November eight activities

The sun came out and blue sky showed itself today. In fact, it warmed up into the fifties. 55º for a while this afternoon.

I spent the morning finishing the raking of my remaining leaves. The oak in front and the neighbor's maple in back are sufficiently bare that I was comfortable mowing the leaves that had fallen, and raking up the dregs. I filled the twentieth black plastic bag of the year with today's donation.  Mowing was pretty slick, and made the raking less of an issue, but it was still taxing (and Congress is not yet back in session).

After lunch I decided to take a walk down by the big river, take in the breezes, and get a little exercise. The wooded area around Crosby Farm looks closed. There is a sign there announcing an archery deer season this month (and last), so I went up the river a ways to Hidden Falls. There were people out, walking around, some taking pictures. It was a nice day, maybe one of the last before winter bears in.

I walked around a bit, went down by the river and looked for an apt photo for today's blog, something to represent November 8, 2012.

This is down by Hidden Falls looking across the Mississippi towards old Fort Snelling. The river is suffering from low water levels, but it's not shallow enough to wade across, or even throw a silver dollar to the other side.

And this is Old Man River looking upstream.  The sky was blue.

Trivia of the day: Current popular vote totals show that Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, and former Republican governor of New Mexico, finished third in the presidential sweepstakes with 1,139,562 vote, about .95% of the vote (less than 1%). He was well ahead of the fourth place holder, the Green Party candidate and leading women's vote-getter, Jill Stein, at 396,684. This Gary Johnson never lived in Coleraine - that's another Gary Johnson.