Busy, full day here, so let’s get right to it, so I can get back to it. (Class prep, I tell you. I hope at least some of it is going well. It’s been going on since Saturday, so hopefully I’ve done well enough to fill an hour or so with good and useful information. But, hey, the class is this evening, so there at least won’t be much longer to have to worry about it.)

Back to the getting to it. Let us first perform the site’s most popular weekly feature, checking in on the kitties.

Phoebe has lately taken an interest in the dining room table. This comes as my lovely bride rotated the table 90-degrees last week. Presumably this new angle fits with her sense of feng shui.

I took the next photo on this very day. And the joke I delight in telling to The Yankee goes like this.

We have a house. And inside that house there are hardwood floors. On one of those floors is a high quality rug. On top of that rug is a still-new overstuffed sofa. On top of that sofa is a pillow. And top of that pillow is your cat.

Because, you see, the sofa isn’t comfortable enough.

Meanwhile, if you have a moment, could you stop by and plug this cat in?

He simply could not go any farther. You understand why, he was forced to travel up several stairs and across a few feet from his afternoon napping perch.

I like that photo because I managed to keep the two if-I-fits-I-sits boxes in the background. They should be coming back into their rotation any day now.

Saturday was beautiful and I took a break from class prep for a quick bike ride. The last time I did a random ride I turned right at a particular T-intersection. So, this time, I went to the same road and turned left. Soon after, I saw this sign, which was great and, presumably, accurate enough.

I love rides like this. On the last random ride, when I turned right at that T, it was purely a ride of discovery. All new roads, the first one, I specifically wanted to see where it went. And when it ended, I had to improvise. This time, I my route after that same intersection. This should make it easier, but it just makes it more difficult.

Here’s a post office I ran across. My hypothesis has long been that you can tell a lot about a town by their post office(s). And this one looks lovely, but it needs a coat of paint.

There are two — count ’em, one, two — parking spaces out front. And the office sits right there on Main Street, which is a collection of a handful of houses and a fire company.

I got turned around twice. And, of course, this matters because there’s now a route to follow. And all of the blue lines in life must be followed. Some of them should be, anyway. Elsewhere that evening, a college buddy of mine also uploaded a workout to Strava. He titled his “I’m convinced that the only reason why cyclists cover so much distance is because they always get lost. I tested this myself.”

I didn’t get lost. The first time, I just turned left when I should have stayed straight. The second time I took another turn too early, had to stop to consult my map, and then modified my route.

Does that sound like I was lost? Sure, I stopped to check the map. That’s not especially fun, but maybe I did it just to level out the great joy of a free ride with no purpose or schedule. Mostly, I was just trying to insure that I beat the sunset back.

On the parts of that route I’d been on before, the parts nearest the house, I set four new PRs on Strava. All of those PRs were on the segments near the end of the ride, which is encouraging.

Last night we went across the river to Wilmington. We saw Tig Notaro at The Grand Opera.

The Opera House has been home to some of the world’s most gifted artists for over 130 years. As historic as it is aesthetic, the 1,140 seat theater represents both the physical and symbolic heart of The Grand.

They have this beautiful ceiling, but nothing written about it on the site, so it can’t have a long lineage, surely.

Tig said no pictures, and I honored that request for once. But I did make this mock up of what it was like to finally see Tig on stage.

I discovered her on Netflix in the teens, in the long office overnights. I think this was the first work of hers I’d seen. She traveled the country and played people’s homes. Clearly, it was a docu-special designed for late night viewing.

And I was hooked straightaway. Her comedy is precious, her timing is perfect and, as time marches on, her story is impossible to ignore.

Anyway, last night, she opened with a version of this joke.

And she closed with a much longer, Tig-length version of this story, while sitting at a grand piano, and recreating the moment, just as she describes here, milking the premise for every giggle it is worth and then finding some more besides.

As she’s doing this, she reminds us all, that when she did this, Adele was in the room. The theater’s sound guy pipes in “Hello” and Tig noodles around on this beautiful piano and signs along. And she does not play the piano. And she can’t sing.

She can’t sing so badly that it’s difficult to imagine that anyone sings that poorly. Surely it is a put-on, but it was hilarious, and self-deprecating, and charming and awkward and yet never cringe. Just more perfect Tig Notaro. We were fortunate to get to see her show.

She’s recording a special in New York this fall. Maybe some of the material we saw last night will be in the program when it’s released. You’re gonna want that coconut water.

What a Monday, eh? In the history of Mondays, this one certainly lands on the list. It is notably surrounded by other such impressive days as Monday. And who can forget, that extra special Monday. Sad Monday makes the list, but you should never forget those happy Mondays. And somewhere, way high up on the list, there’s the special Three Day Weekend Mondays. There’s just no escaping this. Monday is definitely one of the seven days of every week. And even that’s on a list somewhere.

Now, where this week falls on the list of weeks, well that’s still TBD, which is SOP. And highly subjective, too. Weeks being what they are, different for all of us. Or at least many of us. But Mondays! Mondays are a uniquely held condition among everyone with a 21st century working calendar, even if your “Monday” is, say, on Wednesday, you still have them. And this was one of them. Why, we could quibble over the placement of this, but everyone will agree: in the history of Mondays, this was definitely not a Friday.

I spent the day making lecture notes.

