March, 2011


2
Mar 11

About being out

Churned through the remainder of my stack of papers to grade today. I’m now all caught up, which seems a small miracle when I considered the pile of things to work through.

Also had a sit-down with the boss today.

Had a meeting with the editor-in-chief of the paper this afternoon where we critiqued this week’s edition of the Crimson and started thinking about the last six issues of the year. They go by so fast, but I’m always proud of how far the staff progresses in that short amount of time.

Had a meeting with the sales manager, too. She’s selling things that need to be sold. That makes everyone happy. As a salesman friend of mine says, though, you can always sell more. Sales: not for the faint of heart.

All of these things seem safer than my errands of late.

Know what else isn’t? Walmart. I went there late last evening and, I can’t recommend it. I like to compile a short list of things to seek out, lest I feel I’m braving that parking lot for only one item. Two things — a garage door switch and a particular type of bottle — I could not purchase there last evening. A third I decided against. That worked me down to cards and candy. This is why I sat at that weird light and made an almost-unprotected left turn.

Also it means I’ll have to visit a home improvement mega center later in the week. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, because it might be worth a full-length essay all of its own. Come back Thursday or Friday for that.

Just as fun, though, was taking my life into my own hands tonight. I’m walking from a parking spot across a lane of parking lot traffic to get from car to the door at Jason’s Deli. A car is coming through the parking lot lane and accelerates toward me. This was shocking to me as I am not in a drama/action film, but merely a mild-mannered professor carrying a book about the history of the House of Representatives. (Really, this is the person you’re aiming at, dude?)

Fortunately his aggression was all for naught. He was driving a Volkswagen. If he had more than four cylinders that could have become messy.

Which makes you think, high speed accidents will decrease when we all inevitably buy those magic unicorn cars. Incidences of road rage will skyrocket because it’ll take you four minutes to clear an intersection, but there are always trade offs in life.

Like this. I’m going to end this now so I may begin watching The Tudors. I’ve just finished the first two discs of Rome, Season Two (see how I deftly avoided the Roman numerals there?) and am in a television period piece frame of mind. I’m so comfortable with the notion of period pieces I won’t even mind when they obviously veer from history to try and tell a tale.

(But I’ll surely tell you about the egregious oversights. For example: Henry isn’t this young when these things happen. But look at those clothes! It must be legit!)


1
Mar 11

The thing I didn’t do, outweighed by the things I did

I was supposed to do a little video for the site today, being the first of the month and all. But I forgot, and will forever blame the jump from the 28th to the 1st. Sure, I’ve experienced this dozens of time in my life, always at the same time of year, arriving with rote predictability. That doesn’t mean I’ve accurately predicted it.

Take my watch, for example. It is from an American-owned company. It runs on kinetic energy. It is powered from Swiss components using Japanese machinery. I must still remind it to make the leap from 28 to 1.

So there’s no video to start off the month. Just as well. The purpose of those videos is to have a little fun and take about 10 minutes shooting the thing(s) that will characterize the new month. I’m not sure how to show studying, writing and fretting over proposals and defenses any differently than I did in January. (It was artful, go back and check it out.)

Here’s my month. Later I’ll defend the now legendary comprehensive exams. And then I’ll be writing on my dissertation proposal, which will hopefully be completed next month. There’s also work and teaching and grading and getting ready for the spring conference season and wonderful, glorious Spring Break. (Which will, no doubt, be filled with many of the preceding things.) And that’s March. Aside from calendars and stacks of notes and books … there’s just not a fun video there. On the other hand this will require something extra creative to shoot for April.

Today, then. My class visited Intermark Group, which is one of the public relations/advertising firms in town. I studied in the doctoral program with the wife of the CEO. Very nice people. This class takes a few trips — we’ve done a local television station and later we’ll do a magazine publisher — and it gives the young students an idea of what all is out there in the profession. They had a really nice visit today because the people at Intermark are so accommodating and enthusiastic about their work.

The students met one of their interactive guys, two of their media staffers (including a Samford graduate), a traditional PR practitioner, a social media expert, the senior creative guy and some of the nice folks in their video studios who walked them through how they produce commercials and things. It was a good tour.

Also, they have an Airstream inside.

Airstream

And so it was that the first picture of the third month of the year of our Lord 2011 found on this site was a vintage restored recreational trailer which has been outfitted as a conference room. Our host said that whenever anyone wants to do a story on the place they want to talk about the Airstream. Whenever clients come they want to meet in the Airstream.

Wouldn’t you?

They also have a section of wooden bleachers where they do their large group work. She said they came from a local elementary school, but I could have sworn they were from my high school. Gave me a shiver just thinking about it.

And then it was back to the office as the student-journalists put together their newspaper. I started grading. I’m officially one-half caught up there, working my way through the mound of assignments that came in while I was off campus last week. I’ll make it through the rest tomorrow.

I could shoot a 30-second video of a red ink pen. No? April, then.