord who hears drums, and there’s this one door on campus that I’m pretty sure I saw the TARDIS disappearing from one evening. It would be a perfect place to park the TARDIS—it’s almost the right shape.

an ordinary door pretending to be a cosmogyral TARDIS

And all of my doodles lately have been Doctor Who-themed.

many doodles

(I’m a little concerned about how cute my Cyberman is)

This is not helped by the random references to Doctor Who that I see around campus. This is someone’s chemistry art project:

daleks for VICTORY!

Relating to this recent über-obsession, I was watching behind the scenes and blooper clips from Doctor Who when I stumbled upon a video of some British actors (including my favorite Doctor) messing around backstage and telling these jokes. Apparently there’s this format—kind of like the “knock, knock” jokes—where you say “I’ve got a new business” and then when asked, you describe it. The other person then asks, “well, how’s it going” and then you finish up the joke with some sort of terrible pun. Some of them were incredibly hilarious, so here are some favorites (one of them slightly differently told).

“I have a new business.” “What’s your new business?” “I’m making statues of religious icons.” “How’s business?” “Well…I’m making a profit.”
“I have a new business, actually!” “What’s your new business?” “I’m just making fireplaces.” “Making fireplaces, how’s that going?” “Grrrreat!"
“I’ve got a business!” “What is it?” “Demolishing massive clocks.” “How’s business?” “We’ve hit the big time!"
“So….I’ve got a business.” “Is it new, how is it?” “I’m a lifeguard.” “Really, how’s that going?” “I’m keeping my head above water.”
“I’ve got a new business!” “Oh, what is it?” “I have a job re-purposing broken calculators.” “And how’s that going?” “The numbers just aren’t adding up.”
And finally!—“I forgot to tell you, I’ve got a new business!” “Really?” “I’ve teamed up with a sculptor, and we’re making iron busts of famous people.” “And how’s that going?” “Forging ahead.”

I suspect that few of you will find these as funny as I did (with the exception of my father, who makes even worse jokes than I do!), but I couldn’t resist including them.