Autumn must have sneaked in when I wasn’t looking. I can tell because it rained last night, and we don’t get rain in the summer around here. Not much, anyway. So, welcome to the new season (which is spring in Australia, and I know that because it was mentioned during yesterday’s broadcast of Port Adelaide’s demolition of the Kangaroos in the AFL preliminary final).

The rain brought out the deer, or at least one deer, because when I opened my blinds this morning I saw a young buck (that’s what I assume from the animal’s size and the length of its horns) grazing beneath the old oak. It spent at least an hour in my yard, because when I checked on it later it had moved closer to the garden. I have no problem with a deer in my garden, which is in such bad shape that strip mining would improve its appearance. A little munching by the wild ones isn’t about to do it any harm.

The rain also filled the bird feeder tray. This wasn’t very appealing to the birds, so I emptied it the best I could. I’ll let it dry out by itself. I really need a better feeder anyway, because this one gets jammed too often, even if I use the fine grain premium finch food. There were at least half a dozen yellow finches flitting around it yesterday, looking for places to perch while they waited their turn at the one or two openings where the food came out easily. By the noise they were making, I assume they weren’t pleased with the overcrowded conditions.

It was still summer Thursday night, when Eric and I went to our one and only Giants game of this disappointing season. And the game didn’t disappoint us, because it was just as disappointing as most other games the team has played this year. We appreciate the consistency with which they blow leads and lose by one or two runs. But we thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience, as always. We took the ferry from Larkspur to the ballpark, and the night was so warm and pleasant that the sweatshirt and heavy jacket I carried with me weren’t necessary. I’m glad we didn’t wait until fall to go, because (a) it isn’t so nice out today, and (2) there’s only a week left before the season ends anyway.

And what else has been keeping me from writing here, you ask? Well, I spent two days last week nearly unable to walk, for one thing. I’ve been doing Denise Austin’s low-impact aerobics program every morning, and I’d somehow managed to do so much working out that for a couple of days I couldn’t do anything at all. I even took a few doses of pain medication to get me through.

I’m okay now, but I’m also taking a day off from the workout every so often. I keep forgetting to weigh myself in the morning, and I won’t do it in the afternoon, so I can’t tell you if I’m losing weight. But I can say for certain the I’m losing flab, because I now buckle my belt on a notch a little farther from the end, and it’s way easier to bend over and tie my shoes these days.