1. New iPhone season. Yes, it’s new iPhone season. Once upon a time that would have filled my heart with excitement. I’d have even gotten up far earlier than normal to schlep over to my nearest Apple Store for the chance to buy their new wonder. For the last three or four years, though, I’ve basically just been leasing my phone from Apple. I’m about two weeks away from my scheduled upgrade window – and sure, I’ll do it – but the thrill is gone. It’s hard not to see the miniature computer in my pocket as just another electronic commodity, with this year’s having marginally better cameras, marginally more speed, and marginally improved battery life. I’m sure I’ll be duly impressed to have a freshly upgraded bit of kit once it’s in my hands, of course. Even so, no matter how many emails they send me offering to let me swap out early for the low, low price of $60, I’m in no great rush.

2. Consistency. If I have to take a stupid walk for my dumb health, I want to get it knocked out as early in the day as possible. For the last bunch of months, that’s meant schlepping out just at the beginning of dawn’s early light and often getting home before the sun was even properly up. Now that autumn is here, though, to stay on schedule, I’m leaving the house and getting most of the walk done before the promise of a rising sun has even turned the horizon gray. One of the many things I’ve noticed while most of the rest of the world sleeps is how many people illuminate their houses with mismatched exterior lighting.  Some houses are consistent, but the number that mix harsh blue, soft white, and the occasional other colored hue surprises me. I’m not a designer by any stretch, but from where I’m walking, the mash up of mixed color “temperature” scattered across the front of the average house looks awful. It probably shouldn’t annoy me, but it does.

3. Physical therapy. I’ve been in physical therapy several times over the last ten years, but this morning reminded me that there’s one aspect of the experience I can never seem to get over… that would be the general indignity of being laid out, bent, twisted, folded, spindled, and mutilated right there with seven or eight other people getting the same treatment for their own maladies. It feels like there should, somehow, be a more discrete or dignified way of getting treated. I know I’m not looking around or trying to take in a show during these sessions, but the whole experience leaves me feeling intensely vulnerable and that’s just unpleasant.