So let’s talk about the cats. It is, after, the site’s most popular feature, and far more interesting to most of you than my exploration of ancient Egyptian scrolls, or 1st century Roman architecture or how many copies of the Declaration and the Constitution we still have (26 and 11).

Phoebe does not care about my lectures. But she is delighted to play with this mouse, most any day of the week.

And here, she seems to be on her ledge, looking down at the floor, thinking Later, he will hold that shape in front of me and make me pose for a picture, whatever that is.

I don’t think Phoebe really understands cameras or phones. Not that she isn’t as capable as the next cat, I just don’t think it has occurred to her that she should, which is to say, they don’t matter to her, which might make her smarter than everyone.

Poseidon, on the other hand, he understands this concept perfectly.

He’ll even give you moody suntanning photographs. Some cats are just natural born stars, I guess.

He won’t stay off the counter, though, even though he understands the tall people in the house don’t like it when he’s there. But his defiance gives us an opportunity to admire his footwoork.

So the cats are doing just fine, as you can see.

My lovely bride did a nearby-ish triathlon on Saturday, and so I went for a bike ride on some new roads. Here’s a brand new road. The first part of it was fine. The part after this was likewise in great shape. This stretch, just under a mile I’d say, was brand new. My hypotheses are either someone knew I was coming, or an important county official lives on this stretch of road.

No one knew I was coming.

It was a venture out to get photos for the Wednesday historical marker feature. I track all of those down by bike, and I try to do them in batches, which means a lot of planning, a lot of map-checking mid-ride, but a lot of lovely new views to check out.

Today I saw some old churches. I walked around an 18th century cemetery. There was a message board in that old grave, behind one of the old churches, that basically said “The members who founded this church in 1741 also founded the local militia during the Revolution.” It was a fascinating place.

I also visited two historically important houses, a famous cannon and more. You’ll see them in the next few Wednesdays.

I also, for the first time ever, lost a bolt that holds the cleat in my right cycling shoe. This peculiar chunk of plastic is held to the bottom of the shoe by three bolts, and when the one disappeared, probably in that cemetery, that meant that stopping became a bit tricky.

This is the foot that I unclip for stop signs and red lights and the like. Just before you come to a complete stop, you take the one foot out of the pedal. You leave the other one in because it looks cool, and it helps for getting going again in an efficient matter. To remove the cleat from the pedal, you crisply turn your ankle so that your toes point inward. You hear a loud, satisfying pop and then you can put your foot on the ground in the precise moment you come to a halt.

The problem on this ride was that I lost the inside bolt. The cleat only had two fixed points of contact, and when I’d go to point my toes inward, the cleat, my shoe and my foot just kept moving.

Fortunately, I only had to take my shoe out of the pedal twice more after that bolt disappeared.

The best news is that I figured this would mean I’d finally have an excuse to go spend money at my new local bike shop. But, I figured, let me check the personal inventory first. I’ve had to replace cleats before, from wear and tear, and when you buy new cleats you get a fresh set of bolts and the square washers that go with them. That, I reasoned, didn’t seem like a thing I would throw away.

So I went to the new bike room, and discovered the problem. In the old house, I’d know exactly where these would be. But so many routines, systems and paradigms change when you move. Much as I’m still (and forever will be) trying to figure out all of the light switches, and which stairs make what noise, I have no idea where these bits of hardware might be right now. I didn’t set up the new bike room, my lovely bride did. And they were not in the first place I looked.

They were in the fourth place I looked.

Anyway, popped a new bolt on the shoe, took less time to do than to write the above, I’m ready for the next ride.

I have reached the point in my bike-riding life where there’s a reasonably fair chance I’ll have the part I need already on hand, when I need it. It’s a special feeling.

Sunday we had brunch with some of The Yankee’s family friends. My mother-in-law is a retired nurse, and she is the chief organizer of her nursing school’s class reunions, an annual event that she takes great joy and pride in, and that was this weekend. The end of the festivities was brunch, and it was not too far away from us, so omelettes for everyone.

We were a surprise, and all of these lifelong friends were delighted to see us, but mostly my wife. I watched a septuagenarian hopping, literally jumping for joy, that she got to see her friend’s daughter unexpectedly. It was delightful.

It rained on us on the way there, and then rained terribly hard while we visited. Wind whipped it sideways, giving people mind to talk about storms they remember. And then the rain stopped, and the sun returned, acting for all the world like it had never left.

When the nurses all said their goodbyes, we went to the beach, just two blocks away. The water was a bit chilly, but you still go right down to the line, tempting fate.

I couldn’t decide which of these two I liked best, but this was the one I got a shoe wet on, so I’m saying I suffered for my art and am posting the photo.

Just the one shoe, somehow, and no sand in either one.

I did get photobombed. I always get photobombed. She’s just the cutest when she does that.

It is the beach, I think. Some people just go to 11 when they make it to a beach. She fairly glows.

I’m a little more about the woods that way, but the beach is always fun, he said with a wet sock.

We can be at a beach in 60 minutes from where I’m writing this. The biggest thing that would slow me down is digging up the sand chairs and finding the good sunblock. And there’s woods and plenty of other lovely outdoor scenery along the way as well. But just an hour from this.

Which is what I won’t be able to do just now, because it is back to that class prep.

In closing: an important thing of note about Mondays is that there’s a Tuesday following close behind.