So let the memories be good for those who stay.

October means rain. I don't mind — yet. But I will soon. The last two weeks have been the most beautiful I've ever seen in Vermont, so I suppose we've earned a bit of dreariness. I'm making myself a promise, related to that. Next year, I am going to take a series of walks outside of campus and take pictures of the fall colors. I didn't do that much this time around, and now that the wet part is here, I think I may have missed my chance. I did take some though. The iPhone painting effect is on display here, and by that I mean a couple of these pictures resulted from close zoom-ins with my phone, which somehow end up looking like watercolors.

That last one reminds me. Yesterday we ran by a cornfield that looked kinda like the one in that picture, except a lot bigger. And there were crebain — I mean crows — circling around it. Reminded me of that late Van Gogh. You know which one I'm talking about, right? No? Okay, fine. This one.

Last Wednesday I had geology lab, as I do every Wednesday. We drove up to Bristol this time and studied the stream. Beautiful area up there. Lots of granite. Like Yosemite, but much, much older. And therefore a little more worn down. Some of the following pictures are mine, some are my professor's.

 

This dude was straight chillin', or whatever the kids call it these days.

We did not race this weekend. Instead, we had a tough workout and, the night before, we helped out with our annual community supper. (By 'we' I mean the XC team.) This entails prepping a big dinner — I think the statistic was 200 meals — for the less fortunate of Addison County.

I wrote a poem yesterday for my creative writing class. For every assignment, we have the option of writing prose or poetry, and I surprised myself by picking the way I did yesterday. I don't think I'm as good at poetry as I am at prose, but it's good practice.

The NHL regular season is now underway. It began on October 1, and the Ducks have played three games so far, all on the road. They're 2-1, which isn't bad. Here's a little something something that happened at the end of their first game. Don't worry, there isn't any actual hockey going on in this video. It's just two coaches yelling at each other, and one of them goes way over the top. Almost literally. Skip to 30 seconds in, and watch until about 1:10. There. I just made it easier for you with the short attention spans.

Something else happened since I last posted, something I wasn't sure if I wanted to put on this blog or not. I've realized there is no harm in putting it here, though, and I do want this to be an accurate recording of my time here, don't I?

A recent alumni of the Middlebury cross country team — recent enough for me to have known him — killed himself on Friday. There isn't much else to say about it. I'm doing fine, don't worry about that. The tone of the team has changed significantly. People have a thing they like to say about things like this. That thing sounds a lot like "Life goes on." And so it does. For most of us.