The mountain behind my apartment has new colors-- shades of green, gold, brown and maple depending on the light. If it was good Feng Shui before, I'm expecting even better flow of energy this time of the year, when everything is particularly beautiful and crisp. The rain and tornado warnings last night have yielded to a particularly cold Birmingham morning, the kind that calls me to boil water and make tea even if I have no plans of drinking any. Any other Saturday morning I might have stayed in, but today happens to be Halloween.

(to be continued... Bloody Spaghetti and Bobby Flay's pumpkin bread pudding)

There is something about reading a great book that always makes me think about my own life, how I can weave it into a page-turner. I have been meaning to pick up "the kite runner" the moment I finished "A Thousand Splendid Suns", but the guilt of leisurely reading when I have piles of unfinished journal articles kept me from picking it up.

What a mistake.

The first chapter, no the first sentence, spoke to me like it could have been me telling the story... like it could have been my story. "I became what I am today at the age of twelve..." Coincidence? I love coincidences.