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.