We get a monthly box from a local butcher shop, and we’re coming up on the third consecutive “weather somehow still too nice for soups and stews; here’s some grillables!” November brats – what a time to be alive.

Fine-tuning my perfect bike route to and from the West Loop that keeps me away from the most harrowing traffic. Managed one way in 22 minutes, which is just about as fast as I’ve ever managed in a car.

Our street’s apparently not much of a trick-or-treating destination, so for the last few years, we’ve set up camp in the front yard to try to draw in the hungry hordes. Graced with a few dozen kiddos this year.

Frantically cleaning and catching up on some overdue decorating in anticipation of end-of-year gatherings. I hung a big heavy mirror, which I’ll spend years eyeing suspiciously, waiting for the drywall to give out.

No, nothing I have hung has ever fallen down. Doesn’t that mean we’re due?

As we prepare for the return of the cursed needle next week, a worthwhile reminder from Matt Glassman:

A reminder that there’s no horserace aspect to counting votes. No one “pulls ahead” in the count or “makes up ground” or “loses their lead” in any real sense. It’s just an artifact of the process, the order in which votes are counted, an order part mandated and part random.

You can’t win or lose in the count. It’s not a football game with an outcome yet to be determined. It’s the slow unwrapping of a present, the awaiting of knowing the actual and unchangeable state of the world.