December, 2010

Alabama / Auburn / Friday / adventures / family / football / friends / memories / photo / video — No Comments
31
Dec 10

New Year’s Eve

This year:

the Yankee graduated with her Ph.D.
we took our honeymoon to Italy, Greece and Turkey
the Yankee took a job at Auburn
we celebrated our first anniversary
we bought a house
we moved
we discovered we may live on an Indian burial ground
we watched a perfect season of football
I finished the coursework in my Ph.D.
we traveled to Memphis, Las Vegas, New York City and points beyond
we celebrated victories and shared in the sadness of losses
we saw many of our friends, but none of them enough
and we loved our families, but none of them enough.

It was a full, demanding, challenging, rewarding, exhilarating, exhausting, wonderful year. I’m glad you’ve shared in it with us a bit. I hope yours was as full of blessings and joy as ours, and that your 2011 is twice as promising.

Us

Thursday / adventures / family — No Comments
30
Dec 10

Peas and carrots

The Yankee is back from New England. Picked her up at the airport, which is, I think, the low-water mark for people watching.

It could have been my mood. After the drive to Atlanta, which was fine, if drizzly in places, I found a traffic jam in the parking deck. I made it inside 10 minutes early, to see the arrivals board already had her plane on the ground. This was really a statement of confidence on the part of the airline and the airport. The plane was still in the air, but close. They were supposing that they could get the plane down, or that gravity would lend a hand.

Thankfully for all involved the prophecy proved true. I stood at the landing by the escalators that bring up passengers from the underground trains. There a woman was more than a little miffed to have to wait for her husband. It was as if, she implied to her children, that the entire unseen process of landing a plane, gathering one’s things, disembarking and traveling through an airport the size of a small city was entirely his fault and he was doing it on his own schedule with complete disregard for her.

No wonder he was taking his time.

Two other young ladies were waiting for their friend. There was a great deal of texting between them, the expectant waiters and the unseen traveler. When that broke down — “How did she get to baggage? Where’s baggage? Why isn’t she here? Where am I!?!?” — they reverted to an actual phone call. Their friend had exited the train and entered the wrong terminal. So they hung up the phone and left.

Sadly I’ll never know if they were able to find their friend.

An airport steward came along and instructed us to get out of the walkway. We were a fire hazard, he said. We were standing between an escalator and the restrooms. No one moved. He did not put up much of a fight, convinced by our logic that, in the event of a fire in the area, we would no longer be a hazard.

Finally The Yankee rode up the escalator. We were like peas and carrots again.

Picked up her bags, which were being belched onto the conveyor as we walked up and quickly left the airport before much more of this tragic comedy could hold us up. People are very stressed, inattentive and not really prone to thinking for themselves at the airport.

I know this because the stories she told of her entire adventure pretty much backed up the idea. Someone should do a study.

Alabama / Auburn / Wednesday / errands / iPhone / photo — No Comments
30
Dec 10

Things and stuff

Five miles of footwork today, this being one of the scenic and lovely roads near my home that I shuffled down.

Road

I received eight hellos and/or waves. Saw a dog, two squirrels, a horse and two raccoons. And since a quick Google Image search doesn’t show a horse and raccoon combination, I’ll share one here.

Animals

He wasn’t especially wild about the closeup, but knew he was cornered. I think he was hoping I hadn’t noticed him, intent on the branches.

Raccoon

More reading today. If I feel behind with all of this it is only because I am. But there’s a lot to do, too, and a great deal more to go. I have about 10 more pages of notes and analysis after today, though, so that’s something.

Replaced the battery in The Yankee’s car this evening. It left me stranded last week. Since she’ll soon be back in town it seems only reasonable to assume she might want to drive somewhere. So off to Walmart I went, where we picked up this battery on August 1st.

I was all ready to go to protective husband, angry customer mode, but the lady at the customer service desk simply pointed me to the automotive section. Pick up a new one and bring it back, she said. I did, and one of her colleagues pushed the buttons that denoted the change of battery ownership.

She asked for my license, and scanned it verily. I asked what that told her.

“Since you don’t have your receipt I needed to see when you bought it. It is to make sure you aren’t returning too much stuff.”

Next time I’ll ask about the definition of “too much.” Instead I simply said, July 30th.

She confirmed the date, but did not ask about my superior recollection. Shame, since I had a great speech. “Like your wedding day, or the birth of your child, you never forget the day you swap out a car battery on the same evening you move.”

