Fall has officially started here in Atlanta, and we’ve been blessed with a couple of cooler days this week with highs only in the 70s. But that will change next week when the temps creep back into the 80s. Summer heat keeps hanging around.
With the cooler weather, Chad and I have started going for walks after work again. Today was a long walk down the Beltline, and then we cut back through the neighborhood to come home.
The kids are back in school. In fact, they’ve been in school so long already, since August 3rd, that they are already on fall break this week.
Speaking of school, Chad and I are taking an online Intermediate Italian course this fall through a language school in Boston. Our teacher is native Italian and is a professor at Boston University, so she’s a great fit. Plus, there are only two other students in the class, so we get lots of individual attention. If things go well, I might attempt the citizenship language exam in February. Otherwise, I’ll take it in June. (It’s only offered four times a year. It’s also only offered in a few cities in the US, so I’ll have to travel to take the exam, maybe to Miami, maybe to Boston.)
I’m back at work full time, and it’s so nice to be on a regular schedule again. I’m still doing PT exercises, but my shoulder is 98% healed. I’m guessing a few more weeks of PT to work out the final bits of pain, and then I will be back to normal. I’ve decided, however, that I’m going to continue doing several of these exercises for the rest of my life. They are good for maintaining flexibility and building strength, and it will be good for me to keep this up as I get older.
The farmer’s market is having a bumper crop of late summer / early fall produce, so we have been eating lots and lots of vegetables. I’ve been making gazpacho every week. Yum! And this last weekend I made a big pan of ratatouille which is so healthy and delicious.
Our yard is full, almost overgrown after a long summer, and it’s getting ready for fall.
There are lots of late summer flowers blooming around the neighborhood. I love that things bloom for so many months of the year.
And finally, people are starting to put up Halloween decorations. I don’t have any photos of that to share, yet, but I did spy this fun guy on a walk today. This structure is a holding cell circa 1900, located in a park down the block from my house. Back in the day, a policeman, on foot, could arrest someone for something like public drunkenness and lock them in this little compartment until the paddy wagon came around to pick them up and take them to jail. I call this compartment The Drunk Tank. Here is its visitor today:
