It’s raining, but we’re not setting any records. It’s cold too. A front has arrived. It will be chill all week. About time. It’s fall. October. Let’s do this. I have my long sleeve shirts at the ready.

I had a late night of music and roadie work. I’m getting good at wrapping cables with a little thumb flip to keep them straight.

Grapes. I’ve always loved them. In my youth, you only got them when they came into season, and my mother bought green grapes. No idea what variety they were. They were just grapes.

I have no accomplishments to brag on today, except one. It’s looks as though on November 16 our family will grow by two.

I did it. Fixed my dryer. It took a $25 part, two weeks of waiting, and a YouTube video. I was all set to just buy another dryer. But as I checked out the prices, I thought what’s the worst that could happen.

It’s sort of strange. The more I do around the house the more there is to do. Which, I guess, is just part of owning a home. There are things to do.

This is probably getting old, but I have another gate story.

Pro tip. Going from a dark to light paint will cause coverage problems. The dark paint like’s being seen. My gate was black. Now it’s battleship gray. I have lots of touch up to do.

There is something like fall in the air. It is cool outside. It’s a nice way to be greeted in the morning. In addition, I woke up to find my collegiate football team pulled one out late last night after I went to sleep. Good for them.

Helped bury the mother of a friend yesterday. Sad business as always. She left behind a husband of seventy years and a home she’d lived in for fifty-six. An anomalous couple in this day and age of turnover marriages and turnover homes…

Yesterday I walked up a hill in daylight and down again in the dark. Two miles in and two miles out. I wanted to see a sunset from the top of the hill overlooking the Pedernales river valley and the Hill Country out west.

Big doings in and around town. Over at the headquarters of the Pedernales Electric Co-operative crews are dressing the trees with lights. Really. They’ll finish in time to turn them on the day after Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, down the road toward Fredericksburg, they’re strangling traffic.

I like Aspens, Magpies, and Steller’s Jays. The tree and two birds are things I’d never seen before I went to Colorado. Now that I’ve seen them, I want to see them again.

I remember John Denver singing about a Rocky Mountain high, and never really thought much about it. Then I spent last week in the Rocky Mountains and boy do I get it.

I have come down from the mountains. The return started early yesterday around 7 a.m. Mountain Time. Ended about 10:30 p.m. Central. It was a drive of two parts. Pagosa Springs to Ozona in the company of a friend. Ozona to Johnson City in the company of myself.

Took a slow walk through time yesterday. Went back to the trail we hiked on Tuesday. This time, rather than turn left and hike along the Piedra River, we turned right and went up the mountain.

I stood on the Great Divide yesterday. One foot in the east, one foot in the west, straddling our big country. I was at Wolf Creek Pass, elevation 10,858.

Walked along the banks of a river yesterday, down into the canyon it’s been cutting for millions of years. The canyon was impressive.

Went to a multigenerational birthday party this past Saturday. I was a guest of the musician hired to sing songs to the patriarch. He was turning 90.

Lucky. I was late for an appointment yesterday morning in Fredericksburg. As I rushed down the road, several police cars passed me. I discovered why when I got to Hye. Big wreck.