March « 2012 « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

March, 2012

Auburn / baseball / hobby / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
20
Mar 12

These pictures look perfectly composed to me

I think squirrels need Instagram treatments too:

For the record: I do Instagram the old-fashioned way. I shoot through a window screen and lower the shutter speed on the camera to kill the exposure. I’m an old school member of pointless photographs.

I was about to step outside and take this picture in the last of the high evening’s dying light, but the cat snuck out behind me. She sits and watches squirrels and birds all day. Sometimes she gets agitated by this and meeps and peeps at them. We think this is cute. And then we read it is frustration.

I felt bad about that once, for about 25 minutes, and then I remembered how often she wakes me up in the middle of the night, just to show off how good of a “hunter” she is that she found and retrieved one of her toys. I stopped feeling bad about it after that.

Anyway, I was stepping outside, Allie sneaked out around me. You’d think with that much time staring at the wildlife she’d consider going out to play with them. “Pickup hoops, anyone?” Or at least chase them. But no. This cat just goes outside and rolls around in the dirt.

Our cat thinks she’s a dog.

Baseball night. Auburn, fresh off winning a road series against 12th ranked Mississippi, was hosting South Alabama for the Tuesday contest. Determined not to look ahead to this weekend’s homestand against 12th ranked LSU, the Tigers put John Luke Jacobs on the mound.

He pitched shutout baseball for eight innings, allowing only three hits and two walks. He struck out 11:

A five run fifth inning cracked it open for Auburn and the Tigers rolled to a 7-0 victory. (Jacobs, as the Tuesday starter, leads the team in strikeouts, and leads Auburn’s starters in hits, runs and home runs allowed, opponent batting average, ERA.)

By this point, unfortunately, I’ve noticed a suddenly less-than-good feeling for the evening. So this is abbreviated, but I’m going to go try and sleep off this general feeling of mild blah.

cycling / hobby / Monday / photo — Comments Off
19
Mar 12

“We must be caught up.”

This guy was outside this morning:

In the afternoon I rode my little bicycle, turning the wheels around and around for what little I’m worth. I did an out-and-back, just down the long, hilly road from my neighborhood, out of town, past a handful of deputy sheriffs, through the neighboring town and than through two unincorporated communities. When I got to the point that was the farthest I’ve been on this particular road I felt great and pressed on.

And if the pros romanticize riding the cobblestones of Europe I invite them to enjoy the neglected country roads of this part of the world.

I road on a stretch that was little more than beaten shale until it turned into a still-smelling-of-tar new blacktop. It wasn’t much better, despite being brand new. Finally I had to turn around, riding over new asphalt covered in the red clay that means I’d traveled through at least three different soil regions.

On the way home I landed a sponsor, of sorts. I stopped at one of the crossroads gas stations to enjoy the shade and the last little bit of water. The guy working the till was sitting on a bench outside and invited me in to top off from the sink. So, Alice Faye’s Grocery, you guys are the best. And for the water refill and two handfuls of ice, I’ll mention you a lot. Also, I’ll stop back by, when I’m not in lycra, and buy a few things.

By the time I got home I’d managed 50 miles. And only the last few were uncomfortable. For the first 44 or so I felt as good as I ever have on the bike. I even set a personal best average speed over the course of the ride. It is still slow. I am not a very good cyclist.

At home the cable was out. A technician was due between 5-7 p.m. While we waited a contractor for the cable company showed up to bury the line the tech left in our yard on Saturday. He was scheduled for April but, as he said, “We must be caught up.”

This was a man of dirt and grass and heavy machinery. He has a dispatcher who tells him where to go, and that is enough. You have to admire the man’s work. Instead of a bright orange cable sprawled across the property there is now only a narrow cut line where he had to get under the grass. If you didn’t look hard you might not even see it.

As he worked the other guy showed up. And he was mystified.

These problems have persisted since we moved in. We go through a few months of mild problems, and then a long series of very persistent outages. When that happens we have experiences like this, three guys out in three days.

