2026 W42: A clear favorite

§ Autumn’s arrival is suddenly undeniable. Everywhere leaves are changing color and beginning to drop. Yesterday I spent part of the afternoon bringing all our our houseplants back inside. Sometime last night we had our first freezing temperatures of the season. § After posting last week’s note, I took a trip to our local orchard to try to track down my favorite apple variety I discovered last year (“zestar”). Well, apparently that variety is known for its early-season ripening so looking for it in October was way too late. Instead, I picked up a half-peck of empire apples. They were fine but certainly nothing revelatory. § At work I spent most of the week iterating on new potential furniture designs for an upcoming exhibition. The main thing I wanted to experiment with is a construction method centered around sandwiching unistrut nuts between laminated sheets of plywood so that everything can be quickly assembled and disassembled with only a hex key. It is a construction method I…