It’s only 142 shopping days left until Christmas, last week I saw small acorns scattered on the sidewalk, and today bark of sycamore trees had peeled and fallen to the ground.  Yesterday evening it was dark at 7:30 P.M. when I returned from the fifth walk of the day with the dogs.

I’ve been keeping up with my regimen of reading two books a week, which started six weeks ago, and having finished with the very good novels, “The Last of the Vostyachs,” (Diego Marani), “Never Any End to Paris,” (Enrique Viula-Matas), and “Running in the Family,” (Michael Ondaatje), it’s on to, “The Lover” (Marguerite Duras), ” and “I am Zlatan” (Zlatan Ibrahimovic), and “Shire” (Ali Smith).

I don’t get out much.

That’s good news for a couple of reasons.

First, there are the eight good pages of my new book.  Eight pages I can stand to look at.

Then, too, it’s the cooking, which is mostly vegetarian, due to the bounty, such as the fried zucchini blossoms I made last night, but also includes tonight’s ground turkey with Chinese chives, fried tofu in hoisin, and hot sesame and black vinegar noodles.