My in-laws arrived last night, as planned. They got in late in the evening and we had a nice casual day of it today. They are lovely guests who thoughtfully don’t over-pack, which helps me out when I carry their luggage to the guest room.
Since it was dark when they arrived, they received the full tour today. The cats, who spent a few weeks with them earlier this summer, were also happy to see them, because more pets, more play, more treats.
My father-in-law tossed around a football for a while. The big guy still has some zip. It was great fun, that little game of catch.
We took in our first Phillies game this evening. The hometown good guys started a guy who was 0-3, and the visiting Minnesota Twins, who no one really likes anyway, started a struggling former Cy Young Award winner in Dallas Keuchel. Philadelphia gave up two runs early on solo home runs, but the Phillies put six runs up in the bottom of the second, knocking Keuchel out of the game. Everything after that was perfunctory. The home team put runs up in the bottom of the fourth, sixth and eighth. The Twins finished with an outfielder on the mound, and the weekend series started with a 13-2 win for the home team. Cristopher Sanchez went six innings and got his first win of the season.
Here, I think, is what is important. It was easy to get into the sports complex area. We parked right across the street from the venue, so getting in was no problem. It was a very short walk to our lower deck seats. It was easy to get out, even if it took two tries because of a weird merge.
These days, all of the major venues are pretty good. Citizens Bank Park opened in 2004. If you have a good venue and a good product, the thing that will get you to come back, or the thing that keeps you away, is convenience.
And, tonight, it was easy to cross the bridge, get to Greenwich Island, and get out again. A good time, as the cliche goes, was had by all. Except the Twins, and nobody really likes them, anyway.
One thing you never think of as a fundamental, perhaps integral, part of modern life is garbage removal. This is strictly psychological, but no less important because of it. As I think I mentioned last week, the company that used to do the garbage pickup here closed the other account and immediately decided they don’t service this area anymore. Despite having done so previously, and working throughout the little neighborhood.
So I finally found, last week, a new company that services the area. We opened an account with them. Great! First order of business, getting new cans delivered. That was supposed to happen on Thursday, Friday, or today. This, you see, is important because the pickup is supposed to begin tomorrow.
You want that to happen, the normalcy of it. The expected routine. Wheeling the cans down to the street, wheeling them back up the next day. Knowing there’s a can out there to put your carefully sorted things in. It’s just normal.
Using an old storage bin to put a bag into, and then carrying it to the transfer station is less normal. We’ve been doing that for a month. The good news, I guess, is that we are somehow pretty efficient. In a month we’ve only done that twice, accounting for three kitchen-sized garbage bags. (Plus the recycling.)
Just as I write that we learn that the new company has stopped servicing the area. Despite what their website, and their customer service reps, said. Two databases queried; two misses. Also, we’re surrounded by towns and cities, and yet, in no service area? (Despite, again, the previous and existing … service.)
Hopefully these companies are better at doing business with the customers with whom they do actual business. They’re proving themselves lousy at working with potential customers.
It is once again time for the site’s most popular weekly feature. Time to check in on the cats. Phoebe is working on her camouflage game.
She’s making progress.
She’s also still discovering new spaces. to sit. I suspect she’ll come to like that little ledge.
It commands the room, has corner windows and will give her evening sun.
Speaking of discovering new space, Poseidon was genuinely surprised that he wasn’t wanted up there. Which is odd, because if he wants to be there, he probably isn’t wanted there.
The more familiar places are better, though I’m not sure he’s buying what I’m selling.
In other words, the cats are doing just fine.
We went for a bike ride on Saturday, and there is video to prove it.
Also, on these really sunny days, the photos amuse me. It’s all constant motion, of course. And The Yankee is easing back into her tri-bike now, which means we’re about to go even faster. (Which means I’m going to have work harder to keep up. Which means I need to get faster, and better fitness, so I can keep taking cool photos like this.)
The alternative to keeping up is catching up. Some days that’s possible. On the days that it is impossible, I just slow down and enjoy the ride, and take other photos.
Also on Saturday we headed north for a 75th birthday party. It was a surprise party for my godfather in-law. (My lovely bride’s godparents. Just go with it.) There was his family, his lifelong friends (my in-laws) a handful of his work friends, Italian foods and a homemade cake. We sat with a man who was pushing 90, and loved to talk about his grandchildren, and old handyman projects. Nice fellow.
