DEBORAH CROMBIE: Nothing says tempus fugit like getting the email from the online office supply saying that they have your 2025 planner in stock! 2025!!! How the heck is it 2025 already?
You will probably know by now that I am not a huge plan-in advance person. Other than thinking, "I absolutely must go to Bouchercon next year," and tenuous ideas about a trip to London, 2025 had not really impinged upon my consciousness until now.
But I ordered my planner, which will join the ranks of previous Quo Vadis Ministers (yes, I save them! My life therein! And I have a great time picking the color of the cover! This year's is violet) and now the blank pages are beckoning. The arrival of the planner marks the start of a new year for me. This is fourteen years of planners (plus 2024, which is red) in the photo! Unfortunately, I didn't keep them in as much detail in the earlier years, but I can at least see the big events (like trips to London!)
What about you, dear REDS? Is there a time or a ritual that says "the clock is ticking" to you?
RHYS BOWEN: It’s always a shock when I go into the drug store in the middle of sweltering summer heat and there are Halloween candies on the shelves. When I see Starbucks and its pumpkin spice lattes i know that summer is officially over. Tempus seems to fugit so quickly these days. It was only a blink of an eye ago that I was writing 2023 on my checks. Slow down, please. I want those lazy hazy days of summer with picnics on the beach, sipping wine on the balcony, sitting out and watching the moon rise… where were they? Why did I let them slip by?
HALLIE EPHRON: A few weeks ago, I bought myself a new planner for 2025, too (better not to wait too long or all the good/cheap ones at Staples are gone). I live by the thing, and like Debs I keep the old ones. I’ve got the last 18 in a pile. And I often need to refer back.
Halloween ambushed me at the supermarket. We’re already talking about where to have Thanksgiving. But the biggest marker of time: the days are already very noticeably shorter.
I’m with Rhys, 100%. Instructions to Time: SLOW DOWN!
LUCY BURDETTE: Me too on the slow down! I don’t use a paper calendar anymore, everything is done on the computer/phone so it won’t be kept for posterity. (Though honestly, why would anyone want to keep my calendars??) I’m not surprised to see 2025 on the horizon because we’ve been planning the Friends of the Key West Library speaker series for the spring. It’s going to be a doozy!
It’s been so gorgeous here in CT the last couple weeks, with that slight crisp of fall in the air, that I’m really trying to enjoy every minute I’m out.
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Ohhh, Lucy, someday invite me, okay? And yes, it is gorgeous here in Boston, too. I have a day-by-day notebook calendar, and a monthly calendar magented to the white board in eye-view, and the yearly one on my phone and my publicist's google doc and she ADDS to the phone, soI am constantly making sure they are all in sync. I love my notebook calendars and white board calendar, and I have saved them all for years.
The one that’s vanished–I used to have little calendar books I always carried my purse–but they went away, sadly, with the advent of the cell phone. RIP little day-at-a glances.
I am seeing leaves fall now, and I want to stop them! ANd certainly the days are shorter, and the undercurrent in the air is cool, not hot. And no more iced coffee…that’s how I always tell. There’s always a moment when they don’t seem tempting anymore.
JENN McKINLAY: I’m with Hank! I want to come to Key West! LOL. I gave up dayminders when I retired from my library gig ten years ago, but I do have a wall calendar by my desk with big squares where I write everything (mostly deadlines but also fun stuff) and I save them for posterity. I’m sure the Hooligans will throw them out when I die. Whatever. It’s supposed to dip below 100 here in AZ this weekend. I am giddy.
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Jungle Reds Mini-Con in Key West! Woo hoo!
I keep trying planners, etc. and they never stick. The only time-keeping thing that seems to work for me is the Google calendar, loaded with everything in my life and plenty of alarms.
Right now, enjoying eighty degree weather in September, I’m hearing the clock ticking loudly. I’m already overdue ordering two cords of wood, and I need to schedule my furnace tune-up and have the chimney cleaner come over before the heating season begins. Oh, and I need to make sure I’m on my plow guy’s list for snowplowing this winter! At least I haven’t had to pull my fall and winter clothing out of the attic… yet.
How about it, lovely readers? What tells you that there is new year on the horizon?
