Good morning everyone, and yes, it is actually morning as I write this and it is my first blog since the official first day of fall.  Which was Saturday.  Right.  Not around here.  Fall begins the first day of September in this part of the country.  And sometimes earlier.  It’s almost winter.  And it feels like it too.  On the official first day of fall it snowed.  It mostly melted as it hit the ground due to all the rain that day which made everything rather wet. Actually we have had a lot of rain this month so everything is overly wet.  Still, not as bad as some places.  But it is wet.  Very wet.  And it snowed.  Nearly an inch of the white stuff on my deck.  Not much but too much for September.  It’s fall after all.  Sigh.  Then yesterday morning we had a thunderstorm.  It’s too cold for things like that.  But it happened anyway.  Poor Muffin.  She does not like thunderstorms.  The first thunder she heard brought her over to me.  The second time she was under the chair.  And she stayed there until it was over.  Poor kitten.  Speaking of Muffin, check out our new ‘about us’ page.  Okay, it’s a bad picture of us but I’m not exactly a photographer.  I’m me.  Sigh.  This is good COFFEE weather though.  So I’m drinking lots these days.

Speaking of COFFEE, don’t forget that Monday, October 1 is international COFFEE day!  See how many cups of COFFEE you can drink that day!  Amazing how many different fun holidays there are throughout the year.  But nothing on September 29.  So I propose that we name that day international chipmunk appreciation day!  After all, there is one for squirrels.  In January.  So why not one for chipmunks.  I like chipmunks!!

So get out there and give a peanut to a chipmunk that day.  If you can find one.  If not, send me a peanut and I will give it to one of my chipmunks.  If I can find one.  It’s a little hard when it rains every day.  Chipmunks don’t like all this cold rain.  They don’t mind summer rain.  But it’s warmer then.  Speaking of fall.  This is the time of year that Dad and I would get out a lot on various hikes, but mostly out insulatoring.  For my newer readers, insulatoring is when we would go out and look for insulators along the railroad which Dad really enjoyed though it took me a while to actually catch on to this collecting insulators idea.  To me, at first, they were just chunks of glass or porcelain that were just not interesting and had no historical value whatsoever.  Unlike collecting old bottles.  That was interesting.  But I digress.  And of course we always brought some kind of a lunch with us that included COFFEE which we both enjoyed.  We would normally find a nice high rock hill with the sun shining brightly and we would sit and enjoy our COFFEE! Like one time we stopped on a nice sunny hill, Dad sat on a log and I looked around for a place to sit but decided to sit on the log as well.  However, my end of the log wasn’t positioned quite right.  So I tried to move it a bit.  Dad was pouring his COFFEE into the cup at the time.  He yelled.  And jumped.  Seems he ended up pouring the COFFEE on his lap instead.  Odd.  BONEHEAD!, he said.  Well, at least he was having a good time.  Odd. Why did you move the log?, he asked.  Had to, said I, otherwise my feet would have been in that puddle there.  I pointed to the spot.  Dad looked and shook his head.  Poor Dad.  He was a bit accident prone.  Something always happened to him when we were together.  Like the time we went to explore an old farm to look for some old bottles.  We came to a creek.  It had an old bridge across it.  Doesn’t look very solid, said Dad.  He thought we should look for a better way to cross.  Looks okay to me, I said, I’ll check it out.  Off I went and when I got to the middle of the bridge I jumped.  See, said I, plenty solid.  I went the rest of the way.  Dad looked, then started across.  Guess I should have mentioned the ‘crack’ I heard when I jumped.  But it wasn’t a loud cracking sound, so I thought it would be okay.  Dad got to the middle of the bridge.  There was a very loud cracking sound.  Then a loud yell.  Then a loud splash.  The look on Dad’s face.  Amazing. Too bad I didn’t have a camera.  That would have been a great picture.  For some reason Dad didn’t agree.  He also didn’t see the comical aspect.  I couldn’t stop laughing.  It was after this that Dad started bringing extra clothes along.  Amazing how often he would get wet on these treks.  But like I say, he was accident prone.  I inherited that from him.  Sigh. Guess I should stop for today.  Here’s a thought for today, ‘Why count the leaves on the tree when there are stones on the driveway?’.  Hope you all have a great week and God bless.

Steve and Muffin and critters.