I'm only a little disappointed I'm not working the polls tomorrow. Only a little, because as much as I'd wanted to get out and participate, I know calling off was the right thing to do. I'm coming off a nasty cold - four negative rapid tests since last Wednesday night, including one this afternoon, seem reasonably trustworthy - and while I'm mostly recovered, working the polls for the full duration tomorrow wouldn't do me any good. It's hard enough when I'm completely healthy.

What I'm finding amusing about this is one of my clients reached out and because I'm not working the polls and the physical demands will be significantly less with far fewer hours, I'll be working with her tomorrow afternoon, which means I've basically gone from the public to the private sector.

I called the library beforehand to ask when they took donations for the book sale, and how much I could provide. I followed directions on time, but not so much on volume - they got what they got, which was mostly what I'd bought from them over the past couple years. Nearly all of it was DVDs, CDs, and Blurays where I kept telling myself I didn't want the object, I wanted what was stored on the object. It was lovely to get this movie or that album, and now that I had what I wanted on my computer, I didn't need the object anymore. It was nice to grab all four seasons of Black Sails and the whole series of Fringe, and I don't have the space around my apartment to keep those with what I've already got on the shelves. Especially when I haven't yet gotten around to watching the shows. Soon, in due time. But keeping the objects of the box sets around won't help.

All that, and it's nice to get a few square feet of floor space back. Enough to notice, which is enough to make me want to keep going. Do another book cull, drag those clothes to the donation bin. Say "goodbye and thank you" to the stuff that isn't giving me anything but nostalgia. And maybe see about which extant box sets on my shelves are objects I want for the particular value they have as objects. Is it "the value of the object qualia object"? I'm sure there's a term for it.

Tonight was my and my dad's last Friday night rooftop cider of the season. There's still going to be Friday night ciders - splitting a bottle, catching up, having a good time chatting - and with the nights coming earlier, it's going to happen in the apartment instead of the roof. I don't mind too much, not with how dark it was when we got there or how much darker it was when we went back down. It was honestly quite nice to look around and realize this was the last one. Nothing too special about it, no world-class cider or magnificent thoughts, just a good bottle and a nice time.

Let me amend that: nothing too special about what we did, something quite special about the night in a low-key mundane way, paying attention to the ordinary moments. It was a lovely sunset, fast-moving gray-on-slate tufts and spots of clouds, and by the time we went in, it was dark enough the moon was the brightest thing in the sky. So we stopped to look at it for a while. Just past half-full, the clouds were moving eastward. Almost there, almost there, the wind and the angle taking them just below the moon, enough to light up but not what we were hoping for, waiting more, waiting, a large piece comes by and not quite and maybe this next one - and in front of the moon it went, bright as a star, and we kept oohing and ahhing until it'd passed and the moon was shining by itself again.

As ways to end a season, it's a pretty good one.