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Another weather day

The big cultural event of the spring at Samford is Step Sing, the choreographed, team-based, song and dance revue put on by the Greeks, independent groups and who knows whom else. I learned today that there was once a professors’ group. I suspect there’s probably enough interest in creating a local alumni group. I say local because this is a seriously orchestrated event. They put in about 40 hours of rehearsals for the three days of shows. It eats into everything.

One of the ancillary aspects of Step Sing is the banner drop. There are 14 groups performing this year. I know this because there are 14 banners now on display in the Caf. Everything is supposed to be kept strictly confidential until the banners are unveiled, and then the real anticipation for the shows begins. Here are two of the banners:

More later this week.

I say Step Sing eats into everything. The only thing big enough to eat Step Sing is winter weather. And so it was, that on the sixth day of February, and for the fifth time in just the second week of the term, we’ve had campus closed.

So I went home. Which was good, because we had to be in Atlanta tonight. There was a play:

Here is the curtain call:

That show isn’t for everyone, but if you like your satire acerbic and irreverent, well you might find a place in that show.

Things to read … because reading is for everyone.

This story should really be titled “Russia: Our shower surveillance says the hotel rooms are fine.” Russian Officials Fire Back at Olympic Critics

If you were wondering about J.C. Penney’s Super Bowl adventures, here’s an explanation. How JC Penney Accidentally Won the Super Bowl:

But here’s the kicker: It never even occurred to the company or its agencies that people would accuse them of staging a hack — or, for that matter, being drunk. In reality, the tweets were part of JCPenney’s ongoing campaign for the Olympics, which involves promoting its special Go Team USA mittens. The original plan for the Super Bowl was to tweet a stream of these misspelled, clumsy tweets through the big game and then reveal the #tweetingwithmittens hashtag at the end.

If you believe this telling — which has some depth to it — then you have to acknowledge that what really happened here was J.C. Penney was more or less very lucky with an incredible unsound strategy.

You’re going to run a series of bad tweets for a few hours and then tell the joke? There were 25 million tweets during the game, which is to say the firehose was turned on full bore. And you’re going to run a joke for three hours in an environment that is guaranteed to have an audience with an attention span of Dory the Pacific regal blue tang? At best you get ignored and forgotten. At worst people assume, well, what they assumed.

J.C. Penney will take all of the publicity they can get, but the point is this was a deeply flawed plan.

Quick ones:

Der Spiegel journalists on walking the fine line between informing the public and compromising NSA intelligence

IRS Criminal Prosecutions Surge Under Obama

Twitter Breaks Rank, Threatens to Fight NSA Gag Orders

More of … something … tomorrow.

adventures / cycling / photo / weekend — Comments Off
26
Jan 14

Out for a Sunday ride

Worked in a fun little 26 mile route this afternoon. It was a crisp, sunny and beautiful day for a ride. These are base miles or reacquainting myself with the saddle miles. Probably more of the latter, sadly. But great fun anyway!

(I should take more photos while I’m riding. I see other people’s shots — a guy who works for Apple and a newspaper editor I know are big culprits — and wonder how they do this, ride for as long and as hard as they want to, and then stop and take some incredible shots. Those are from Angelo Calilap, the guy who works for Apple, who is also a bike racer. And then he finds someone else’s beautiful cycling shots and says inspires him “to want to bring another camera other than my iPhone during a bike ride.” Like I’m carrying a real camera on my bike. Like I’m going to actually build up some momentum approaching respectable, see some nice view and then stop. I need my momentum! But I see those pictures and I want to go ride again. How’s right now for you?)

We worked our way through the back of the neighborhood, down one half of the time trial route and then past the city limit sign. We went by all of the shopping, through a sleepy little stretch of road that really lets you work out your legs and then down, down to a creek bed.

Which only means you have to come back up. And it feels like a long way up. It isn’t, really, numerically speaking. But I’m not a climber. And so when you crack on the first hill, know you have to still turn right and go up another one … well … I should be a better climber.

Thing I learned on the bike today: A few doughnuts and a banana are not good fuel.

I knew this already, but it is good to reinforce the basics.

Other thing I reinforced on the bike today: I enjoy riding my bike with her, especially on days when I can actually keep up. I even passed her a few times today, hence the pictures.

We were almost home and she said she had a craving for broccoli and brussel sprouts. She also remembered the rule about doughnuts and a banana. So we had vegetables for dinner. Is that something else worth learning? Eat what you crave on the bike?

May have to test that idea.

adventures / running / Wednesday — Comments Off
1
Jan 14

Travel day

Ran this morning, and then spent the rest of the day running. We did two miles around the track that surrounds the football and lacrosse field. Two girls outran me on every lap, and a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race kind looked better than me too. It was too cold, and my leg hurt and felt too inclined to come up with excuses.

It was about 24 degrees at the time.

After that we spent the afternoon packing. We were due to leave on Friday, but there’s a storm coming with even more cold and, most importantly, snow and ice. Neither planes nor I like to travel in snow and ice.

So we flew home this evening. The trip was great. Christmas was fine and lovely. It was a lot of travel and it was cold from time to time, but hour journey that began almost two weeks ago is over.

We stopped to see one more set of friends before catching a lull in the traffic on the way to Laguardia. We met a helpful Delta ticket agent and a pleasant TSA agent. We managed to get everything on the plane in short order. I read. A beautiful young Indian woman sat next to me and laughed a lot at whatever she was reading.

