As of this writing, I am dangerously close to being caught up. This is a sentence I haven’t been able to say since late September or early October. Yesterday and today I did a bit of class prep. Today I graded. This evening I built slide decks for tomorrow. I even got one of my inboxes under control.

I dislike the weight of being behind. I thought of putting about 400 words into that, but everyone knows the feeling, and everyone registers it differently. Besides, that’d just slow me down. What I’ll do is enjoy this feeling for a day, maybe 36 hours. And then I’ll be behind again.

Also, I have a document to write about a future class, start building that class, this, and some things to read for tomorrow.

Since I’ve been on a roll, at least some of that gets done tonight.

Let’s look at the last few days in photographs, shall we?

What is it to go up a road? Or are you going down a road? And what distinguishes between the two? For instance, was I going up or down this road on Saturday?

I had timed up my ride to get out and about and back in time for football. From that spot I was about 13 or 14 miles from home. And I almost made it back for kickoff. Didn’t miss much, but there’s something to be said for knowing how slow you are, so you can set up and pace your whole day around a ride. Also, it was beautiful. Just gorgeous. Shorts and short sleeves and it will be much too long before I get another ride like that.

This is a park I ride by pretty regularly. There are a couple of baseball and softball fields back there, a few soccer fields, too. I’ve never seen it this empty, and on what might be the last perfect fall Saturday of the season.

Great job, everyone!

I had a great shadow selfie. I must have been headed east at the time.

And here I am riding south, with the sun over my right shoulder.

Sometimes these roadside trees look like sculptures. Also, I didn’t notice it at the time, but there’s a bird flying through the background. Sometimes art is serendipitous.

At all times, my photos are pretending to be artistic.

I went for a run. OK, it was a short run. It was a nice foggy midnight run.

It was 5:50 p.m.

And this evening, we had a lovely sunset. I enjoyed it for about 20 seconds.

Because, of course, there are things to do.

Did you enjoy Catober? I have a great time with that daily feature. A cat a day really makes the month go by faster, content-wise. Somehow. You might think it puts a lot of pressure on the process. A photo a day of cats doing cute things! You’d be wrong. The only hard part is catching them in various places among their routines. And then keeping all of that straight. Capturing the moments is the easy part. Choosing which ones to use, that’s the impossible part. There are only 31 days in Catober, after all.

It started like this.

And it ended like this.

You can see the full collection on the Catober, just scroll back to see the whole month.

Except it hasn’t ended yet. I still have some great shots to share, and I’ll put them up tomorrow.

But today there are other photos. We, too, are experiencing the time change, which means a lot of seasonal changes. Which means the sun went down at 4:52 yesterday. Which means that, for the next few months, it will really feel like we’re stealing daylight.

That’s what yesterday’s bike ride was like. Soft colors and blurry textures and stealing daylight. And also reed grass.

Quite a bit of reed grass. That just comes with being a little close to the water, I guess.

The cover crops in this field are shockingly green just now. I’m used to seeing corn in there, but the season has, of course passed.

And in its place things are turning a delightful series of yellows and browns. Oh, it is nice for a time. Even the vibrance and vigor of that soon will fade. It’s just around the corner, or the curve, if you will.

Now it may look like it is getting dark here, but that’s just the trees. Besides, I still have about 14 miles to go from here. I didn’t know that at the time.

At the time I was just starting to figure out where I was going to go from here. First up the king’s highway, then Main Street, and then the old road, back into town. From there, it was a four-and-a-half-mile tempo ride home. No longer stealing daylight, but racing it.

Stupid seasonal change. Why can’t it be light until 8 or 9 p.m.? And also warmer. Not much, just five or 10 degrees, for outdoor purposes.

It was a productive night. Watched a football game. Got most of Tuesday’s class prep done, got some things graded and so on. And it continued on into today. I wrote some things that needed to be written, including a job ad for a student employee role. And I was on a roll. My big to do list for the week is already down to just four things.

