Well, it's official: today is December 1st. To many, this marks the beginning of the holiday season: drinking hot cocoa by the fire, singing along to Christmas songs on the radio, wandering through a wondrously festive shopping mall, decorating your house for the season and watching others as they prepare to decorate theirs... I'm totally and completely ready for all of this to come, as it's my favorite time of the year.  At the same time, though, it's crazy to think that December is already here.  It feels like fall has quickly come and gone.  Most of the trees on our street are already bare.  Still, this was an incredible, beautiful fall that we had.  I feel bad that I've barely had the chance to document any of it on this blog, so this post is a farewell as well as a remembrance of fall.  I hope you enjoy!

DISCLAIMER: I haven't technically read Tangles yet (though am anxious to start it!) and there were a few other books I read that are not included in this piece: Anya's Ghost and Friends With Boys, both of which I highly recommend you pick up!

Wow, two posts in one weekend!  Well, today I decided to continue on in trying to make this a more productive weekend rather than just one filled with me sitting in my room doing nothing, so I made the plan of walking down to the part of town that's close to my college and go into the local Starbucks down there.  Of course, I couldn't help but take pictures of my walk on the way there, as it's starting to look more and more like fall:

This last Thursday, I checked yet another item off of my Summer Bucket List and did something I've wanted to do for a long time: ride the Sounder train.  I remember when I was in my first quarter enrolled in Green River Community College, taking classes at the Kent campus, Mom would drive me down there, but we would often get stopped before the railroad tracks as the Sounder rolled by.  I always loved looking in through the windows at the people inside, some at tables where they typed on their laptops, others reading the morning paper.  I always thought how neat it would be to take the train every morning to work or to school and be among one of those commuters.  I've wanted to go for a ride for awhile, but I never could since the Sounder doesn't operate on the weekends - only on the weekdays when I was too busy with school and Mom was too busy with work.

It's been exactly a week since my last post, but I feel like so much has happened since then!

About a month ago, when my Spring quarter at school was coming to an end, there were a lot of things set in my mind for what I wanted to do this summer: go to Victoria and Nanaimo, BC, with my mom; take a trip down to Portland to visit Powell's Books, the world's biggest independent bookstore; go on a couple hikes; spend plenty of sunny days in Seattle.  Another thing I really wanted to do this summer was go on a bike ride.  Me and my mom had been talking about this forever, but our bikes needed fixing, so we never got around to it.  Last week though, we finally managed to take our bikes in to the local bike shop and get them fixed, and Tuesday we got a head start in the day and drove our bikes to our favorite bike trail.