Holy Crap, It’s October Already

Posted on October 1, 2011    Posted by      79 Comments

Which one of you thought that was a good idea?

Well?

 

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79 Comments on “Holy Crap, It’s October Already”

  2. Well, as the weather in Texas seems to finally have turned to fall – I did. High of only 91 today in Austin, overnight low in the 50s. Practically midwinter weather.

  5. Wow. Oh Wow. I just took my dog on a walk. I wore shorts, a hoodie sweatshirt, and a baseball hat. I should have worn gloves and a coat. Autumn is here in Minnesota.

  10. Me. I don’t have air conditioning. October is a beautiful, beautiful month with apple-crisp air and leaves diving for the comforting warmth of the earth.

    I accept full responsibility.

  14. Um, I did. It got so hot out on the parking lot this summer that our kiosks’ air conditioner would Quit at 105 degrees and we depended on our fan for moving air. Plus my car has No a.c., so I don’t want to hear this from you ‘kids’ with your northern climates and your months of winter.
    Note to self: Lighten up, Francis.
    P.s. enjoy the cidar & leaves turning color, everyone.

  15. Was writing out the rent check this morning and I honestly had to think hard to remember what date to put down.

    Surely it can’t be October. Did we skip a month?

  17. Don’t look at me. We just got our first oil delivery of the season this week. With what it’s costing us, I freak out if I even think the furnace is coming on.

  20. John, you make it sound as though October can’t happen without consensus approval of the Whatever readership. I don’t think it quite works that way. Would be nice it it did, though.

  22. It seems to have snuck up on us, even our weather appears to be surprised and stuck at “July” at the moment (it’s 27c/81f outside at the moment).

  25. I have 3 words for you – Apple Cider Donuts.
    I don’t care who’s idea it was, I *like* it.

    Mary T.: One of our customers reports Home Depot had Xmas gear out 2 weeks ago.
    I find anytime before Thanksgiving weekend excessive – and *I* am a retailer.

  26. Not I.
    The weather person used the F-word yesterday, so all the house plants had to move back inside.
    How about we all agree to skip winter this year?

  27. After the summer we’ve had? You bet it was my fault. I ordered a box of October and had it shipped overnight. Best purchasing decision I made all year.

  29. I voted for October too, with a side order of Indian Summer. My birthday is tomorrow and the weatherman says it’s going to be 90 here in the Black Hills. Win.

  30. September is soooo yesterday. Hip up, dude.

    You know that Christmas is like next week, right?

  31. Let’s see here…
    A whole slew of birthday’s (mine included), plus all the attendant parties. Check.
    Oktoberfest. Check.
    Temperatures somewhere below ‘Insanely hot’. Check.
    And Halloween. Which is a month-long holiday, not a single day. Check.

    Yes, I think I’m happy with the arrangement. However, I am putting in my requests now to delay the onset of winter if at all possible. I don’t want to dip into ‘insanely cold’ any time soon. Plus, I can’t afford tires for my truck, so ice is not a good idea.

  33. Today is my wedding day, so I thought it was a great idea to be October already :)

  35. What are you talking about? It’s September 18 here. What, did you jump on the bandwagon and become an early adopter of that new-fangled Gregorian Calendar thing? Nothing but trouble, that.

  38. Tomorrow is my natal day as well Mossjon @ 8:35 am.
    The big 50 for me!!!
    I feel very fortunate as the neurosurgeons at UCSF were not sure I would make it to 43. Many thanks again to Dr. Sandeep Kunwar.
    I plan on spending the day in a bikini at the beach in Poipu, Kauai, Hawaii with husband of 28+ years.
    Lucky me :-D

  40. October first is a wonderful day. Its the first day to open a box on our advent calendar. Don’t have a Halloween advent calendar? Well get one. With 31 days on it they are 24% better than your typical advent calendar. Us pagans take our holidays seriously.

  41. Well, you can pretend that it is still summer and leave the AC on high!!

    And to all the people who just reminded me of “October the first is too late”, THANK YOU!! Just ordered a copy. I haven’t read that since I moved out of my parents basement

  43. October is my holy month. As there is a reasonable chance of the Phillies and the Yankees facing off in the WS, it makes this year extra holy. (The only more sacred scenario would be Yanks vs Mets.)

    According to Dashboard, it is locally 66 degrees, so I’m heading to the grocery store in shorts and flip-flops.

  44. October! Spring is here! (or here-ish — after a very pleasant last week of September, the current forecast is for week of rain with sporadic outbursts of rugby).

