Autumn Leaves!

So the leaves are starting to change colors here, which I'm really excited about for two reasons. One reason is that the leaves don't really change in LA because we don't have seasons.  It will be hot and leafy outside until November or so, and then there will be a cold snap and everything just dies, including stuff that's supposed to stay alive through the winter (like oranges) if we're particularly unlucky.  We might get pretty leaves for a week or two, but there's no gradual autumn-ness that goes on. 

The other reason is that I've had a song stuck in my head for about three weeks now that talks about autumn leaves.  It's an old jazz standard and the lyrics start like this:

"The falling leaves outside my window, the autumn leaves of red and gold..."

It then goes on to talk about lips and sunburns and other stuff that sounds poetic if you're not just artlessly glossing over it the way I'm doing right now and ends with this line:

"Since you went away, the days grow long, and soon I'll hear old winter's song, but I miss you most of all, my darling, when autumn leaves start to fall."

So I was really excited to be able to sing that song while watching the autumn leaves slowly drop off the trees outside my window so I could be all thoughtful and pensive, which are my two favorite things to pretend to be.  Unfortunately, I forgot that I live in the heart of the Downtown district of Seattle.  Here's what the view from my bedroom window looks like:

...Bleak.

So if I'm going to look wistfully out my window at the falling leaves, I'm going to have to have to pay someone to ship them in from somewhere outside the city limits, and then pay my upstairs roommate to drop them slowly outside his or her window, which doesn't have quite the same effect. 

Luckily, all is not entirely lost, because Capitol Hill, where the music campus is, looks like this: 

So all is not lost!  There are some change-y leaves in my future after all!  I'm just going to have to let my dream of being perceived as all mournful and deep die quietly, which is probably for the best.  I don't do pensive or thoughtful or wistful or deep very authentically, anyway.  People would probably see me gazing listlessly out of my window and shout things like, "That doesn't look believable at all!" or "Take an acting class, failure!"  or "Are you paying that poor girl to drop dying leaves out her window? What is wrong with you?"

It's really better this way.