I have often spoken of how autumn is the best time of the year here. The days are temperate, the sun is warm, the humidity is low, the sky is clear.

I don't get to see much of it. Work of course sucks up prodigious amounts of my life at this time of year. And I'm trying to move from "familiarity" to "fluency" in Italian ahead of my voyage there in 96 days, 19 hours and 5 minutes from writing. And the verbs, oh the verbs. So many, many verb tenses (at least 14, not counting the infinitive and gerund), each with 6 different person forms (Io, tu, lei, noi, voi, loro). Thankfully you can get by with about 5. Unless you're in Sicily, which we won't be this time.

06:30 this morning. I should really be doing some work. There are issues with the budgeting system at the job. I haven't skilled myself up on the latest versions of the software I use, which will be an issue if my current job expires under me which is not if but when and I need to re-enter the job market. I need to work on my Italian past perfect tense, boy do I need to work on my past perfect tense. I need to work on some financial management tools so that I can better plan my own finances and figure out better ways to pay for my upcoming trip and get the damn mortgage off my back, not to mention finance some needed repairs around the house. And I need to do a stack of things in relation to my investments before the looming end of the financial year.

06:35 this morning. Screw it. I spent most of yesterday in front of a computer and I will be spending most of next week in front of one. I grab the camera gear bag, fire up the car and head out. I arrive at Sandon Point. The sun is just over the ocean. The air is cool against my face and the sunlight is warm, balancing each other perfectly. The light is unfortunately coming to the end of the Golden Hour, but some of it is still there. It is relatively quiet and peaceful; I hear the sound of the ocean, more rubbing against the coast than beating against it this time. The wind has cleared the air and made it pristine. A smattering of clouds gives the sky some character, and the sun has yet to turn the rest of it blue but it doesn't need to be this early. For a few moments I just soak in what is, meteorologically speaking, the best day of the year so far, and forget about all of the things that were in my mind a mere half hour earlier.

But of course, as I type this I'm back in front of a computer. And all that entails.

Still, l'autunno non è ancora finito.