After the dinner we repaired to the godparents’ home, and watched the kids swim. I coached one into doing flip turns. No doubt owing to my masterful teaching techniques, she had the basics down on her third try.
We left just before the rain. Drove for a bit in the rain, but then we were rewarded with some beautiful views.
And the front behind this storm system (which was in some places, dangerously breezy) is what broke the heat wave. Also, those windshield views.
We were back in the 80s on Sunday, today, and all this week. And because it felt comparatively mild yesterday, we spent the afternoon sitting outside, reading.
I finish May Sarton’s “Journal of a Solitude.” It’s an actual journal the poet kept for a year.
On the last entry, she talks about the coming New Hampshire fall, writes obliquely about breaking up with her partner. (Sarton, from what I’ve gathered from other places, was apparently a challenging person to be around. She wrote more about that part of herself, and its impact on this relationship, more than the relationship itself.) She seems to be coming to the realization that this breakup was a long time coming, and that she was meant to live alone.
She also sent off her latest collection of poetry, “A Durable Fire,” her 10th collection of poetry and her 26th book, the day before this final entry.
She says “When I began writing those poems I had had the dream that I would celebrate my sixtieth birthday with a book of joys, a book speaking of fulfillment and happiness. But on the final re-reading I saw clearly that it is an elegiac book, and that the seeds of parting were in it from the beginning. This where poetry is so mysterious, the work more … ”
Mystery of poetry? If the poet says so. The biggest literary mystery I can concern myself with right now is what to read next. There are many, many options.
My first job, at 14, was landscaping a surgeon’s mansion. He was highly successful. He also married old money. They had an early model Rolls Royce Ghost in the garage. On each of the sweeping staircases there was an oil painting of their beautiful daughters. These were the people you saw in movies who didn’t exist, except that they did.
It was a summer job, I was working for one of my junior high teachers. My mother would take me to a McDonald’s parking lot to meet that teacher each morning, and each morning it was already hot. Even in a little cooler there was trial-and-error about what would survive until lunchtime. My teacher and I would drive over to the really nice part of the nice part of town. And she worked all day, and taught me to work all day. She taught me a lot that summer. I learned how to wrap towels, like she had in the Peace Corps, to keep cool. I learned the best places to take breaks. She talked a lot about music and her kids and other normal things about life, too. It was one of my first instances of interacting with a teacher beyond the classroom model.
It was very, very hot that summer. Almost dangerously so. And these people’s property was large. By the time we worked from one end of their property to the other it was time to start over again. If I didn’t mention this already, that was a hot, hot summer.
I use that story, kind of as a joke, to explain how I knew I wanted to go to college and get a nice, comfortable indoor job. Really, I’d already realized I wanted to be in an office, looking sharp in a coat and tie. But that summer, and some later ones that involved a bit of real work, only reinforced the idea.
I was thinking about that, when I spent an hour or so late this morning doing very, very, light work, mostly in the shade, but still under a heat index of 100 degrees.
People out there doing real work in the heat deserve breaks and water and shade. It’s easy to forget how demanding some conditions can be. Whenever we have people in to work on something, I’m constantly bothering them about needing air or heat or ice or … whatever.
I think of all of those people I see harvesting crops in the fields. When I ride by them on my bike I slow down a little bit and try to see if I can pick up any conversation, prepared to wave if anyone looks my way. But, absorbed in the details of their work, they seldom do. We’ll go down to one of the farm markets this weekend, or next week, and pick up some fresh produce. We’ll enjoy it, of course, knowing it is up from the soil right around us. But I’ll also wonder how many breaks the hands get. Hopefully, these last few weeks, they’ve been getting enough. Hopefully that becomes the norm when the conditions call for it.
Fortunately, this heat wave is forecast to break at the beginning of the next week.
Until then, stay cool as best you can. Pool floats are good for that.
And since the weekend is upon us, I’m giving you permission to unwind. Here’s 60 seconds of wavy clouds from four feet under water.
We started this morning with a bike ride. OK, I started this morning with a PB&J, and then we went on a bike ride. The first 10 miles felt great, just following my lovely bride, jumping ahead on the little hills because I can, but sitting up and waiting for a second or two for the red flash to come through.
