Time, Time Hears the Bells Chime

"Time. time, hear the bells chime"

...is a line from a terrific song by The Pretenders called "Time The Avenger". You can find it on their album (damn, that makes me sound old) Learning To Crawl, which I personally think is their best work, ever.

Anyway, it's now into the guts of Fall in Northeastern Pennsylvania, and the colors sported by some trees are now turning to rust, although there are a few trees (and my rose bushes, btw) that are clinging to green as if there was some kind of reprieve possible. There isn't, as far as I know. Testimony to that fact comes via my performing today of the annual ritual of putting away the warmer weather power equipment. Every October/November I hose down the lawnmower, scrape the grass out from underneath the mowing deck, and then drain/run out the gas. The same Fall rite is performed for the weedwacker. I do keep my gas leaf-blower gassed up and ready for use year-round, as it can just as easily be used to blow snow as it can leaves/grass. Ah, the rituals of Fall. There is a footnote to this, in that I still have to put both pieces of equipment away...both are currently drying off outside before they make their journey to the cellar for storage.

Along with rust colored leaves come Christmas shopping. I usually try to get mine done as early as possible. Mind you I actually enjoy Christmas shopping. Years ago, when money was a bit tighter, it was a pain. Now that things are "relatively" ok in that department, I like looking for interesting gifts for family members. I try my best to get people smaller, but meaningful gifts...in other words quality over quantity. Maybe that's my superimposing a belief system on others, but I'd rather get a few things that are nice, truly needed and will last than a lot of meaningless junk. To each his own, but in the immortal words of Bobby Brown, "I made 'dis money you didn't".

Speaking of Christmas shopping and time, it's amazing how much shopping has changed over the years. 15 years ago everything you bought you either found in a store or maybe from a catalogue. In other words, merchants showed you what they had and you decided to buy it. They dictated the choices. Now with the Internet, you really can find virtually anything you want. Case in point: there is an imported CD that I have that I wanted to get for my mother. You can't buy this any store that I've ever seen. You can, however, find it on-line. Anyway, now I do about 40-50% of my shopping on-line. Times have changed.

Will people be spending less this Christmas? I'm planning on spending about the same on gifts this year as I did last year. While the economy may be in the toilet, my personal economy is doing relatively ok.