The End of Autumn

Another weekend has come and gone, and once again, it was pretty darn not bad.

There was less slack than I wanted due to light snow coming on Saturday night, and the remaining leaves needing to be cleaned up on Saturday morning. The good news is that 95% of all the leaves are down and cleaned up, and the remainder can be taken care of another time, or just let winter take its course. Glad to have it done and out of the way. Of course, I was gifted a literal pain in the neck in the end, so that’s not great.

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Brief Forays Into The Light

It’s strange that after 15+ years of living in central Michigan, my mind still thinks in Pittsburgh time, where the sun rises more than 20 minutes before it does here. So, while this has been a nice week of starting my lumbers in what is known as “civil twilight,” it will, of course, be coming to an end in the coming days1.

After that, I will have to at least start out with a headlamp if I want to keep my normal “business hours.” And sadly, this will be the case until after the Winter Solstice on December 21st, when the light will start creeping back into our lives.

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My Ignorance: Year One

I

“There is never any reason to get worked up about things you can’t control.”


II

“You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you.”


III

“You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.”

-Marcus Aurelius


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Woodsy Sounds, Soiled Sounds

For the sake of not forcing my daily micro-adventures down the throats of the world, I have limited my posting this week. [insert ironic crowd cheers here]

The reason being that while the week has offered me my normal allotment of miles, it’s been more “samey” than usual.

I wake early, drink some coffee, drive to the trails in the dark, hike 6+ miles, and hardly see any critters because the sun has only been fully up for about 30 minutes by the time I finish.

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To The Weekend

It’s been busy Friday that started with a 6-mile lumber to get me over my 30-mile weekly goal, and then home for my second (or is it the third?) “Mulch Mow” this week of the leaves around the vast (not really) grounds of the Cul-De-Sac-Shack. Not my favorite activity, but a good way to get another mile or two in my feetz. Then it was on to more crap that I wanted to get done before the weekend.

More than half of my hike was done in the dark today, so I only have one photo. I did have a Bald Eagle sighting, and a pic, but it was flying high above, so it’s pretty crap. Still, seeing an eagle soaring overhead is always amaze.

I’m glad to have hit my 30-mile goal for the week again, and I’m of course looking forward to my weekend of slack, footy, beer, photo-creepin’, and goofing off.

Later.

A Bad Start, Good Finish

Some days you wake up and just know that things are going to be shit. And some days, you have that realization as you are in the act of doing so at 5:15 AM, and your cantankerous bulldog is snorting, whining, huffing, and puffing at the bathroom door for her morning gruel.

“GIRL, GIMME A SECOND, I’M IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING!!”

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