The bright skies that we've enjoyed since summer vanished Monday. Although the temperatures have remained warm, gray clouds too stingy to rain have arrived to herald another November. The weekend weather was glorious � sunny and seventy � but except for a few moments in the sun when I took walks or chauffeured a kid somewhere, I spent the weekend indoors. Our own yard work is nearly complete, and little remains to be done there until the neighbor's leaves finish blowing over to our yard.

We had laid in a good supply of videos against a forecast of foul weather that didn't come true. In spare moments throughout the days and nights of the weekend, we watched Enchanted April (soggy Brits drying out in the sun of the Italian Riviera between the wars), LA Story (fun, fun, fun), The Legend of Bagger Vance (fuzzy metaphysics and motivations, but good entertainment), and Breaker Morant (Call me Bob Van Winkle � I've slept since 1980).

It was also time for me to watch Empire of the Sun again. I'm not sure why I enjoy this film so much, but I'd probably watch it again just to hear "Suo Gan," the Welsh lullaby that recurs throughout the film.

Since September 10th, I've paid these prices to fill the Metro's gas tank:

168.9
168.9 (again)
141.9
124.9 (October 8th)
116.9
107.9
105.9
109.9 (two days ago)

On September 11, some local stations goosed their prices a dollar to 268.9. They were promptly admonished by the Kansas attorney general, but in the post-attack panic, many folks lined up on the afternoon and evening of the 11th to pay that price. At many stations, drivers queued up for blocks and waited to fill their tanks, even at that higher price. Since that day, gasoline prices have fallen here as they have around the country.

In the past month, one of the Dillons (Krogers) grocery stores installed pumps in their parking lot and began to compete with the convenience stores and the few remaining service stations, driving the price further downward. By this weekend, prices had fallen to 98.9 around town, but those pumps were idle as folks waited again in 1970s gas-shortage fashion to fill up for two cents less per gallon at Dillons.

There are lessons in this about oil and cars and human foolishness that I do not have to draw because they've been drawn for me: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (from George Santayana, who had evidently forgotten his Georg Hegel, if not his ultimate "e": "What experience and history teach is this � that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.")

Okay, I'll dismount now.

Next Tuesday morning, his mother will retrieve Joshua from the Kansas City airport when he returns home for Thanksgiving. It will be his first visit home since he left for Virginia in August. (Writing that he's "visiting" still seems unnatural.) She invited Taylor to take a day off from school to accompany her on the drive and to spend the morning watching jets take off and land at a busy airport.

"Oh, I couldn't possibly," he replied. "I might miss something at school."

These are the explanations for his behavior that I'm currently considering: 1) this child is far older than ten ; 2) this child is not mine.

Reading: New Yorker back issues, with special attention to the pitchers, cartoons, and column fillers, as befits my current (in)attention span.