autumn has come!

Autumn has come. “It came a few days ago,” Kevin said. But finally it actually feels like fall. Autumn is my favorite season. Pumpkin pies, hot steaming coffee in the cold, the way the leaves change colors and fall from their perches in the trees, the crisp coolness that fills your lungs and the football being tossed around. Nearly all my favorite memories come from autumn. Hot dogs, hay-rides, dressing warm and walking the windy streets. One of my high school friends, whom I’ve shared countless autumns with—“We’ve been friends eleven years,” he told me—came down to Cincinnati yesterday, and we went to Newport and saw the movie “Surrogates,” and we walked the cobblestone paths by the river and drank Venezuelan coffee, and when Sarah got back from work we went to Blockbuster and rented two ridiculous “horror” movies: “Teeth” (about a girl’s you-know-what that has teeth) and “The Gingerdead Man” which stars Gary Busey and is about, well, a vengeance-seeking gingerbread cookie (we stopped it halfway through because the acting and storyline was awful). We spent the night sitting around and talking about all kinds of things. The religious state of America, the biblical realities of sin and the need for repentance, false teachings such as legalism and antinomianism, and the status of Christians before God and whether or not addiction is sin.

It’s rained nearly non-stop for the last week, and it stormed awfully bad last night, but now that the sky is clear and crisp, Sarah and I decided to celebrate by carving a pumpkin! We bought it from Kroger and carved it on the front porch, and I dished out the seeds and cooked them salted in the oven. They’re delicious. We watched the Bengals vs. Steelers game on television, and she got really into it, leaping up and down and cursing and shrieking and screaming for every good play and bad play both. Here is a picture Sarah took of me scooping seeds from the pumpkin: