96 Days Till Christmas

Everything has apparently figured this out except the weather. 90 degrees through the end of the week.

Odd because everything else in nature has been pretty much operating on schedule. Some weeks ago the cicadas quit screaming from the trees in the office park complex. The oak trees are shedding their acorns all over the tarmac to crunch out their lives under tires and soles, and the squirrels' tails are plumping nicely. (I'd wondered if they were sick this year; I've never seen squirrels with such skinny tails as this summer.) Odd leaves are turning yellow, especially on the big tulip trees, and the dogwood trees already have leaves tipped and dipped red, sometimes only one and two to a tree, some with a whole tip of a branch showing scarlet. There's usually a breeze, and it sends leaves spattering down.

We are chatting on one of my Christmas groups about favorite holiday movies, including Hallowe'en films. I'm not a horror film person. "It's a Good Life" on Twilight Zone was about as creepy as I get. Even with Sam Neill in it, I couldn't finish watching Event Horizon. But I do like a few traditional things:

• It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
• The delightfully kitschy The Worst Witch
• Following Fairuza Balk, Fairuza Balk: Return to Oz, deliciously creepy and with Nicol Williamson to boot
• The Haunted History of Halloween from the History Channel
• The even more delightfully kitschy Midnight Offerings, with Mary Beth McDonough (Erin Walton) as a good witch and Melissa Sue Anderson (chewing the scenery) as Vivian Sutherland, a really, really bad witch
• And always the For Better or For Worse cartoon special, "The Good-for-Nothing," in which Farley disappears on Hallowe'en night