The corn is nice and tall. The sun is high. The roads are quiet. Everything is going great.
Somewhere around mile 13 my legs reminded me that they have been underused of late, and they stopped pedaling well in protest. It was squares from there on in, and I have to ride more, I know it, and my legs do, too. But the views were lovely.
And even though my ride was feeling clunky, I did remember to take a photo of this sign which surely means … something.
I think it’s recounting the local legend of the bird that celebrated the building as a deity, and brought it fish sacrifices, in the hopes that the building would give plentiful thermals in return. Silly bird.
Around mile 18 my legs rallied, if only for a moment, and then they stopped being productive at all. There was no more hanging on the wheel. No more catching up, not even on the gentle rollers. I was merely dropped. I managed to set four PRs on Strava. She set PRs on five Strava segments.
After that, The Yankee went for a run.
I sat in the shade.
Today was, I think, the first day I didn’t do anything involved with house settling. That’s about the tasks, not the mentality. That may take a while, I guess. But I did make a list of things to do tomorrow. And a long term list of things we might want to do, one day. Also, I did some paperwork for work, but there’s not really a good tale emerging from paperwork. Not one like this …
Late this afternoon we took some garbage to the garbage taking place.
The waste people decided they don’t manage service in this neighborhood anymore, despite having just closed a contract with the previous owners. And despite evidence — actual garbage cans that will go out tomorrow — of all of our nice neighbors receiving said service. We called this company twice on different days and times, just to see if that was a fluke, but it was not. Not sure what’s going on with that company, but I invoked Smith’s First Rule of Economics.
Don’t make it hard for me to spend my money with you.
So I found another company. Feeling very proud of myself, I shared this information. I didn’t know what the relative rates were, but it turns out this contract will save us a few bucks. They’ll start pickup next week, and deliver one of those giant cans later this week, supposedly. Which meant we took a few bags and some recycling to the transfer station today.
Transfer station being a term that sounds better, but isn’t necessarily an improvement in the olfactory region.
Being a warm summer day, we enjoyed our evening outdoors, and then had a fine steak dinner. It was a wonderful day, thanks for asking. I also introduced my lovely bride to Ray Stevens today. It was a topic that just evolved from a regular conversation. To my great relief, she found him funny, too.
I don’t know what comedy track we’ll get into, but tomorrow could be even better!
Somehow the day passed quickly. It doesn’t seem like I got a lot down, and, on a Wednesday in July, that’s as it should be. I did get some things vacuumed. Moved a few more boxes and straightened up that sort of thing. Stuff that needed to be done, some which was past due, but nothing big, and nothing which should have filled the day, but there I was, 4 p.m., getting ready to call it a day.
Why, you ask? Because it was a Wednesday in July, that’s why. And also because we had tickets to see a show in Philadelphia.
We did not watch an opera. But we did hear an operatic song.
I think it was 2000 when I last saw John Ondrasik. It was at Five Points. Was he opening for Guster? Edwin McCain? Train? Probably someone else. This was right about the time Five for Fighting was getting a lot of airplay off that second record and I saw a lot of bands in those days. Anyway, that was a great venue. They existed at a time when the local Birmingham radio play was helping set the tone, and the people that book shows put those things together and you could see all manner of up-and-coming acts and an eclectic mix of true artists with their share of road miles in there. Five Points South Music Hall existed from 1994 to 2003. Then it became a night club, and then the shooting happened. That joint had been around for five years by then, but late on July night a fight turned deadly. Two killed, two wounded and the neighbors and the city had enough. That club folded. But the next year, 2009, it opened as Five Points Music Hall again. New owners. It last for less than a year. No one seemed to figure out why they shut it down. It got torn down in 2015. (I was in town, but not in town.) A hotel is in that spot these days.
Someone is probably singing Bohemian Rhapsody in there right now, but I bet they’re doing it un-ironically.
Anyway, tonight’s headliner was Barenaked Ladies. And it was a singalong kind of night.
And Kevin Heard serenaded us. This is, I guess, the fourth time I’ve heard this live. They’ve been using that multimedia show for the song for several years. They should keep it up. It works and the synch is pretty great.
I’ve got nine or 10 of those to consider doling out over the coming days. It was, as ever, a fine, fun show from BNL.
