Today was a day of waking up at a reasonable time. I had forgotten there was a 7:30 a.m. I am not the morning person. I’m fine when I wake up, but just let me sleep in. It’s my natural condition. So imagine, if you will, the 10 or so years I did morning news. I had one job where I was in the studio at 4:30 a.m. That might the next job’s 6 a.m. arrival seem positively easy. The upside was that you had an afternoon to get errands done. The downside was you can’t, in your 20s, convince people you need to be in bed by 8 p.m.
Reader, I never was.
I was not last night, either. I only had to wake up at 7:30. This was rude enough.
Fortunately, my classes are all in the afternoon and evening.
Anyway, we had a meeting at 9:30 a.m., our first faculty meeting of the semester. This involved sitting in a classroom, reading an agenda, talking about the various items. Trying to stay on track and on schedule, and so on. (This group has a terrific sense of staying on time, and that’s a nice thing to be a part of.) It ran for six hours, this meeting. Six hours is not easing back into things. I suppose all of the work I’ve done these last four weeks have been the easing back into things. And, also, the sudden increase of email that has coincided with the work. Perhaps that has been the easing back in. (Just four more days of easing back in until the full stride begins. But I don’t want to wow you with all of that just now.)
The good news is that we’ll be on the clock for the work next week. Once we get started, then we can get started. The feeling before classes begin is an odd one. It is a stew of excitement and anxiety and you-still-have-time and you-have-no-time and there-are-days-to enjoy-yourself-so-relax and who-can-relax and, also, I-need-more-days-with-which-to-relax. This paragraph breaks no new ground — as opposed to every other ‘graph on this site. It has always felt like that. I suspect the days before a new semester begin feel like that for a lot of people. I imagine it always will, at least so long as we have semesters and people teaching in them.
And now, notes from real life.
We went out for a morning bike ride yesterday. A simple 20-miler, one of the traditional routes. I decided, wisely, that instead of trying to stay out front for as long as possible, I would ride sensible, hanging onto my lovely bride’s wheel, and then maybe I’ll still be there at the end. Going out front would have probably been a better option. She’s riding so well lately and I am not and that’s how you find yourself going 20-plus miles an hour and squinting into the distance, trying to determine if you can still see someone in the distance.
Nothing on that ride was terribly bad. She’s just super great at the moment.
Some farmers, in some places, talk about a second season. We have that here, and here’s evidence of that. I rode this same route a few weeks back and the corner was taller than me. Now, it is not.
This, if I remember my corn growing rates, is pushing the boundaries of the science, which is pretty cool. Double-cropping is a growing thing, and I need to read more about it. I can’t recall if it is efficient or inefficient. (Most likely that depends on the crop.)
For today’s bike ride I recreated a route I did three years ago, this week. It was a ride-every-road-within-shouting-distance-until-you-get-to-20-miles route. I did it at just below a tempo pace. I finished it two minutes and two seconds faster than I did in 2023. I wish it had been faster.
After my ride I finished this project. It’s the same picture I shared yesterday, because the face of it looks the same. This evening I had to attach the cleat to the back. From there, hang the cleat on the wall.
This took four screws, but they had to be precise because the cleat isn’t quite large enough. The cleat isn’t quite large enough because it is a leftover cleat that I made last summer. I got a corner cabinet and mounted it in a dead space in the garage and there sit the bike shoes and the helmet. All of this was an effort to get the bike stuff all the tool stuff. Only, lately, the sunglasses and have migrated back to the tool stuff. So, I had some extra lumber and wanted to try my new brad nailer and everything worked out well. Until I had to get those screws in. There were about three millimeters for error because, again, I cut twice and measured once on this project. It is garage furniture.
And now it is sitting on a wall cleat and holding sunglasses and it doesn’t even wobble when the garage door goes up and down.
There are no cats in this tunnel. Phoebe ran into the room for attention and settled down in her favorite spot for speculative belly rubs. I gave her a nice pet and then shot this, just because I like the way the light was playing off the tunnel.
That’s a new tunnel that my mother sent the cats. We now have two tunnels, so our jealous sibling cats can get along with one another. I’d randomly move them around the house, but these little guys are such creatures of habit I’m not sure how they’d react to upsetting their routine with such an offensive gesture.
Outside, I looked up just in time. This plane is going to London. By the time you read this, of course, the people are already there. Probably over the jet lag. I wonder what they’re doing today.
Sometimes you should look up even when there’s no rumble or roar of an aircraft overhead. Sometimes you just get lucky. Just about every time, really, if you think about it.
Think about it.
