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Auburn / baseball / cycling / Friday / Samford / video — Comments Off
5
Apr 13

“Even though we’re presidents, can we still hug?”

Late in the day, just before the sun gives way to dusk. My shoulder has been bothering me a bit this week, and so I found the opportunity to treat it with the foam roller, where you take a hard piece of cylindrical as big as a small melon and roll it between your body and the floor, using your mass as the therapeutic engine. (Even though doing so with shoulders can be tricky, because you are not, under pain of all holistic devices, supposed to use the foam roller on bone. And your shoulder has lots of those.)

Allie grew indignant. Because I was in her sun. So I scooted over two feet.

So everything here is fine this lovely day.

I spent the day reading news and students’ work and grading things and writing stuff. I got in a little time on the bicycle, too, feeling like I was going nowhere fast until I would glance down at my computer and see that I was pulling off a remarkable (for me) pace. I have many questions I need to ask of someone who knows things about bikes and gears and pace.

We listened to the Auburn baseball game — they beat somebody! — over the app on my phone. I pretended like it was an AM feed, and that there was constant bleed from nearby stations. In my mind it was a gospel station, a bit of sermon, a bit of choir, mixed with a station blaring Jerry Lee Lewis and the occasional crackle of someone broadcasting farm reports.

Pretty sure I’m the only 30-something in the 21st century imagining things like that.

Anyway, Auburn downed Texas A&M 6-4 in 10 innings. All of the things that have happened to that team didn’t happen tonight. All of the things they’ve been waiting for finally showed up. On the season they are stranding eight runners a game and have lost four by two runs or less, plating people being the big problem so far this year. No wonder teams say they take it one game at a time. You’d go mad trying to find reason in the aggregate.

But, tonight, they are 18-12, 2-8, and could win a conference series on a Saturday.

One of my students shared this, President Obama meeting Kid President. It is a great tour of the Oval Office, and a nice moment all politics aside. Boy meets hero! Hero shares time and message! Everyone is thrilled!

Also, there’s the Emancipation Proclamation, just hanging on the wall. Remarkable.

“Even though we’re presidents, can we still hug?” Great moment.

Have a great weekend!

cycling / Monday / Samford / site — Comments Off
1
Apr 13

A new thing

I have been playing with code. This will be a fun format for the occasional piece.

Here are the fruits of both my bike ride, figuring this out while I was struggling up a hill and taking pictures. I could talk about it, but it is all in the new Big Stories section.

I won’t use that often, but it does have some nice flexibility and really lends itself to long form essays. I like it. Seems to work well on the phone, too. What do you think?

I could write about other things, but aside from doing some work, watering a plant, riding my bike, taking those pictures, editing them and building that and doing some more work … well, that’s been pretty much my day.

Plus there are several words on the Big Stories page. Check it out.

Alabama / Auburn / baseball / cycling / Friday / friends / iPhone / photo — Comments Off
29
Mar 13

The baseball Iron Bowl, game two

Alabama’s second baseman, Kyle Overstreet who is really quite good, committed an error in the sixth inning tonight. Naturally the helpful fans at Plainsman Park pointed this out.

By then Auburn had the game under control. They found their first lead in conference play, which came in their 66th inning of conference play. The Tigers’ bats came alive again in the fifth, putting four more runs on the board and Auburn finally won one, 6-3.

Check out the highlights, particularly the gem in the ninth inning at the three minute mark:

So, now, Auburn is 10-43 against the SEC in the major sports – football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and baseball – since the 2012 SEC baseball tournament. It has been the worst year ever since Title IX in terms of a cumulative conference record.

But a beautiful day otherwise. Got out for a quick ride on the bike and was about seven miles from home on a quite road that has been closed because the bridge two miles down was out for construction. I heard a nice ting!-ting!-ting! doppler off to the left and behind me.

It seemed important to stop, to see what had just fallen off my bicycle. And I was happy to realize that the brakes were still working and the wheels weren’t falling off.

Finally I realized it was the metal clamp that holds my bag to the seat post and saddle rails. So we spent a while looking for the parts. I’d hit a bump and something felt loose, so up and down the shoulders, stomping on plumes of grass and bending over to peer at ever dark piece of material near the roadway.

After about an hour I found the metallic piece, realized that was the only part I was missing, so that’s a win. I only have to replace two screws. And get home in time for the baseball game, managing only an impressive 10 miles for my troubles.

But I had a turkey burger for dinner, we closed down a restaurant with our friends Adam and Jessica and that somehow makes it all better.

