“Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.” – Garrison Keillor
September, 2010
3
Sep 10
Friday is Pie Day
Are you ready for football? This is week two of the high school season. Drove by this one this evening as the team was warming up. I’ll try to get to a high school game this fall, the school I covered many years ago is doing very well, but we are especially excited about college football. That, of course, begins tomorrow.
Reading and class prep today. And resting. Strained my back at the gym this morning. Did squats and everything was fine. Did what I think of as the jail break exercise — the move started years ago by some anonymous person is slowly digging through the corner of the cinderblock wall — and everything was fine. Did a curl and dropped down a weight. Did another curl and my back tightened up. Wisely, I put the weight down.
A comfy chair and a heating pad this evening have helped. I’m fine, just moving a little gingerly. Tomorrow I’ll be good as new.
Pie Day tonight at Mama Q’s. We had the chicken tonight, which was delicious. The dutch apple pie, we decided is a consistent winner. Give them a visit.
We checked out the soccer game tonight. The fans got a great show.
(I downloaded a pseudo tilt shift application for my iPhone — two of them, actually, but I think one is a bust — and I’m playing around with it a bit. Now I have to figure out which subjects look best in the tilt shift style. My apologies in advance.)
Florida State was controlling things with a disciplined effort on the ground. They snuck in a goal in the 28th minute and Auburn struggled against the fifth ranked Seminoles through the middle portion of the game.
In the 73rd minute Auburn’s Lydia Townsend found a glaring hole in the center of the FSU defense. She chipped in the ball over the goalkeeper on a breakaway.
Florida State scored on a header in the 83rd minute and Auburn answered with a goal in the 87th minute to force overtime. In college they play two sudden death periods of 10 minutes each. After that you just settle for a draw. With two minutes remaining in the second overtime, so in the 107th minute, Katy Frierson picked up a loose ball outside the 18 off of a corner kick and struck the ball home.
Here’s Frierson earlier in the game:
And here the Tigers celebrate the game winning goal:
They are celebrating Auburn’s first win over the Seminoles since 1995 and the first win over a top-five team since 2004.
I’ll have more pictures in the photo gallery early next week.
Which leaves us with the last installment of the evening, YouTube Cover Theater, where we turn the place over to people pouring their talents and odes and ambitions or fears out there for our consumption. Tonight’s featured coveree is Duncan Sheik. We’ll start out with an incredible rendition of She Runs Away:
And now, for your listening pleasure, we have a nice run at That Says It All:
Sheik, apparently, has written a musical. Here’s one of his fans’ playing his favorite tune:
And, finally, we’ll hear from the original artist himself as Duncan Sheik covers … Radiohead?
Who doesn’t enjoy a good cover?
Who doesn’t enjoy football? Are you ready? Tomorrow Auburn has Arkansas State. Look for us. We’ll be the ones in blue.
3
Sep 10
Catember, Day 3
“There is, incidently, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.” – Dan Greenberg
2
Sep 10
There’s a football in the air
The last few days have been … mildish. Given the recent weather the upper 80s were delightful. Over the weekend we actually enjoyed a day of weather that, in comparison, seemed almost cool. And, yes, Deep South, September. I understand. We have this conversation often, The Yankee and I. These are perfectly natural temperatures here, I remind her.
Doesn’t make you sweat less.
But, today, we returned to a heat index of 97 degrees at one point. I like summer, but there comes a point in September when it just begins to feel cruel. We’ll reach that point in a week or two, the point of Rubbing It In. The point of Oh, Really? The point of biology where the body says “You know, there’s no more sweat to be had.”
And suddenly a subarctic lifestyle doesn’t seem like a bad idea. That’s when you walk into a restaurant’s cooler and realize “A little more summer might not be so bad.”
Spent the morning researching media effects. Had a meeting with one of my committee members to start discussing my comprehensive exams. He’s such a cool guy. Very kind and energetic and incredibly intelligent.
So naturally we talked about NASCAR and iPhone applications.
At Samford I had a meeting with the new editor. She’s getting ready to run her first issue of the newspaper next week. The online editor joined us to hammer out a few policies for the new year.
We turned it into a teleconference, which turned into a site re-design project in the next few weeks. And from that conversation a lot of exciting things will happen. It was an enthusiastic afternoon full of a great deal of promise. We’re looking forward to new partnerships, bringing in more news outlets to the site, breaking more news on the web, adding more sports and more.
It’ll be a good year.
Traffic? Not so great. Eight miles of construction to get through, all of it behind this guy:
Soon after I passed the buses carrying the Florida Atlantic football team. (Later: FAU blocked a UAB field goal attempt on the final play to win, 32-31.)
I also saw this guy:
Temperatures or not, that’s the first sign of fall. Football is here!
In fact, there are five games on my television tonight, so if you’ll excuse me …
2
Sep 10
Catember, Day 2
“When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?” – Michel de Montaigne
