the correct way to spend an early autumn evening

First, go out on the patio and smoke your brand-new hookah, while pondering the characteristics of fairies in the story you'll be writing this November. Occasionally recite parts of Ash Wednesday, just to make sure you still can. Watch the alternation of clouds and stars overhead, and enjoy the shapes your smoke makes against them.

When you are good and chilly and your coal has nearly gone out, pack up and return indoors. Heat up some mushroom-parmesan pasta you made the other night, and cook and butter a sweet potato. Eat these with a bottle of Dogfish Head's pumpkin ale. Along with these, read or watch something fun and comfortable (I chose Remembrance of the Daleks, my first Seventh Doctor episode, but I understand that may not be for everyone. Rex Stout would be another excellent choice.)

Play a game of go online (optional.)

Finally, bake a few chocolate chip cookies and eat them with a glass of milk. Trader Joe's makes a great chocolate chip cookie dough that they sell frozen. Stickler as I am for homemade, I love these because you can keep them in the freezer and bake them a few at a time, so your chocolate chip cookies are always fresh from the oven. (Note to self: see if this can be done with homemade cookie dough.)

Go to bed, warm and well-fed and full of a sense of cozy autumnal well-being.