  45. Coffee picking time in Kona and the first whales have come back from Alaska — what’s not to like?

  46. Me. September SUCKED this year. So far this is much better.

    Congratulations to all the October weddings/birthdays/anniversaries, too.

  47. I’m happy with it. It’s my birthday month…I’m a libra. Aside from that I live in a place that has all four seasons and I have to say the older I get the more I appreciate it. And I’m glad that I’m getting ready to see the beautiful colors of fall……

  48. D00D, I needed a rest from September. By far the most productive fiction writing month of my life, this September I’ve written 166,950 words of fiction, equivalent to 4.17 SFWA-metric novels of 40,000 words each. While writing the 1,200+ page trilogy Alzheimer’s War, I started and completed two other novels this month, both serialized on my Facebook wall.

    WaterMagic began 4 Sep 2011 and was completed 17 Sep 2011, at 188 double-spaced pages, and 48,400 words.

    Lonelyheart Locusts began 20 Sep and finished 6 (!) days later, 26 Sep 2011, at 190 pages, 52,550 words including References with the 5,500 word concluding Chapter 11 “My Sin, my Soul” posted and reposted on my Facebook Wall yesterday morning.

    I’m following the advice of Ray Bradbury, on using dreams (in the most literal sense. And following the advice of Stephen King, of writing very day in the same place at roughly the same time, so your muse gets in the habit of being there for you. I have dashed of some short-shorts, short stories, and novellas, and novelettes in the past few months as well. The harder I work, the luckier I get.

  49. The idea with getting it into October as fast as possible is to get over all the arguments about football down here in Australia. We have four different codes, each of which proclaim to be the One True Code (AFL, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Soccer) and the end of September is finals season for all of them. Now that we’ve got this out of the way, we can now get down to some serious thinking and discussion… for the whole week and a half before the cricket season starts up.

    *sigh*

    Oh, and we’re back to daylight saving on the south half of the eastern two-thirds of the continent, too. Which means in a space the size of the continental USA, we now have a total of five different timezones running. There’s NSW, Victoria, the ACT and Tasmania, which are on AEDT (Australian Eastern Daylight time – GMT + 11). Queensland is on AEST (GMT +10). South Australia is on CDT (Central Daylight savings Time – GMT +10.5). The Northern Territory is on CST (GMT +9.5). Meanwhile, over here on the western third of the continent, WA is on GMT +8.

    Australian summer, isn’t it fun?

  53. When we switched from Julian to Gregorian calendar, we dropped ten days. We jumped from 4 October 1582 to 15 October 1582.

    46 BC was 445 days long in the Roman empire.

  55. ON another note, I am getting comments on a paper that I co-authored with my wife and son that was peer-review published 7 years ago, as it has this past month been suggested that LHC sent particles (specifically neutrinos) “off the brane.” Here’s my abstract of that paper, which sort of, kind of, predicted the CERN neutrino anomaly (how’s that for really hard SF):
    IMAGINARY MASS, FORCE, ACCELERATION, AND MOMENTUM:
    PHYSICAL OR NONPHYSICAL?

    Draft 6.0-Short [for ICCS 2004] of 27 April 2004 [8-page version + 3 pp. Bibliography]

    by

    Jonathan Vos Post
    Mathematics Department
    Woodbury University
    Burbank, California

    Andrew Carmichael Post
    California State University
    Los Angeles, California

    Christine M. Carmichael
    Physics Department
    Woodbury University
    Burbank, California

    ABSTRACT:

    This paper analyzes a possible emergent behavior of subatomic and astrophysical systems, which involves Complexity at four levels: (1) dynamic implications of assigning a Complex value to variables which, by tradition, were assumed real; (2) analysis of the related literature in Newtonian, Quantum Mechanical, Relativistic, and String Theory contexts, which have a social and conceptual complexity from their mutually different assumption; (3) the possibility of pattern formation shortly after the Big Bang, in high-energy events today, and in hypothetical dimensions beyond 4-D space-time; and (4) practical complexity in performing experimental tests of these hypotheses. This paper constitutes a preliminary discussion of a foundational question. Are imaginary mass, imaginary acceleration, imaginary force, and imaginary momentum under any conditions ever “Physical” (i.e. in principal observable by direct or indirect means) or “nonphysical” (i.e. theoretically amenable to calculation, but inherently unobservable in the real world)? The discussion begins by hypothesizing a particle or object of positive imaginary mass in a co-moving frame of reference, and considers some logical consequences. One unusual interpretation is that imaginary mass allows for objects to “disappear” from our ordinary space-time and “leave the brane” to go somewhere perpendicular to ordinary reality. The predictions in this paper are “far out” – even Science Fictional, yet they do not obviously violate Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, or General Relativity. They are in the broad context of the scientific literature. They may have both microphysical and macrophysical observability in the laboratory or cosmologically. We review the related literature on mass, in Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity; return to a pseudo-Newtonian analysis; and then approach the complexity of modern theory and speculation.

