Happy November, welcome to the beginning of the end of the year. I hope you enjoyed Catober. The kitties certainly did. And they are certain you enjoyed Catober as well. Cats come with that level of certainty about things.

You’ve never met a cat with imposter syndrome. They know what they are, and they know at all times what they are after … unless we’re talking about precisely where they’re going to curl up to take their next time. It takes ours a little bit to figure that out. But any nap worth taking, right?

Anyway, as you could tell all through October Catober, the kitties are doing great. As the weather cools here at the beginning of the end of the year, they are extra cuddly. No one minds.

We went to vote on Friday. Early voting is awesome. In this state you can vote by mail, you can vote by drop box, you can hand deliver your ballot to the county election officials, you can vote at any of multiple polling places in your county the week before Election Day in the in-person voting period, and then of course there’s Election Day.

Politics can be pretty simple: those trying to make it harder to vote, and trying to disenfranchise people from voting, aren’t to be trusted.

Anyway, Election Day is tomorrow. Go vote!

This is how it went at the early in-person voting. We drove about 20 minutes to one of our polling places — there are three in-person voting places in this county and they are equidistant from home. We pulled into the parking lot, the only car there. Four women sat at two tables and a man sat at a far off table doing whatever while the ladies went through the check-in process. Of course, to try to amuse my audience of six people, I turned it into a race. This flustered the woman that was checking my name off the rolls. One of the volunteers asked my lovely bride where she picked me up. My lovely bride got her ballot card first, and went over to the little machine. There were four machines there. I got my card, ran over and pretended to interfere with her vote. I thought that might not go over too well with the volunteers, who had been full of jovial good spirits, so I cut the bit short.

This particular set up requires you to return the little card they give you to the volunteers. As we walked back up her team of volunteers was heckling me for losing the race I created. I credited my team of volunteers for doing a great job of keeping the race competitive, but said I let them down. One of the ladies said that my wife would not let me live this down.

Nor should she, I said.

Just then a man and his daughter walked in. He proudly announced it was her first vote. I think they were starting a party as we walked out, proud to have done our part, hopeful that it might be prove to be of some good use.

Pretty much how you live every day. It seems to me that’s about how voting should feel. Important. Hopeful. Ordinary. A celebration. And always about the future.

Back at home, I realized that the hat I wore to the polling place is old enough to vote.

That’s my 2004 cap, and that’s why the cloth has gone from navy blue to Clemson purple to almost white. (The story goes like this. George Petrie studied at Virginia, where they played football. When he went to Auburn he took on the task of building the first football team, in 1892. He chose burnt orange and navy blue, from Virginia’s colors, for the new program. (Auburn, at that time, was named Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama.) A young man named Walter Riggs played on that first team. When he left A&M and went to Clemson, he took with him some of the old practice gear. He becomes the founder of their football program, and, later, the president of the university. His team wore the faded old colors from Auburn, inspired by Virginia’s color scheme, and the blue turned to purple. (Hence Clemson’s ridiculous orange and purple color scheme.) My hat has followed a similar path and gone beyond.

“You should get another hat,” you could say. But why, I reply. “Be bright and modern and fresh and new,” you say, but I like desaturated looks, I retort.

Here’s something bright and vibrant. We had a lovely weekend with mild temperatures and no wind, for a change. Two conditions we’ve been patiently waiting to coincide. Now, finally, it has happened, so we lit up the fire pit.

We had a lot to burn. Some large, now dried, weeds. A huge stack of small branches felled in the last nor’easter. It was me-high. This was next to the chest-high stack of limbs I’ve had to cut up. And that’s next to the long row of old firewood.

Fortunately, a lot of the now dried leaves and twigs and branches burn fast. Unfortunately, since we had decided to burn for thinning out the pile, I had to keep that inferno going. No sitting, just moving. Meanwhile, the Canada geese were on their evening commute. They’re leaving from the sloughs and the river, the day is done.

They are heading for some empty fields and some familiar nearby treeline. They’ll spend the night over there, and then fly back over in the mid-morning to go back to the water again.

They fly over in waves and in small groups. Not as many this year as the previous two years — so it seems, anyway. There are quite a few flocks around this little area, though. Maybe they rotate through. the different fields and waterways. Maybe there has been some dispute among the geese. A schism. A gheesism, if you will.

Anyway, we had a lovely evening at the fire pit. This, too, we should do more often.

The list of things we should do more often has grown rather long.

I burned stuff for more than three hours. As day turned to night I moved closer and closer to it, needing a little more warmth than I did the hour before. And the burn pile is now manageable. Almost attractive, even. And we still have plenty to use for more fire pits. Next time we break out the S’mores.

That is not the reason we should do this more often, but it is going to be a nice, tasty, fringe benefit of doing it more often.

I mean all of the ingredients are just sitting there in the pantry, waiting. I bet if I go down there right now and listen carefully, I might be able to hear them call my name.

Hold on.

Nope. Which comes as some relief. A marshmallow or graham cracker that could talk to us would be rather disconcerting.

Had a lovely 25-mile ride today. The weather being just perfect once again. (More of this until April, please.) Here’s a farmer out doing donuts in one of his fields.

The time of day for this ride was just about perfect, so I went over to one of my favorite nearby roads. Perhaps you can guess why it is high on the list.

And here’s a different guy on a different tractor, in a different field, some ways away from the first guy. He’s still got a bit of chopping to do back there. A new version of that Unverferth grain cart would run you about $122,000. It’ll hold 1,300 bushels. Depending on what he’s putting in the back, he might be getting between eight and 11 bucks per bushel. Fill it up 12 times, he will break even. On the grain cart anyway, to say nothing about his fuel and alllllll of the other expenses. Every second he’s not turning the wheels he’s not making money.

But it was nice of him to pause right there, in the space between the trees, to let me take a quick snapshot as I breezed by.

Turning back east from the lovely tree-lined roads, I had a nice riding partner for the last stretch of my route, and here’s the shadow selfie that proves it.

There was barely a cloud in the sky today. (Seriously, this until April, and then bring me spring.)

And so today I have written 1,400-plus words here. I have shared 13 photographs. I have cleaned last months files from my old computer. I have updated my templates page. I have updated the spreadsheet where I chart visitors to the site. (Catober was the second most popular month in the site’s 22-year history. These last three months have been most popular ever. Aside from Catober I don’t know why, but thank you.) In a few days we’ll mark one million visitors for the year. In the next few weeks the site will hit an even larger all-time milestone. Spreadsheets are … fun?

All of which is to say thanks, once again, and to confess that I must now dash off, and finish preparing notes for tomorrow’s lecture. And also grade so, so many things.

Now go vote!