Ah fall!  When the weather gets colder, the leaves turn pretty colors and the DVR overheats from taping so many of the Fall TV shows.  A couple of weeks ago I told you what returning shows I was waiting for like a kid on Christmas morning, and now that I've seen a few, I'm here to report back on What's Cool and What's Crappy.

For some movies, there's no higher honor than earning an adult entertainment counterpart parody. Some of the greatest movies have been remade to star women with impossibly huge breasts, men with impossibly huge private parts, and lots of extras who are impossibly tuned in to the sexual needs of the main characters and who make impossibly bad puns. Its rare that this crosses into the real world, but apparently, Sarah Palin is about to earn adult entertainment's highest honor herself.

Women have been struggling to balance family and career as long as women have been in the workplace. And over the last decade, we've seen progress. Partners expect to have to share household responsibilities to a certain extent; modern couples understand the need to take turns so each person gets a shot at making particular goals a reality.

Yesterday, we carved our pumpkins. Well I didn't, I don't carve pumpkins, I just assist. TW and five children carved pumpkins in our living room because the weather goddess hates me and decided it should rain on our last full day with all five kids. I'm lucky, the clean up was minimal because the kids are all pretty grown up and everyone except the 22 year old stayed on the sheets that I spread out around the living room. TW made the biggest mess and the dog dragged pumpkin guts around the house a little bit but I'm used to the dog doing that sort of thing.

I have a case of the reading blahs. There's no good reason for them to appear right now. I have piles of great books to read. The weather is perfect for curling up in front of the fire with a blanket and an excellent book. But I just don't feel like reading these days. I want to knit. I want to watch dvds. I want to play on the internet. I want to do everything but read. It will pass shortly I know but for the moment I'm just not in the mood to read. I am officially in a slump. Thankfully I know that it will pass and that I'm not the only person that suffers from the slumps.

October is famous as Breast Cancer Awareness Month when stores are awash in pink products that often contain breast cancer causing chemicals are sold to women in an effort to fund various activities to combat breast cancer. However, I'll save that topic for next Monday. October is also Domestic Violence Awareness Month. According to The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), one in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. In addition, one in six women and one in 33 men have experienced an attempted or completed rape, and 1 in 12 women and 1 in 45 men will be stalked in their lifetime.

When I popped open my email this morning, I was amused to find an invite from a Seattle friend to join in on a "Haunted History Tour" - seems there's more than meets the eye to the old brewery neighborhood. I'm all about the wacky local diversion -  they're often quite cheap, close to home, and it's always thrilling to learn more about what's in your own backyard. Also, a few years went on the Night Watch tour in the pretty medieval city of Steyr in Austria and had a great time, in spite of the freezing cold and the rapidly whispered translations.

When I was asked to choose DonorsChoose Challenge project, I immediately knew I had to pick something to do with gardening. Children can benefit from the physical activity of working in a small garden plot; growing their own vegetables encourages children to eat them; and gardening is just plain FUN!

I was in Washington, DC the weekend of the first presidential debate and the beginning of the Great Bail-out of 2008.  I was there to promote a book, but it was impossible to ignore the tension in the city tasked with saving Americans from themselves.

The Bush administration's so often pitted economic concerns against environmental ones, namely claiming that the former will suffer if the latter are addressed. But today, a new book's come out that argues the two concerns can, in fact, be resolved simultaneously.

Photography changed my life. My first photography teacher told us that photographs give us the most accurate record of our lives, and I believe this more and more the longer I devote myself to picture-taking. This is why I love looking at other peoples' photographs as much as taking my own, and I especially love to see young people excited about photography.

A popular African proverb counsels, "Until lions have historians, hunters will always be heroes." Today, I am asking BlogHer readers to help two groups of young lions get excited about studying history by experiencing it first-hand.