I hereby declare all the excitement to be over

I got nothing going on over here.  The well has run dry.  My life is boring, in a nice safe way.

See?  Even this cat is boring.

I think I've pretty much milked this year of its excitement.  Now for the long, slow, sleepy slide into winter.

We don't have exciting winters here.  Mostly we have cold rain.  It doesn't make for much in the way of outdoor activities.  The few times it snows, we do have some panicky french toast emergency buying. (With the shortages of milk, bread, eggs at the market, I have to assume that's what's happening.  Personally I make chili.)  And we shovel until every part of us hurts.  Actually last year we had to also shovel the roof, and that was exciting in a "gosh, I hope I don't fall to my death" sort of way.  Someday I plan to move into a house with gutters within jumping distance of the ground, as opposed to our current vertigo-inducing roof heights.

It would appear that I'm hoping for cold rain.

I bought snowshoes with the intention of using them in our newly snowy climate, but I think 2009-2010 was more of a fluke than a climate.  Not that I mind.  Snowshoeing was hard.  It looks so easy on tv, doesn't it?  It's not though.  (However, it was the only way to get around the house to check the gutters when we had several feet of snow, so that was nice.  Otherwise the snow came up to my middle.)

There was a Miata behind me.  Normally, it's a lot shorter than I am.

The advent of cooler weather (not that you could tell by today's temperature, but what the heck) usually leads to me pulling out all my maps and planning hiking trips.  However, I already know what I want to do next year, I think.  I want to thruhike Shenandoah.  I had such a good time last weekend that I want to go back and do the whole thing.  Vera and DeLee are both interested, so it should be a good time.  I've already hiked the whole thing before and therefore have no real planning to do.  Plus I don't want to go until October when it's fabulous out.  I might be forced to plan ANOTHER hike, somewhere that requires the use of maps and maildrops.

Mmmm, maildrops.