golden apples, yellow leaves & a yellow light�

how was your october? mine has gone by too fast! it's busy season at work, with a flood of new client/student referrals. i'm still having a flare, not helped by colder temperatures and stress. but i'm also appreciating autumn's harvest of apples, squash & pumpkins, and the fleeting splendor of fall foliage. just like cherry blossoms in the spring, there's a short window of time in the fall to get out and appreciate the glorious outdoor scenery before it's all gone.

the shorter days are making it so hard for me to wake up. seriously, i now hit my alarm's "Snooze" button 8-10 times (!) before getting out of bed. i've been ~10 minutes late to work every day this week, but today my boss gave me a great performance review!

what else? i've been thinking a lot, figuring things out for myself. at once, i'm energized and excited. and then insecurity starts to pervade my entire being, and i get overwhelmed and scared that my plans won't work out or i start questioning whether i'm making the right choice.

oh! remember "p"? he's that guy i met at the bbq/picnic (the professor). honestly, i've been giving him the yellow light, and it's kind of deliberate at the moment�there's a lot on my plate these days. and maybe it's sort of an "i'm willing to be friends" statement. and as i wrote a while back, the age thing also makes me pause & think. it's (age) not a big deal to a lot of people but i have my reasons, and after a lot of self-awareness-raising thought, i know what those reasons are. but i don't have time for details right now.

so why am i even mentioning this? well because, as crazy as this sounds, although i didn't necessarily intend for it to happen, our exchanges have been online. (not out of shyness, though. it's just been easier & more convenient for me b/c i'm away a lot, etc). we've e-mailed back & forth a few times, until today, when... he surprised me and called me at work(!). he said he got my office phone # when he got an "out-of-office" auto-reply e-mail from me when i was out of town recently. anyway, he asked if he could meet me for lunch or coffee sometime when i have time, and added that he was willing to come downtown one day (my office is downtown). um�so, uh, i think he's been really wanting to catch me by phone and, like, maybe see me? and why not?! right?

so yeah. maybe the professor wants to have some office hours with me. if i told people i was 21 and in college, i bet they'd all believe it! ;-)