Somehow, summer ended last week, and at my house, we almost immediately started sleeping with the windows open again.

And in a little more than two weeks, early voting will begin in the election that we’ve been hearing about and contemplating for more than a year now.

Here’s a friendly reminder: If you plan to vote in the upcoming Nov. 8 general election, you have until Oct. 11 to register. Visit your local elections board office or go to their websites.

In my business, September and October bring our usual process of interviewing political candidates who are seeking local offices, and then sharing stories about their positions on important issues and even our endorsement selections in some of the races.

We’ll cover various candidate nights, debates or forums as a service to voters who are unable to attend.

At the very least, we’ll be publishing lists and boxes of the contested local races, issues and liquor options as early voting and Election Day approach.

Our politics reporter David Skolnick already has been in high gear, covering developing stories, area campaign visits by big names like former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. We now expect U.S. Senate candidate debates and stories about the campaigns and polling that likely will show rises and falls of candidates’ popularity.

Undoubtedly, readers will be writing letters to the editor about why they like or dislike particular candidates. Additionally, many candidates likely will share their pledges and qualifications in paid advertisements on these pages. All this information is excellent when it comes to educating yourself before heading to the polls.

Indeed, this is crunch time for the candidates, but it’s also similarly busy for those of us in the business of covering the candidates.

Election season isn’t all that’s going on in my newsroom.

Along with the quickly approaching October and November months, you’ll find many promotions, events and special sections in your daily newspaper. Here are a few things you’ll be able to expect.

On Saturday, Oct. 1, you’ll open your morning paper to find we’ve gone pink.

As usual, we will be turning our newspaper logos pink in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. You’ll find interesting stories about survivors, programs and upcoming fundraising events in that day’s paper. Additionally, on our regular Tuesday Health Page covers throughout October, we will feature uplifting and informative breast cancer survivor stories.

If you know someone who is a breast cancer survivor from Mahoning and Trumbull counties and who has an interesting story of courage to share, please contact our Features Editor Burton Cole at 330-841-1738 or email him at bcole@tribtoday.com.

In mid-October, we will be publishing our annual salute to area firefighters in honor of National Fire Prevention Week. We also will be recognizing this year’s local Firefighter of the Year, chosen from among nominations from fellow firefighters and the public.

We soon also will start inviting readers to send us their short commentary about what they are most thankful for. Regular readers know this is a longtime newspaper tradition in which we invite local folks to submit what they are most thankful for. We then share those thoughts — every one of them — with our readers, free of charge, on Thanksgiving Day.

As we prepare those stories for publication, we also peruse them for interesting comments that we can turn into feature-length stories for Thanksgiving Day papers.

Keep watching the newspaper for more information on how and when to send your thankful thoughts!

Of course, on Veterans Day we will, as always, publish a commemorative edition reprinting all the weekly veteran stories we have been publishing since Memorial Day. The special section will be included in your Nov. 11 newspaper.

In Warren, we also sponsor and coordinate the Trumbull County Veterans Day parade. Keep watching the newspaper. We soon will be calling for parade participants to sign up.

There’s much more to come in December, but I’ll save some of that info for later.

For now, grab a pumpkin spice latte, and sit back and enjoy today’s paper.

blinert@tribtoday.com