The foliage must have reached peak color sometime last week because when I drove to town for the groceries many of the trees were already bare. The rolling mountains had put on the drab gray of winter, retaining only a few stubborn patches of red. In the vicinity of the house the trees have turned yellow. During gloomy days in particular the air seems suffused with a golden mist.

The past few days temperature rose into the upper sixties. Since we've had a hard frost I suppose that would qualify as Indian Summer.

Once again the Yankees disappointed me by losing in the playoffs. It's been hard to do without my daily box score fix, now I have to start waiting for next year.

A typical autumn, except that this year -- as you may have heard -- here in the Northeast we're supposed to get a visit from the scariest trick-or-treater ever: Frankenstorm.

According to the weathermen, or what I can glean from their maddened gibbering, we would be better off having the car windows soaped in thick, abstract impasto, or our trees wrapped in toilet paper like a Christo art piece. I figure I'd better make a blog entry because we may all be washed off the map or blown away.

How often do we mock the weathermen when they don't get the forecast right. But, then again, look how often are we really hoping they get it wrong.