September, 2011
20
Sep 11
Do not be dissuaded by the gray atmosphere
Rain today.
But it is like summer isn’t even trying anymore. Summer knows this is her last official week, and is conceding the point. The rain was just a sprinkle, a pat dropping of precipitation. There was nothing dramatic about it. It was probably even cold.
So maybe summer is slinking off. Maybe that will make way for an actual season of autumn this year. Maybe there’ll be months of the stuff, instead of days. Maybe we’ll grow weary of crispy mornings, sharp colors and the fragrant smells of the grill and evening fires. Maybe the crickets and the katydids will stick around, and the lightning bugs, too, but the mosquitos will be pushed off in an evening breeze.
It’s a pipe dream, but a good one. Summers are lovely and long. It will be mid or late October before the seasonal average high dips below 75. There may be troughs and cold fronts and odd chills in there, but there will also be the spikes. Beyond a certain point temperatures flirting with 90 are a bit demoralizing. That point is October 17th.
So we’ll see how that goes this year.
Class today. Students working on stories, some of them are quite strong. All have promise. Fifteen kids given one assignment and there are probably nine different angles they’ve explored. These can be interesting times in the development of young student-journalists.
Some of those stories will possibly be in The Samford Crimson sometime soon. That bunch of student-journalists, a bit older than those in today’s class, are working on their latest issue now. All of this is great fun.
Like sports teams, each year’s staff has their own personality. This year the Crimson has more guys on the editorial staff. There’s more talk of fantasy football teams than sorority functions. They all work hard, though, each staff going late into the night, and early into the next morning at the beginning of the year.
So far this year’s new staff has finished their paper at 5:30 a.m., just an hour before it went to press, and then 3:30 a.m. last week. At least I think that was the time last week. I find it hard to remember now. I can’t imagine why.
19
Sep 11
We do not talk like pirates
Talk Like a Pirate Day today, of course, but there are no “Yarrrs” or speeches about torrents or proxy IP addresses. Today is my lovely wife’s birthday, and it just seems wrong to share such a day with a fake slogan. I can talk like a pirate any day.
I just choose not to do so.
I wrapped one a last present, and then pleaded my ignorance about how it got there. She opened her fourth and fifth cards that have been spread out about the house since last week. And then I installed the new present. It only took four tries!
It is a special light fixture, which may not sound like your idea of a present, but she asked for it specifically. And it glows in the dark. You can imagine our entertainment.
The first installation attempt I tried following the instructions. On the second and third tries I operated on the assumption that the instructions were wrong. The sticker said Made in China and, while the English was straight from a solid 101 class, the first screw stripped with less than half-a-turn.
When this happens you immediately move beyond a need for the installation instructions.
On the fourth try, though, I decided to give them one more good faith effort and, what do you know.
And now one of our rooms is lit even when it isn’t.
We carefully saved the box and are preserving the old fixture because, as she said “That one is going with us if we ever move.”
Told you she liked it.
We had the traditional Japanese birthday dinner, surrounded by our new best friends, a 13-year-old in a poodle skirt who was just learning the joys and intricacies of ginger and wasabi and that she can’t trust her father for anything, ever, and a family of five, who eat there each week, who just bought a new car, who’s oldest plays fall baseball and who’s youngest is an unholy terror.
Also, the Japanese place in town does a Halloween costume contest ever year. Our chef has won the prize by going as Buddha and almost burned himself alive as Nacho Libre. Capes are flammable, and get this guy away from me.
The Japanese steakhouse is very instructive.
We also had a delicious slice of Oreo ice cream cake from the local place walk-up shop and tsettled in for a nice DVD date night.
She announced to the room in general that it was a great birthday.
