All The Leaves Are Brown

And The Sky Is Gray

Around this time of year, when my nostrils are frozen together, I really miss California. Yes, you can find snow and cold in California, but it’s a big state. I was in the part that never had it, unless you count the fake snow they use while filming a TV show or movie. Do they still use fake snow or do they just run some sort of snow software? It doesn’t matter. The point is, I’m cold.

But good things can come out of the cold and snow, like staying inside and reading. Ok, maybe you can go up to the mountains for skiing. There’s good reading chairs at the lodge. Other than that, most of us aren’t doing anything except being inconvenienced with the snow. Do you own a one horse open sleigh? You do not. It’s better to read a good book.

Of course, I recommend Calvin and Hobbes for the best snow-oriented humor. Nobody got more traction out of winter than Bill Watterson. Then there’s Ruth Ware’s suspenseful mystery novel One By One. That’s good. Oooh, there’s also snow in Stephen King’s The Stand. You know, I wasn’t really expecting to list reading materials with snow as a setting, but that’s the risk you take when you’re writing in the middle of the night.

Let’s forget about cold and snow. The following comics are going back to a magical time, a time before snow. It was a time when I could still ride my bicycle. Snow was a laughable, distant thought. Come with me, won’t you, to early November.

Experts are expert at adding credentials to their expertise. There’s a reason that they give you their credentials and that’s because they can sense your skepticism. If you want to shorten a conversation with an expert, just say “wow” to everything they say.

Everything can only go according to plan if there’s actually a plan. This is why my plans never pan out. I never forgot when somebody was going on vacation, though, because I was usually the sucker filling in for them.

I gave Tabby a cat retreat in the mountains to go to on vacation a couple of years ago and now I really think there should be such a place.

Rusty is the obvious mentor to Tabby, but Tabby was Tabby before Rusty arrived. Now he’s just the store Obi-Wan.

The first three customers are the reason to do the job. Most customers are nice and normal, but the bad ones, like everywhere else, get all the press.

I always find myself sympathetic to Todd. Giving each cut of meat its own backstory would be a great sales pitch for vegetarianism, but I don’t think that’s what he’s going for. He’s just making his job more interesting.

Fun fact: I’ve left stores because of their music selection. I’ve also stayed in stores that might have something I like despite their music selection, but didn’t stay as long as I would’ve. And I’ve stayed too long in stores that didn’t have much that I liked, but great music. Music matters.

It always seems like the stores that play music I hate play it extra loud. Or it could be that I hear the music that I hate more loudly than the music I like. If that’s the case, it’s a really cruel trick for my ears to play on me.

One day I hope to be as smart as Tabby.

I’m always ready to leave but I can never leave. It makes for an easy tombstone. “He Left”.

The best place to leave was the library. I didn’t work for just any library, it was the huge downtown library of one of the biggest systems in the country. So on a busy day, the front checkout desks could have lines stretching down a huge cathedral lobby and out of sight. When it was your time to leave, you were off the clock. Every second you stood there you weren’t getting paid. The state didn’t care. The state didn’t care that there were people waiting, either. Your tax dollars at work. When it was your time to leave, you left. If there were two people checking out patrons and it was three o’ clock, time for one of those two to leave, the clerk walked away. A hundred eyes would follow the retreating clerk and return sadly to the one clerk remaining. It was like walking off stage in a play.

Again, this place should exist.