It's at about this time each year at the beginning of September that I
look forward to the autumn season to cap off my summer.

When I was living in Los Angeles I remember looking forward to the
winter being sunny and mild out there. One of my favorite things to do
in December was call back east to friends and family from the beach
pay phone. Collect, of course. This was before the big outbreak of
cell phones back about 1990. Actually, any of the winter months would
work.

What was really weird was auditioning for commercials that were
holiday themed and I would just be coming from the beach. Never having
been one to celebrate the Christmas holiday I could only imagine
getting into the holiday spirit by looking at neighboring Christmas
decorations back in Cleveland in my childhood or watching TV
commercials with Christmas themes when I was a kid.

Fall is when the pilots all premiered for the new season, as I think
you all know from watching TV. They were actually shot around
February.

"Pilot season" was nuts out there. Every actor wanted to get auditions
for a job and all the restaurant managers were freaking out because
the staff all wanted time off to pursue their careers. More
accurately, they didn't want to lose the money for their shifts and
were constantly shifting their schedules around and making the owners
and managers crazy-some of whom were actors or had been actors
themselves -until they finally succumbed to the notion that the
restaurant business wasn't just a "means to an end" job but an end in
itself.

Very rarely would you find anyone working in a restaurant who wasn't
an aspiring actor. People pretty much fell into the roles of casting
directors, producers or directors-most originally thought they would
become actors. You often hear of people going to directing from
acting, rarely the other way around.

In comparison, my life in autumn is as calm as can be. I try to keep
the stress level low. As I'm writing to you now, my beloved
11-year-old cat Sam is asleep at my feet. Herman is dutifully typing
as per my dictation and we just finished viewing another beautiful
sunset over the lake.

It's a long way from Los Angeles in more ways than one.