  56. Leaves turning in New England. Crisp cool mornings. Last of the good fishing, opening of the hunting seasons. October is the best month of the year.

  59. The deletion of the month of Hadrius was necessary to repair the fractured time continuum. Anyone complaining about it is a whiner who wanted Hitler to win World War II.

  60. Going to the cider mill, drinking apple cider, baking apple pie from fresh baking apples (I use Northern Spies). I love Autumn in Michigan. The crisp feel to the air and the leaves falling and crunching underfoot. It’s a great time of the year. Followed by the frozen blasts of a nightmarish Michigan winter. That’s not so hot. But as the famous hotel guest said, you’ve got to take the bitters with the suite.

  61. I didn’t order it but it contains my favorite weather, so I’m good. Looking forward to April, the other October.

  62. Lots of Libras looking forward to it — my wife and I as well. Plus it’s our anniversary (between our birthdays), As long as I get a cruise or two up the Hudson to see the leaves change before I put the boat away, life will be good.

    But yeah, let’s do something about November….

  63. Sorry. I had to change the page to October so we could have Mole Day on the 23rd.

  64. I also didn’t order it, but was excited for pumpkin goods, and apple cider, and fall colors, oh my! But waking up to a freezing house put a damper on my goodwill towards October. Whoever DID order it, would you care to reimburse me my heating bill for the next 30 days?

  65. Honestly, the weather in San Francisco doesn’t seem to change much; cool with cool tomorrow so my only clue was realizing that rent was due and it was freaking October already. Oy.

  66. Around these parts, there are some who call it “Fucktober” as in “how the !#$% did it get to be October already?”

  67. My cousin Phil is reading former pharmacist, former software developer, and for several years an award-winning science fiction author, Charlie Stross’ new book, Rule 34.

    Stross is very adept at separating the idiotsphere from the IDE sphere, and has coined great phrase for Singularity cultists such as E. Yudkowsky (who openly insists on blogs and to his demented nitwit followers that I don’t exist) and his ilk –-
    “The Spamularity.”

  68. John must be off with the family, because otherwise surely the hammer would have fallen on these off topic posts by now.

  70. Elgion, if I’ve offended you or anyone else, I’m sorry. Family weekend here. Me, wife, dog, garden, baseball playoffs. Later, son will visit, and drive me to funeral of brilliant but eccentric ex-employer. I already wrote a 2,300 word chapter this morning, 300 words above my daily fiction quota, so I can relax now.

  71. I’ve never, ever, ever understood hatred of the fall (or the love of summer, for that matter). Fall is the best season, and October begins the best time of the year weather-wise and everything else-wise (holidays, movies, TV, etc.)

  73. I’m actually reasonably pleased it’s October. I’ve recently decided fall is my favorite season. I’ve held out for years but because I live in a place where spring lasts about 23 seconds I have no other choice but to like the time of the year that’s not too hot and not too cold. Is October just right? Well, if not, pretty close. Plus this is the time of year my garden looks best. Seriously, my marigolds are dancing in the dirt.

  74. It wasn’t me. World Fantasy is coming up so fast and none of the things I wanted done by then will get done. Well, maybe the easy one. Maybe.

  75. Well, it wasn’t me. I just got sunburn from the 15 minutes I spent outside acquiring my lunch today. Stupid spring. All my beautiful coats will have to be packed away again. *sigh* I will miss them.

  77. Actually it was a half-idea of mine. I was thinking it would get us that much closer to the end of the hurricane season and I could finally drain that generator and put it away again and viola! October was born. You should be happy though, originally the name was going to be “One more anxiety filled month to go”.

  78. MeMeMeMeMe! I love fall, and not just because October is my natal month.

    The *nasty* heat is gone (hurray), and the weather is gorgeous. Lovely weather during the day, and nice sleeping weather at night. I love the colors the tree leaves create each year – achingly beautiful, and almost impossible to photograph truly.

    The only bad thing about October this year is my tempjob ends the last Friday of the month. My part time job will continue (thankfully). The pursuit of permanent full-time employment sometimes seems endless, but hope abides. (also, if I don’t have anything lined up, i’m going to visit my mom in florida)

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