Morning star

I am pretty much a night owl by nature. When I was a baby, I would sleep from midnight to noon, then stay up from noon to midnight. At Northwestern, I was known for my late hours, often ridiculous even by collegiate standards, and my oft-quoted-by-Drew commentary on once needing to get up pretty early to catch a plane: "I should probably just stay up all night."

With that said, I really enjoy being up early in the mornings. I'm here in Seattle, as most of you are probably already aware. Since we came in on business, I figured that I wouldn't have a ton of time to do a lot of touristy stuff, since we'll likely be working 9-5 or 9-6 every day. (Granted, that still allows for 2-3 hours before sundown, and last night the sun didn't completely sink behind the Pacific until after I fell asleep, which was around 8:45 local time. But still.) However, I've been getting up earlier at home, and 5:30 Central, which is about when I've been waking, is 3:30 Pacific.

Well, I didn't get up at 3:30 today. But after a long day of travel and work, that would have been crazy. I woke up at 4:15 Central on Monday so I could get down to Midway for an 8:30 flight (which ended up having its boarding delayed by almost 90 minutes), and as usual didn't sleep on the flight. By mid-evening Seattle time, after a few hours of work, I was pretty wiped out. I was in bed by 8:15 or so, and though I didn't fall asleep right away, by around 8:45 I was gone.

A strange dream in which I was being chased down a dark hallway by a young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Cheryl Ford (better known as Karl Malone's illegitimate daughter by non-WNBA fans, by which I mean everyone) woke me up this morning at three minutes to five, just before my first alarm was set to go off. I had plenty of time to take a shower and be out the door by six.

The upshot is I was able to walk to Pike Place Market, take some photos of the waterfront and a snow-capped Mt. Rainier (lurking in the background and not terribly prominent in the photos as it fades into the sky), get a cappuccino from the first Starbucks, buy Alma a present, and walk back to the hotel... and even after writing this entire blog post it's only ten minutes past seven, leaving nearly an hour and a half before I'm scheduled to meet the other two people on the trip to walk over to the office. Being up early and doing things in that time makes me feel productive in a way that really nothing else can. I don't know if I'm the kind of person who can really be "early to bed and early to rise" every day, but darn if it isn't fun right now.

Oh, and pictures on Facebook, if that might interest you.

They're watching me, watching me fall

Sure enough, right as October rolls around, the weather cools off precipitously. On one of the last warmish days, last Sunday, Alma and I went up to Elkhorn, WI, for the Apple Festival at the Apple Barn. It was probably nostalgia to some degree; I'm sure I haven't been apple picking in 15 years, and I can't remember going more than once, but it was something I had been thinking about doing.

There are closer places, but the Apple Barn had a few attractions besides merely apples, namely the Apple Festival's promise of cider donuts and a tree maze. Unfortunately, it turned out that cider donuts are either the hardest baked good to make in the world ever, or just the most popular. The Apple Barn was limiting orders to a dozen per person due to a problem with machinery, and the line showed no signs of moving. We actually ended up going to Apple Holler, just north of Kenosha, where they did have cider donuts - and it was still a 20-minute wait because of demand. As for the tree maze, it wasn't exactly that tough. You could see through all the trees inside the maze, and the whole thing was only about 30 or 40 feet on a side.

Picking apples itself was pretty fun. I got a bunch of Cortlands and Ida Reds, which are both supposed to be on the tart side. I've actually only eaten one so far, so I should probably get on that this weekend before they all go bad and I feel like an idiot. I have been enjoying the cider we got at Apple Holler, which is really nice and tart, which you rarely see in cider.

To continue the nostalgia back to a time I'm not even old enough to be nostalgic for, we went for dinner to a Dog 'n' Suds drive-in in Lake County. It was interesting, although it was a bit cold for keeping the windows open by that point (the last day for the drive-in is actually this Saturday; it finally occurs to me why Sonic doesn't have any serious penetration north of the Mason-Dixon Line) and they were having trouble with their eponymous root beer (Alma did manage to get it in diet). I settled for Green River, which isn't a bad second choice.

On the way back from the Apple Barn, we drove past a farm that touts itself as having Illinois' largest corn maze. We might go do that this weekend. We spend so little time outside, might as well get it in before it gets too cold to do it at all, and some walking (the corn maze apparently covers as much as 11 miles) couldn't hurt either.

Fall fever: catch it! (Don't bother catching Cubs fever, though; it's only a 24-hour bug anyway.)