Hobbled off the plane, rode the terminal train, found our bags, caught the shuttle to the car. Packed the car, got rained on. Missed the interstate. Found the interstate. Found that the only thing still open for food was McDonald’s. Made it home in between rain clouds. Unloaded the car, got stamped on by the cat, unpacked …

That’s one way to start a new year.

How’s yours going so far?

adventures / Monday / photo — Comments Off
30
Dec 13

We went to a high school shoving match and a hockey game broke out

Back to New Jersey today for a hockey game. This was my first high school hockey game, which was good, because the pace moves a bit slower, so the action is easier to follow. This was also the first time I tried to take pictures of a hockey game, which was a struggle in a dimly lit arena.

A lifelong buddy of my father-in-law is the coach of a high school team, the Ridge Red Devils. They are wearing black and green:

This was a rivalry game against Bridgewater Raritan.

Bridgewater Raritan is a good team. They were state champions last year, apparently, and returned all but one player this year.

And so while Ridge was outskated, Bridgewater won 3-2, without ever really putting the good guys away.

We had pizza with the coach and his wife after the game. As I said, the coach is an old friend of my father-in-law. His wife went to nursing school with my mother-in-law. They have a lot of friends like this, people they’ve known for more than 40 years, people they’ve both known separately and together, which is a neat thing.

Tim, the coach, said that this was the coldest rink around. After Hurricane Sandy, he said, this area had no power for two weeks. When the power came on he went to the rink and skated. It was the only one around, without power, that still held ice. After two weeks.

It was about 32 degrees when we left the rink tonight. It was warmer outside than inside.

adventures / family / memories / photo / running / weekend — Comments Off
28
Dec 13

Connecticut Christmas

I’ve been battling a head cold of sinuses and various other fun for several days now. I can point to when it began, precisely at the end of dinner on Christmas Eve. This being the holidays, and that meaning traveling and a dozen people’s varying schedules and being courteous to the dietary habits of others, that would have been at around 5 p.m.

We’d had dinner with a portion of the family that was just getting over some bug or another. And I thought, for a time, that I’d been given some fast acting strain of a thing that I did not want.

Instead, before I complain about being sick and never eating, let me tell you about the best Christmas present I received on Christmas Eve.

We show up late, because there is being courteous to the dietary habits of others and then there is being alternatively busy and passive aggressive against the idea of eating dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon. So we sit down, all of the family in one big giant circle. For some this is a nice time. For others, perhaps they’d rather be elsewhere. Presents are passed around because one of the kids has to go to his father’s for another meal — the typical modern American Christmas, of course.

So it turns out that all of the gifts are aimed at the children, as it should be. This set ranges from 10 to 17 or so. Being book lovers, and considering these particular kids, The Yankee and I decided we’d simply do gift cards for all of them to a local bookstore.

The 10-year-old, after the haze of Christmas presents presents burns down to a nice, soft, amber glow in his mind, becomes upset. He has gotten me nothing. He disappears. He scours his room. He sends word that I am to join him there. He presents a miniature American flag. And a child’s giving, loving heart.

For the next three hours he proceeded to try to cheat me out of every dollar possible at Monopoly, but, still, for a moment, that was perfect.

Anyway, that was Christmas Eve, where I started coming down with something in his house. When the plane landed the day before yesterday here I couldn’t hear anything because of whatever is going on in my head. I’ve been walking around sniffling and listening to everything as if I’m three feet under water.

So we went for a run this morning. So we walked up the hill to the park where my wife played as a child, the same park where we had our engagement photos taken a few years ago. It is one of those old, large homes turned into a city showcase arrangements. There are dog runs and empty fields and disc golf and a gravel path and plenty of woods.

It was about 39 degrees and I’m going to be that guy, here, but the run helped me feel better. Cleared my head a bit. Now I’m hearing things slightly more clearly, and so on. I got in just over four miles.

We got back to the in-laws just in time to see Uncle Scott, who was up from New Jersey for Connecticut Christmas. How nice of him to wait for us, huh?

Cleaned up, and then Christmas presents, where Santa did an amazing job of bringing wonderful things to everyone. I’m still very much under the spell of that thing parents tell kids just before Christmas, and I’m always sure that I’ve never been good enough to deserve the Christmas gifts I receive. This year, this fine year, was no exception.

We had Christmas dinner, at a reasonable hour. And I calculated this: I believe it has been eight days since I’ve had both lunch and dinner at or near their regular times.

Now let me tell you about the luck of Christmas dinner. My mother-in-law, she’s a fine chef. Christmas in their home is shrimp cocktails and prime rib. Prime rib isn’t the first cut of meat I’d choose for myself, but she makes it happen and it was delicious, as always.

So I helped her clean up afterward and then went to play with my Christmas presents, which are too many and too grand for a boy like me.

Also, at this Christmas dinner, we open crackers. It seems you have this tradition or you’ve never heard of it. There is a cardboard tube with a ribbon coming out of either side. You pull the ribbons and it pops, a mini-firework! The tube opens and you get a paper crown for dinner, a cracker jack-type toy and a joke. These are the jokes we received tonight:

And Christmas still isn’t finished! One more tomorrow …