I said to myself that, this year, I would not go crazy posting leave photos. How cliche. How ephemeral. How incomplete a reflection of the season. How pretty.
That tree is one I never see, because I had to be on a different part of campus today. I had to be on a different part of campus today because a product is being micromanaged. But my part of this particular project is done now. So I spent the afternoon in the more familiar building, doing the more familiar things, and saw more familiar leaves on the way out.
That red maple in the early morning light was nice, but these sweetgums are showing off.
There’s a parking deck on one side of these trees, and some tired campus rental houses on the other side. For a few weeks in October, though, nobody notices all of that. They’re looking up at this.
At the end of the day it was back out to the UPS Store to return something. We watched a young woman hand the UPS desk clerk a bag of clothing. No, that’s not exactly right. She handed her one item from the bag at a time, and the desk clerk was bagging and putting stickers on each individual item. It must have been a good week for that young woman on Poshmark. And a good day for UPS if there’s someone willing to pay you to wad up that shirt, put it in a clear back, slap a sticker on it and add that to the pile of yoga pants and blouses you’ve already packaged for her.
This took about five minutes. She had a lot of clothes to ship.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with that young woman’s personal economy.
We then visited the not-Publix. One needs produce, after all. Peppers and onions and apples, a little thing of coconut milk, why not. Some pizzas for a quick snack. And then to checkout, with little incident.
We use the self checkout aisle, of course. I always say that you should have to pass a test and get a license to use the self checkout. But it occurred to me this evening that I’d have to pass that test as well. And the poor impatient people behind me might think me unworthy at this whole thing, too. The self checkout monitor, responsible for six stations, was as unflappable as ever. And by unflappable I mean unimpressed. Which is to say, busy staring at her phone.
“Help is on the way,” seems like an Isaac Asimov subplot gone awry.
Anyway, that was the day. Nine hours at the office. Barely two of it at my desk. And then two stores and now the house, those leaves and still, still, waiting on the weekend.
