The site’s photo galleries are now up-to-date through May. Previously they’d stopped at February — I’m blaming comps. Now, though, you can see most of the things my camera saw in March, April and May.
This one did not make it in there, but will be on the June page when I build that.
Allie is very streaky when it comes to places she occupies. Each part of the day has an assigned location, most having to do with the sun in the windows and where we leave her alone. And from time to time those locations just. Lately she’s been a monorail cat on the arm of the sofa.
She’s sitting there just now, in fact. I think she likes it because it gives her the high ground (over her entirely fictional competitors) and allows her a commanding view of two rooms and the main hallway. She could pounce down from her mesa and control any situation.
This is the cat startled by anything larger than a moth.
Easy day today. Overslept, and so I missed my opportunity to ride. It was decidedly too warm by mid-morning. I’m going to have to maintain a real schedule in order to get my rides in, it seems.
Cleaned the office a bit, caught up on the site, goofed off with The Yankee and generally had a nice day of it. We were fortunate enough to have shrimp for dinner tonight; there’s nothing wrong in our little corner of the world.
I suppose one balloon of the moody sun wouldn’t be too bad. A manic three-star system … that would just be bad for more than just gravitational reasons.
This was at the Publix recently, in the produce section. They have little sprinkler systems with piped in thunder when it is time to spray the greenery, probably as a “STAND BACK!” feature, but surely they aren’t expecting these mylar stars to deliver any great photosynthetic processes.
There, there’s your band name and first album title in one sentence.
Just a quick ride today. The Yankee says there are these things called Recovery Rides. The purpose, I’ve just discovered “is to stimulate the metabolism to remove waste products and to loosen stiff muscles, not to train hard.” That page has a sub-barf quotient on it, so you know it is for legitimate athletes.
So I did a quick recovery, about seven miles at an easy pace — easy being relative as I am already not the most brisk, talented sprinter on the road at any given time.
Hit the post office to return something from e-bay. The post office here has always been one of the least fortunate places to visit. I’ve only been to the DMV here once, but I’ll take it over the Auburn post office anytime. Thought I’d timed it well, too, there were no cars in the parking lot. Filled out the envelope, sealed it up and I’m second in line. There are four postal workers at the front and two of them were working.
One of them was. The third one was busy talking cell phones with a guy who’d just shipped things.
There’s a design flaw in the building, too. While you stand in line you’re standing under a skylight. So you bake. And that’s enough to make you want the DMV any day.
Hit the sporting goods store after that, found nothing useful, and then the Sam’s Club. Picked up a forklift-full of toilet paper, an industrial sized box of gum and a box of snacks for bike rides.
Barbecue for dinner, I had the chicken at Moe’s, and the red beans and rice and the Moe’s pie, which is more like a crumbled oreo-fudge combination in a tiny styrofoam bowl rather than a piece of pie. But we tried.
And so the day has ended quietly, just as it began and held that attitude throughout. Too hot to move. Mid-90s? No one and no thing is willing to cause much of a fuss. May the weekend bring us more of the same, without searing temperatures.
I’m on my bike, about 14 miles into the ride when the sprinkling started. Oh, I’d watched out for the storms, but this did me no good. My certainty of the existence of rain did not dissuade it from falling upon me. My awareness of the clouds to my left did not preclude precipitation.
There was a gas station, though, where I managed to take refuge when the wet stuff really started falling. We need the rain so bad I would have stayed under there for a long time, but I was back on the road again in half an hour.
In that time I had two great conversations, each centering around my predicament. One guy asked how far I had to go. When I told him he just laughed. Another man asked if I was getting wet.
No sir, that’s why I’m standing under the awning.
It reminded me of the time in 1994 — during the LSU vs Auburn game*, in fact — that I had a flat tire. My jack slipped and I had to try to pick up the corner of my old Buick by my shoulder. This guy walked by and asked “Have a flat?”
No, I just rotate my tires every 50,000 miles no matter where I am.
You know, it might have been the same guy.
So the rain stopped, my ride continued. And then the rain returned for about 45 seconds. I pedaled on. Stopped at my pre-arranged place to pick up a snack and some replacement beverages. And off I went for the second half of my ride. This is an area I’ve only ridden twice before, so I’m only starting to get comfortable in the hills. I struggle my way through until it is time for a snack … and realize I can’t open the packaging from the bike. So I stop. Still can’t open it. Poke it with a stick, no luck. Find a sharp rock, and suddenly I’m a prehistoric man in sweaty raglan.
Eat my nuts and honey snack, get back on my bike and realize one of my water bottles is missing. Well.
So I backtrack. I go all the way down one road with no luck. Down a huge hill and another road with no sight of the gray and yellow bottle. And then down a third stretch of asphalt.
Where I find it sitting next to a bridge. I had squarely hit the rim-wrecking pothole on the bridge and the bottle fell out of the cage. Probably I was grunting too hard to hear it land.
Now which way? I didn’t want to go up that huge hill again, and it felt as if I hadn’t reached the mid-point so I called an audible and worked my way back home. When I got in and looked at the altered route I found it was a 41 mile day.
Didn’t feel nearly as miserable as I did from our 41 mile trek last weekend. That’s improvement.
And I was only heckled twice, so clearly I’m doing something right.