Oh they mean well, and they try hard. There are a few constants in the many visits. Most of them have something unflattering to say about the cable company they work for. They can never figure out the problem. They mostly just undo what the last guy did.

The guy that came out Saturday was little different. He told us the spectrum of numbers our streaming data should be at, and then told us the negative number we were at, which brought about the new cable stretched across the lawn. That worked until today.

The guy today yanked out an amplifier module one of his colleagues installed last year. It isn’t needed anymore, he said, because of the new, and newly buried, cable.

Why this wasn’t a problem for two days he couldn’t say. He couldn’t say a lot, really. He spent much of his time confused about the problem, which can’t be great for his morale. Here’s the customer, here’s the problem, here are your springtime allergens and your cat allergies.

“What is the deal with this?”

It doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence, granted. But he got everything working in time. The cable got buried, everything is working as it should again. I had turkey for dinner. Life is good.

Also, we had this visitor today:

photo / weekend — 1 Comment
18
Mar 12

Catching up

The “Spring is here!” edition. Within the last week we’ve of course had the time change. And there’s been a rush to bathe ourselves in pollen. Also, lawn mowers and edge trimmers have all been fired up. There’s nothing like the smell of a freshly cut patch of grass.

From the library, as the sun went down. I wasn’t going to even mention the cable running through the yard. Charter has been here, and the temporary solution is to run a cord from the platform in the front of the yard, around the house and to the junction box. Sometime in April they’ll come bury the thing. We are very sophisticated around here:

The flowering dogwood in my yard is now, finally, flowering:

Everyone else’s has been in bloom, or has already turned to leaves. This one looks a bit like the monster flower from Little Shop of Horrors:

Some of the bushes in our flower beds. I do not know what they are called, but they don’t seem to mind:

cycling / video / weekend — Comments Off
17
Mar 12

On curation and heat in the sun

Not a lot today. Hey, it is Saturday, and this week that is enough.

But I stumbled across this video via Twitter, and it is something I think and talk about on campus a fair amount. Thought I’d share it here, too.

Pedaled around the city bypass today. It was only 17 miles, I wanted a lot more, but my legs just weren’t there.

Also it was very warm. This might be the year that I become a wilted flower. I’ve felt this coming for the last few years. Septembers have started to get to me as I’ve found myself fundamentally opposed to triple digit heat that late in the year.

And now, on the other end of the seasonal spectrum, mid-80s in March seem a little unbecoming of technically-late-winter.

You don’t notice it when you’re riding. You do notice it when you have to stop for a red light in an intersection with no shade. You wonder about a lot of things just then.

Like why you’ll do it again tomorrow.

Then you get off the bike. You cool down a bit and clean up. And then you remember why.

Auburn / cycling / Friday / photo — Comments Off
16
Mar 12

The definition of only

So long, and thanks for all the flips:

Laura Lane and six of her teammates were honored on senior night which, thanks to unfortunate scheduling, took place during Auburn’s spring break. The gymnastics squad has a devoted student following, filling one half of the floor at Auburn Arena. Two of them were there, the rest were young families. So there’s some work to do on the scheduling side of things.

The Tigers did not have their best meet of the year, but they did enough to defeat BYU handily, 195.950-192.575.

But after this meet the stakes get bigger. The SEC championships are later this month in Georgia. Auburn will have to face the likes of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Florida, but they battled each of those squads within a point during the regular season.

In April the NCAA regionals will be at Auburn Arena.

Dinner at Cheeburger, including a basket of fries and a shake. I don’t mind the indulgence: I rode 27 miles this afternoon. And I’m now to the point where I said “I only rode 27 miles.”

I got scoffed at for that, but I was disappointed with the effort. I wanted more, but my energy levels disagreed. My hand hurt. (Remember a while back, I fell on my wrist? My chain slipped in a turn and jolted everything just right today.) It was hot. I forgot to press through. I was too busy trying to find reasons to stop after only 27 miles.

Terrible, I know. Tomorrow, then.