It was a good afternoon as we head into a great weekend. Hope yours is even better!

cycling / food / Monday / movies / music / Samford / Tumblr / Twitter / video — Comments Off
25
Mar 13

Ode to flashmobs

We have half the grapes that we started the day with. And one less navel orange. Also, the leftover spaghetti from last night disappeared. And then I was full for about an hour. But white grapes only last so long and I had to talk myself out of an extra lunch. Miles on the bike speed up the metabolism, or so I tell myself, and I want to eat everything.

Strange since my energy was all over the place yesterday. I chased The Yankee around town, counting my second, third and fourth wind. These things should be more predictable, but yesterday I was left amazed at how I couldn’t find my legs to get over this hill, but soft-pedaled over the next one, with my legs feeling bored with it all. The body is an amazing thing, and a body on a bicycle is a curious miracle, all balance and whirring and swaying and moving forward. I’m not a good cyclist. Usually I do well just to stay upright. Balance and whirring and all that. At my best moments I’m either trying to make nice little circles with my feet or, if I’ve given up on that, I just try to make it all look casual. That’s also impossible.

But, 30 more miles yesterday, and I really need to start putting more miles back in. We got home just as the wind picked up. She’d forecast the afternoon perfectly. Meteorologists call her for input, or they should.

And now back to work today, the cold week of spring break is over, replaced by a cold regular week.

In class today we talked about films, which means a lot of clips of special effects. One of the students found a five minute EXPLOSIONGANZA of CGI that just melted everyone’s brains. Oh, for a few scenes of expository. Or even a Stallone quote.

When they talk about film they also talk about awards, which everyone loves except me, apparently. I’m fine with it. I did enjoy the Oscars poster someone showed off. It had the statue in the foreground surrounded by floating lines from memorable award winners. I saw this famous line and thought about adding in some running commentary — we’d recently talked about civil rights, the 50th anniversary of various events in Birmingham and across the south, how critical a time that was and how there is such a great museum just over the mountain — so bringing up In the Heat of the Night would have been perfect.

I decided against it. I’m not sure kids born in the 1990s would understand 1960s Mississippi and why all of this was so important. Even the television show was off the air by the time my oldest student was born. Sidney Poitier, though, he just gives you more every time you watch that quiet moment.

Everyone always remembers this, perhaps a cinematic first:

They filmed most of In the Heat of the Night in Illinois because of conditions in Mississippi. The country’s come a long way in those two generations.

There are two new things on Tumblr today. One is here. This is the other one.

I call that Tumblr page “Extra stuff in an extra place.” That is, perhaps, the most apt thing I’ve ever written.

And, finally, I’ve watched this twice now. It will be the best five minutes of your day on the web.

If you’ve never read the Wikipedia entry on Ode to Joy, you should.

Back to work for me, have a lovely evening you. See you tomorrow, when there will be more on Tumblr, more here, always more on Twitter, another Glomerata and who knows what else we can find.

cycling / family / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
14
Mar 13

Anyone have any marshmallows?

Pausing on a quick evening ride:

I saw a fire as I rounded for home. I believe someone was doing a prescribed burn to clear out the underbrush, but there was no one around.

I sit there for a moment or two, looking or waiting for someone to come back to the fire, but no one is around. The occasional car or truck cruises through, slowing down in the smoke and haze, and I’m taking pictures. So, great, someone probably think I started this. I did not.

The sun was just to that point of getting to ready to let go and the world was quiet, except for a little whirling wind over distant crackling. It was as if a great thing had been done, but the environment didn’t know what to do with it. There was a stunned feeling. There was an anticipation.

Love the woods, but not a fan of this fire. Just down this little country road there was a house and in the driveway of that house there was a man who made a big point of waving at me as I went by. In his yard was another small fire. I assume he was taking care of the serious business of the controlled burn. He wave awfully emphatically.

Most importantly, no one stopped me to ask if I did it. i did not.

Atlanta by nightfall, we picked up the in-laws for the weekend. There was a former basketball player waiting at the airport and giggling teens and people who were happy to take their picture with him. There was a family looking for their Marine and a limo driver flagging down clients with names on his iPad. Everyone was walking to the left of everything. It was amazing and awkward at the same time.

Sort of like Segways, which are now appearing at the airport. Because navigating the crowds isn’t challenging enough on most days. Who needs a Segway here? There are already shuttles and a train. There are wheelchairs and carts. I suppose if you’re working there and going back and forth you could use something that moves at slightly faster than walking speed that’d be the way to go.

But I rode 30 miles late today, through fire.