Turn the page

In the back of my pocket calendar, after the week-by-week pages, where manic listmakers pencil-in what they're doing every morning, afternoon, and night, there is a quarterly page-spread for every three months of the year, with just enough space to ink-in a rough account of one's practice times: 20 minutes of this, 40 minutes of that, and a big ugly X when I miss a day of something I would prefer to do regularly. Since I don't train for races or other formal competition, it's a way of tracking a few elements of a daily practice quantitatively. Call me OCD (or worse), I don't care.

So the end of September means it's time to turn the page and enter the last quarter of the year, which at this point is a blank slate of days just waiting to be filled in with minutiae. The end of a quarter also is the ritually correct time to switch libations. What, you didn't know that? Summer is gin season, of course, and gin and tonic just doesn't taste as good when the weather turns cool. Just as spring was tequila time and winter just screams for vodka, fall is right for rum. So I'm penciling in a trip to the state store at Schrock Road and Cleveland Ave. for some Ron Rico gold this weekend, a fifth of which should easily last until Halloween.

It's also time to change hats. As of this morning, a baseball cap just isn't making it on a morning bike ride, and the chilly air requires the wool cap from the Czech Republic, absolutely the best all-time Christmas present from the 12-year-old Zelda and still a perfect fit on my large nordic head. I haven't yet swapped out the summer sport shirts for the winter turtlenecks, but it won't be long. Soon after that, cotton boxers will be put away until April, and thermal longjohns will take their place. Chamois shirts will migrate from the back of the closet to the front. Corduroy and wool pants will do likewise.

I shall solemnly hold off from touching the thermostat for as long as possible, but a lot of good that will do, since I'm not the only person inhabiting this, uh, house. But I have the capacity to fight corporate gas furnace fire with homegrown hardwood fire. That will require some routine maintenance on the stove in the den - a wire brush here, a little stove-black there, good as new - and a lot of splitting and stacking to ensure that there is dry wood come January. But that's the best seasonal ritual of all: the wood you cut yourself that warms two, three, maybe four times.

My knees are complaining about this change-of-season business, so I'll have to do something differently, and I'm not sure what that will be. Up the ibuprofen dosage? Wear an Ace bandage? I've already started going to bed earlier and sleeping more deeply under a quilt and a down comforter. I don't have a rugged sunburned look anymore, just a rugged windburned look, so I still somewhat recognize that guy in the mirror. Not that I'm vain about my appearance or anything.