For a long time, I wanted to compartmentalize my life. When I lived at the Home Office, I had my work and my other life together in one room. It seemed as if I was always at work, and eventually it got to be too much. When the landlord raised the rent, I took it as a challenge and found Green Acres.

For four months, I had what I thought I always wanted. At Green Acres, I had an office that was comfortable and roomy, but at the other end of the house from the family room, where I could relax and get away from work. I probably would have stayed there, even though I had misgivings about the layout almost immediately, if it hadn't been for the noisy neighbors.

It turned out that I could relax in the office, because it was far from the common wall where all the noise came through. My family room shared that wall with the neighbors', and even though I could hear their every moan and sigh, I never wanted them to hear me. So I played the stereo rarely, kept the TV volume down, and sometimes even wore headphones while watching late at night.

And I also discovered that I didn't want the computer to be that far from the TV and stereo. I didn't get any more work done that way, but I did feel as if I might as well be in an office somewhere, under the scrutiny of supervisors. It's not that I watch TV while I'm working, but I do so much on the computer besides working, and the TV is a good companion.

Now that I'm here at the Fortress, I have everything in one room again. But it's a huge room, and I can turn my back on the area dedicated to my job, and still see a vast space to relax in. It was pure luck to find this place, and I'm not sure I deserve it, but it's what I always wanted, even if I never knew it till I had it.

One thing I know for sure is that I'm not planning on giving it up.

Didn't the weather forecasters promise us rain this weekend? We're a month into autumn, two months away from winter, and the day was so spring-like I could feel my sinuses swelling up. It was warm today, but breezy. I could hear the wind whooshing through the trees all around my house, and I could feel it blowing through my chest as I was out watering the yard this afternoon.

Tonight the wind is blowing so hard that it's positively spooky. It sounds as if there's a motor running outside, and some ethereal presence is revving it up. I had to look outside to make sure it was just wind, and not a UFO landing. The sky is clear and the stars are bright, so why does it sound like a thunderstorm out there? The doors and windows are rattling, and there are creaks and cracks that I haven't heard in the time I've lived in this house. Weird and haunting, it is.

World Series Notes: Both teams wasted a lot of chances to win game one long before the twelfth inning was even thought of, but the Mets kept forgetting to run, and the Yankees kept forgetting to hit. The latter is excusable, since good pitching can stop good hitting. But falling asleep on the bases is a little hard to take, especially after you've played a whole season and worked your way to the pinnacle. If you're going to play as if you've forgotten everything your coaches ever taught you, you probably shouldn't be in the World Series, and you definitely shouldn't win.

Jose Vizcaino, on the other hand, is not a star but a smart ballplayer, and by guessing what pitch was coming and doing what he could with it (instead of trying to do too much), he got the hit that won the game. The Yankees got him from the Dodgers for his defense, but they played him in game one because of his hitting, and he came through with four hits. He will probably never even have a chance to do something as great for the rest of his baseball career, so taking advantage of his golden opportunity has to mean that much more.

Hey, I'm not going to complain about an almost five hour game, when it's this intensely played. It's going to be a long winter, and there are at most six more games before it starts. It's unfortunate that most of the memorable moments were blunders by the Mets, but at least it gives us something to talk about between the end of the Series and the start of spring training.