Dear Internet,

please excuse my rudeness in not writing for awhile, but I was out having a life. Specifically, it is autumn, a time for staring off into the quickening evening, watching an amazing palate of steel blues and greys outside meet every yellow and golden glow of the indoors. It's like rain has a color, and the exterior shots of horror movies exist to remind us how good it is not to be trapped in an abandoned insane asylum with a dead cellphone. It is my favorite time of the year, and I will cheerfully stare at the greys and the glowing for hours and hours until I am overcome with the urge to have sex with everyone's living room lamps. Don't worry, I usually go inside my own house while the urge passes, but realize that my mother just read the phrase "sex with living room lamps" and go ahead and have a drink for both of us. Then again, an hour ago I was emailing her about her matching underwear, so perhaps you will need more than two drinks. Especially if you are my mother. Hi Mom!

Lately there have also been beautiful loud thunderstorms and torrential rains and a new wonderful job that is incredibly hard but fascinating and challenging. Also, I just noticed that there is such a drink as the Autumn Splendor and Pumpkin Pie. Be still my beating heart. Seriously. Between lightning, university accounting and themed holiday drinks, who has time to fix their archives? Not I.

Also, Internet, I had pneumonia for a couple weeks, thus ending my 31-year streak of staying out of emergency rooms. Man, even with broken bones I never had to take a taxi to the ER at 2:30 in the morning. And pneumonia wrecks such havoc with your to-do list, because the major symptom is the lack of any energy at all, even the energy to power your legs over to the kitchen or tv room. TV is even beyond pneumoniacs. It's way too hard to listen for that amount of time. Pretty much the only available activity is reading, because you can go fetal and clutch a book open in one sweaty palm. Try it. But it's hard to cross things off your ongoing activity list when you're too tired to get the cap off the pen.

Also, and I'm a little scared to even type these words lest it jinx the whole thing, but the Deadly Meringue is coming to visit in like 15 days. That's only two weeks. And there will be so much fun stuff, like rock climbing class and Agatha Christie movies and home decorating tips and trips to The Alchemist and dinner at the vegetarian Chinese restaurant. Not to mention Autumn Splendors and Pumpkin Pie.

All I'm saying, Karen, is that the vinegar-and-lemon-juice thing is much better with maple syrup.

Then again, what isn't?