Today’s the last day of summer, with the autumnal equinox occurring at 21:18 UTC tonight (which would be about 5:18 PM EDT). It’s the Festival of Dionysus, so I’m not sure if I’m supposed to go out and have an orgy or sacrifice a chicken or something. I cooked a couple of chickens for the dogs on Sunday, so I guess that’ll have to do (we’re usually too tired after work to get a proper orgy going – that and we don’t really have any friends that we’re quite that close with). Either way, now it’s gonna start to get dark really early (by the time DST ends on November 1st, sunset will be before 5:00 where I live). Fall is my favorite season (except for the getting dark too damn early part). I really love the end of the heat and humidity, the cool, crisp days, and the cold bug-killing nights. Nothing’s more beautiful than hills and valleys colored orange, red, and gold beneath a deep blue fall sky (though seeing them with a fresh dusting of snow comes pretty close). I know there are people who hate the cold and snow, but I wouldn’t give up the change of seasons for anything (though feel free to try me; the bidding starts at $1 million).

According to the Census Bureau, 10.3% of Central New Yorkers are without health insurance. That sounds bad, until you see the NY State rate is over 13%, and the national average is 15.5% (thanks to places like Texas, where 1 out of 4 Texans are SOL – even less, if you don’t count their 155,000 or so prisoners). You would think that would constitute a form of “rationing,” but I guess the definition of rationing is having to wait to have that mole removed from your ass so somebody with a burst appendix can go to the front of the line, rather than keeping the line short by just flat out kicking people out of it.

Ah well, time to get day two of the march to the weekend started.