Not that she would have cared … There was a product, a customer said it was faulty. She had buttons to push, keys to to turn and items to scan.

I had the new battery, picked up a commemorative Sports Illustrated, a picture frame and a handful of buttons.

Installed the car battery — and what do you know, it cranked on the first try! — and did a little sewing. A sports coat needs different buttons. I’m swapping out the plastic gold look for something a little more sedate.

The frame? I put this postcard behind a piece of plexiglass.

Postcard

The note on the back details visiting family throughout the country. The postmark is from 1912.

Alabama / Auburn / Tuesday / family / football / video — No Comments
28
Dec 10

My day

I woke up warm, which was ironic considering I spent all yesterday cold and today wasn’t exactly spring. We’ll be in the 60s by Friday. Why can’t it already be Friday?

I make this joke a lot, and usually I’m joking. I talked with my grandmother today, it was her birthday, and she might despise the cold more than anyone I know. Whenever I run out of small talk, I can always retreat to the temperature. At Christmas, on a white Christmas, she brought up the year my cousin was born. It snowed that day too. My cousin is 27.

Anyway, I joke about the cold, but she hates it. I don’t care for my feet being cold. Socks, slippers and a space heater aren’t getting the job done tonight. Come on Friday.

Anyway. I ate. I read. I wrote maybe four pages on a methodological feature. I now know more about repeated measures design than I did before the day began. I learned other things today, too, but not enough. Tomorrow I’ll read and learn more. Comps, meanwhile, are beginning to loom large.

This Oregon-Auburn magazine came in the mail today. My step-father bought it for me, ahead of the big game. Normally I’m not a big commemorative issue kind of guy, but this is pretty nice. If you’re familiar with one of the teams at all at least half of the writing will be stuff you already know, but the photography is great. You might think of picking one up if you’re a Duck or Tiger fan.

Otherwise, there’s not much. So here are the three videos I watched today. Enjoy.

Time lapse snow video:

That is … a lot.

It was only a matter of time before someone mixed clogging with contemporary music to produce mildly amusing results:

“Hey guys, I got a new sword!”

“I got a new camera!”

“I wonder what we can do with the both of them?”

If some physicist doesn’t take that footage and rethink the way we sword fight — What? You don’t? — I will be very disappointed.

It must be good: the comments on YouTube are fairly genial about the video. We might have reached the end of the Internet. Even the Aztecs wouldn’t have predicted that.

Monday / history / iPhone / links / photo — No Comments
27
Dec 10

Roadside hypothesis and a bridge to history

Road

This was my yesterday evening. Made it back home by around 9 p.m. thinking “There’s no place like home from the holidays.”

Though I wish I could have stayed longer, there is work to be done. And, also, the vain hope that moving 170 miles to the south will improve the temperature. It is cold in north Alabama, where the snow still looks abnormal, but the bitter chill is setting into the bones.

So that’s looking west. I headed east, and then south, and then east again. And in all of that driving I began to tinker with an hypothesis about what you can learn about a reason by the tall things you see during your travels. Here’s a partial list of last night’s sites:

Neon catfish. They like their fried fish around here.

A giant cross. It is the Bible belt.

Vulcan, the god of the forge belongs in a steel city.

The big peach, in the fruit tree region.

Then, of course, that regrettable Confederate flag.

And on the last leg of the trip the dog track’s giant triple sevens.

You could write books from just those starting blocks.

Anyway, back to the above picture. If you look east, you’d see this:

bridge

I took that particular picture four years ago after it closed. Yesterday, when I drove by it was still covered in snow.

The bridge was built in 1924 and opened in 1925. My grandmother, at Thanksgiving, showed me a newspaper clipping of the first car that went over the bridge. There was an addition made in 1959, making it one of the last truss bridges built in the state.

When they closed the narrow little bridge it was supporting something like 15,000 cars a day. Now there’s a nice, wide six-lane expanse sitting nearby.

And we’re going to call that History Monday, because the rest of the day was indoors, trying to stay warm and reading. I did make it to the mailbox. We got a card from family in New England. The theme was “Let it snow.” I bet they’d like to take that back just now.

Very cold here in Auburn still. There was a wintry mix late on Christmas day. Snowmen were made. I saw photographs.

Later this week it’ll be in the 60s.

← Older Entries