Farmer’s market this afternoon, where we bought cantaloupe, watermelon, corn (from a different grower), peaches, squash and tomatoes.
I sound so healthy, don’t I? (We had cookies for dessert tonight.)
Random things: Reporters arrested for … reporting. That’s going to court with a great hue and cry.
Publishers to universities: We aren’t the bad guys. Another tough spot for everyone that devolves to control, and impressive markups.
What’s eating college radio? Bottom line issues, apparently, though we’ve been discussing it and the prevailing opinion among WEGL-alumni is that all the good ones graduated. (And I did, too.)
Dumb commercial of the night:
* This is what I missed while struggling with my car. I remember it because the seven turnovers to win was quite ridiculous. My senior year in high school, Auburn was as out of that game as you could be when I blew my tire. By the time I got back to the radio the game was over and they’d done the improbable, and thank you Curley Hallman.
My roommate in college was from the central part of the state. They grow a lot of citrus and peaches and watermelon in his part of the world. He came from a prominent farming family in a rural-agricultural area. He told stories about how he’d go help in the fields at harvest time. He recalled a day when INS showed up to pick up all the migrant workers and take them away for deportation.
He said the workers would be back in the fields, hauling watermelons, before the INS agents got back to town.
I thought of that story, people eager to work hard, long, thankless jobs for low pay, while reading about what’s happening in Georgia:
After enacting House Bill 87, a law designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Georgia, state officials appear shocked to discover that HB 87 is, well, driving a lot of illegal immigrants out of Georgia.
It might be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
Thanks to the resulting labor shortage, Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.
The entire AJC story is a good read. Closer to home, we’ll soon see something similar.
The law requires proof of legal residence on the job, at school and when obtaining state benefits.
It also allows police to arrest anyone on reasonable suspicion they are in the country illegally, requires courts to void contracts involving undocumented immigrants and requires employers to use the federal E-Verify system to check applicants’ legal status.
[…]
Alabama’s new law could have unintended consequences and be costly to enforce, said Gary Palmer, president of the Alabama Policy Institute, a conservative group that generally favors illegal immigration reform.
Some aspects such as the E-Verify requirement, are good, he said. But “it will be interesting to see” if native Alabamians will flock to lower-wage jobs now filled by immigrants, he said.
There are no easy answers.
I’ve read three stories on this today, though, and found 450+ comments between them. Some of them, surprisingly, have been worth reading.
So we’re making dinner tonight, where it has become my permanent job to remove the silk from fresh corn. We’d picked up a few ears from the farmers’ market last week and there was a corn earworm larvae in one of them. That didn’t go over well.
So we threw some of the corn out, as it had been damaged. Presumably the farmers we bought from had a bad streak of luck with moths or pesticides. Maybe they should do a lot of trap cropping.
Doesn’t really matter, The Yankee said, she wouldn’t buy corn from them anymore. Two ears did make it on the grill, and when we ate it with dinner she pronounced it the best corn she’d ever had. It was good stuff. Went well with the burgers, too.
But, still, I think she’ll buy from someone else at the farmers’ market tomorrow.
Rode 29 miles on the bike this morning. It was no longer morning when I got back in, but rather the beginning of a full summer day. I parked, checked the thermometer and it said 88 and going strong.
New route today, heading down the dangerous hill on which we live, out through a rural area where I was passed three separate times by the same FedEx truck, through construction, slicing through a rural light industrial area and then onto the hilly, curve fun of Wire Road.
That was the first road I ever drove on in Auburn. The road I hit a deer on (not the same day) and the route back to campus I preferred as a student. I lived just off it for two years. And now I am struggling up its hills.
Walked my bike into a gas station where the cashier observed it was becoming warm outside. Not sure how she jumped to this conclusion, perhaps it was my generally disheveled condition. Picked up a Gatorade and pressed on for the final five miles. It was a good ride, especially since I’m taking tomorrow off.
Just about caught up on the site after two weeks away. The WEM blog is up to date and the tea blog still makes me question why it exists. (When I was experimenting with the multiuser interface in WordPress last year I needed multiple blogs to do it. Otherwise, I haven’t touched the thing, clearly. The LOMO blog has plenty of catching up to do, which may be next week. This blog is just about back in shape, though. Later this week I’ll get the photo galleries a little more current. Hard to believe it has been four months since I built one of those here.
Edited video today for various things, worked on that non-profit site I’ve been nursing along. It should be done tomorrow.
And then, this evening we enjoyed our anniversary dinner. While yesterday was the big day, Monday seems to be a trendy evening for restaurants to close. So we had barbecue last night and got dressed up a bit tonight.
We visited The Warehouse Bistro which is, apparently, one of those open secrets. Never been there. Had only heard of it a few times, though it has been around for ages. It is set in the middle of an old industrial park that otherwise only vaguely looks used.
The exterior is humble enough to miss altogether, but inside, once you pass the obligatory autographs and well wishes is a nice little casual fine dining place. We were sat in the corner and met a guy a half-step too smart to be working in a restaurant, but he had the patter and did a great job. Everything was wonderful — though we skipped the $7 desserts.
I had the rack of lamb:
Quite tasty.
We came home for cookies, which should be a mandatory part of most any meal.
It was a fine start to year three. (We’re, clearly, still zeroing in on the clever name we’ll give this one. Let ya know.)
