All the leaves are brown...

...but the sky is bright blue and it's hotter than most of the summer. I imagine this will be the last Frappuccino of 2011 - we are apparently going to experience a drop from the mid 20's to single figures over the course of the next week. Good job my new North Face triclimate jacket arrived today (I gave in). At lunchtime there were dogs, naked infants and feet, attached to weary tourists, in the ponds. This is a common sight in summer, made slightly eerie by the brown leaves floating in the water. As usual I walked by cringing - if only they knew what the security guards had seen happening in those ponds at night, and what maintenance have fished out in the mornings...

The day has been mostly filled with fixing things and solving problems. I like days like this normally, because they go by quickly, but I really wanted to get the first draft of my application done today and ran out of time. I did at least find out that I've been accepted as a member of a new advisory group, after a last minute meeting to clarify my inexpert description of why I want to be involved.

A glass of wine at one of my favourite pubs with a colleague followed, and as usual I was reminded that it's something we need to do more often.

Now driving through a still-balmy city to in-laws, in the hope that my dearest sister-in-law, a very good massage therapist, can fix my increasingly dodgy back.