Two or three more days like this will feel like momentum.

That’s the opposite of what I had on the bike today. I set out to ride my 40 km time trial, but I simultaneously realized that I didn’t have the legs I wanted for that, or the time I needed for that. So I changed my route, mid-route to make it back before dark. Instead, I did 35 km.

I could have totally made it.

And, then after dinner I finished up tomorrow’s work. We’ll see how that goes.

I’m feeling fine, thanks. I had a little procedure Friday. Because there was a cutting implement and blood and gauze and stitches, I’m calling it a surgery. Look, I walked out of the room and to the car and had lunch after, so clearly no big deal. It was a dermatology thing, removing a small spot on my back. So I had back surgery. That’s how I’ll tell the tale. It was a preemptive sort of thing. They put some gauze and tape on me, I pulled my t-shirt on, and they re-taped it because that move loosened the tape.

This has been the extent of it. I woke up Saturday and felt pretty terrible. It’d been probably 12 or so hours since I’d taken any Tylenol and I tend to sleep on that side. So once a new OTC dose kicked in and I started moving around, it was fine.

In the medium term, I can’t do anything that involves a lot of exertion for two to four weeks. In the short term that has meant discovering which movements don’t hurt. Nothing too big and sweeping. Also, no sudden movements. And don’t pick up anything heavier than a gallon of milk. So, eight pounds. And I can’t lift and bend anything. So I’ll put my empty backpack on a chair or table, and then put my computer in it and that’ll be about it. And also the cats.

Not in my bag, just in general. I’ll pick up the cats.

In the long term the location of this incision is the primary problem. It is very near the shoulder blade. Now, for the purposes of wound healing, just imagine how much you use your arms and shoulders in a day.

But it feels OK. At its worst it feels like a sharply pulled muscle. In a way, it is very similar to that. And while it is in a tricky spot, the incision is helpful in letting me know if I am about to do too much. So I’m not doing too much.

You can, I’ve learned, sit awkwardly on it. That’s no fun.

Anyway, stitches out in 12 days. And then whatever new restrictions or limitations I’m given.

Of course, I was on my bike the next day. I am a cyclist. We came home from the skin pro’s office and I stood over my bike, just to see what it’d feel like. They said no heavy exertion. You’re not supposed to move around a lot on your bike anyway. I figured I would soft pedal, keep my hands on the hoods or at the stem, because if I went down to the drops that’d change my body position and might involve a flexing of the shoulders and back. So Saturday I clipped in and went around the loop our house is on, fully committed to go back inside if it felt bad. It felt fine.

I rode around on some neighborhood roads, just to be outside and say I pedaled a little bit that day. I got in about 10 miles. It was 40 minutes or so and I didn’t even work up a sweat. (You’re just going to have to let me do something over the course of two to four weeks, and this I can do.) Also, for that first day, I chose quite neighborhood roads that looked like this.

I went over and checked on the horses.

Also, I saw their neigh-boring friend.

And I noted that one of our other neighbors, who has a nice little herd of cattle, has stocked up the hay barn.

That was it. A super easy spin the day after back surgery. (We’re calling it that.) If I become a legendary athlete, we’ll point to this as one of those defining moments in my story.

More likely, we’ll just be looking at the flowers — but you never know.

This bush does not stop, and I respect its output a great deal.

And the bush daisy still looks wonderfully inspired.

We have this small planter hanging on the fence that cordons off the little vegetable garden. This year, despite however many seeds we put into the thing, it gave us nothing until just now, this beautiful little specimen. I’m glad I stopped by for a closer look.

And now, back to work. We’re talking about two new stories in my criticism class tomorrow, and audiences in org comm. I have decided to turn my dislike for fans, some of ’em anyway, into a comical presentation about social identity theory. So I have to finish those notes, and find the gaudiest team gear I have, to help prove the point.