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cycling / errands / football / weekend — Comments Off
24
Aug 13

What a wicked thing to do | To make me eat seafood

The weather was incredible for an August Saturday. Sunny, clear and bright and the mercury never got more bold than 81. This has, so far, been the year of the anti-seasons. So far, there’s nothing to complain about any of it, really.

We had a nice and easy 25 mile ride today. Even with the milder August weather you have to plan ahead. I had 64 ounces of water on the bike. I had 16 ounces of electrolytes and a giant cup of chocolate milk when we got home. And I don’t hydrate enough.

I think I’d have to drink my body weight.

We visited Target, where we bought Target things like household items like frames and cat toys. Because Allie has no toys. Just ask her.

Fortunately she likes the new toy. It is a couple of pieces of vinyl wrapped around a flexible frame. It opens up to a square size, and the top has four holes in it. On two of the sides there are also holes. Inside are two toys — and we put in a few more. The cat then roots around for the bits of fur that smell like catnip and the globs of plastic that make ringing and tingling noises.

Within a few minutes she’d gotten so fixated that she was attacking her own foot. Also, it looks like a game of Feline Twister.

Why hasn’t some disreputable huckster tried to sale that yet?

We visited the grocery store, where I remain convinced the seafood counter is manned by a moonlighting Chris Isaak. He told us this particular type of Alaska salmon isn’t as fishy. We didn’t believe him when we put it on the grill later in the evening, but by the time it landed on your plate he was proved right.

I bonded with the cashier about picking and shelling purple hulled peas. It was obvious that no one listening in on that conversation had any frame of reference. Some of them were mortified.

Spent part of the evening watching NFL preseason coverage. You forget, in the offseason, that the NFL isn’t terribly exciting at all. But in August, any football will do.

The first college games are next Thursday. Everyone is counting the days.

adventures / errands / I do not know what is happening. / movies / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
13
Aug 13

The kind of day

Had lunch at the vegetable place, which is easier than typing Crepe Myrtle Cafe, because I often misspell it.

I order the The Markets Roasted Veggie with Bulger Creek Farm Goat Cheese, because goat cheese makes everything better. You can’t even taste the balsamic, and you forget your eating grilled veggies out of a defective pancake.

And then I realized that I inherited my grandmother’s taste buds. This blueberry was bitterly sour. That blueberry was terribly sweet. As soon as I make this story more interesting I’ll have to call and tell her about it.

While we were eating we received a call. There was something we could do right then, if we could arrive at the place right now. Well. We’re just a bit away and can be there in 10 minutes. And so we were. Walked right in and took care of the appointment. It was that kind of day.

Visited the giant box store and picked up cards and box store things. The only problem was the woman who was about 55 and 4-foot-5 with six children with her. They blocked the aisle I really needed, but only for a moment. And then they disappeared in that way that means you won’t see them on the next aisle over — whatever that means. It was that kind of day, too.

Self check out, then, with no one in front of me, which meant I couldn’t make the joke about how people should be certified by the state to use those things. And the machine worked perfectly for a change. The disinterested self checkout herder could stay that way. Beep, beep, beep and we were done. Such a lovely day.

Forgot to buy a brake light for the car, but that was pretty much the extent of the day’s difficulties.

Back home and read and wrote and should have done more. We went out just before dark to run. I got in 5K and finished just at the point of darkness where I could see a silhouette without knowing who I was seeing. My run was not great, but none of them are. This one had its moments, though, where I stopped counting footfalls and exhausted breaths and just kept moving. My splits are still very poor.

Got home, cleaned up, had leftovers — a vegetarian pasta dish which makes six meals in a row with no meat. That can’t last forever.

Watched Men in Black 3, and became convinced that Josh Brolin can become anyone if you give him enough screen time. I was relieved when the kid, at the end, turned out not to be Jaden Smith. You just knew it would be. And IMDb says it almost was. The database says there is a MiB 4 in the works.

Here are all the problems with the third one. They were plentiful:

Kind of makes you not want to see a fourth one made, but then you can say that of most any series, now can’t you?

And, now, cuddling with the cat, who doesn’t even seem to mind so much that she went to the vet today. She doesn’t know she has to go back next week, though. And everyone is impressed by how young she behaves. We’re just fortunate all the way around, then. It was that kind of day.

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23
May 13

The age game lives

I noticed a short time back there was a tire on my car that was going out of round. I managed to drag this out and limp around as long as possible. Last week I was on an errand and noticed the thump-thump-THUMP-thump was even worse. I stopped between here and there and added air. When I got back home I noticed the front tire was contorted to an alarming state. Heat some plastic and torque it between your hands. My tire looked like that, which is, to say the least, troubling.

So I went to the tire place today. I put a little air in hoping that it would at least help get me close to the shop, which is about four miles from our home. Just before I arrived there the thump-thump-THUMP-thump returned to pre-front-tire-deformity levels. When I got out the front tire looked fine.

The guy at the counter, the kind of guy who speaks low and fast and is hard to understand over the noise of a room and has an odd beard and gives you a general uneasy feeling to start with, assures me that tire is probably fine because there are two pieces of rubber and they blah blah blah.

I don’t know that much about tires, but I have seen round rubber on vehicles my entire life and I can say these two things: 1. round is the optimal shape and 2. a bad tire doesn’t become good. With this wisdom in mind what he said didn’t carry that much weight, but, he said, they’d put the car on the rack and do their thing and so on. It was agreed that I would return this afternoon for the car.

So we went to Montgomery. We returned. We had lunch at Byron’s with a friend. I told the story about how, when Byron’s used to be a Dairy Queen they one day found themselves out of ice cream. I told the lady that day she should lock up and go home. No one goes to Dairy Queen for the chicken fingers, after all. Today Byron’s was out of chicken. Always something. (I had a vegetable plate and it was good.)

The Yankee isn’t feeling so well, so we went to pick up her bike which now features a shiny new derailleur and, presumably, no more shifting problems. (Which would be a change for her.) We stopped at the house for a bit and then headed out to fetch my car.

It had been moved, but the two guys working, earnest, confident men who gave you the impression of knowing what they were doing, said they had no idea what was going on with my car.

I’ll just skip ahead here to the point where I closed my eyes and was mentally, actually, really, counting to 10. I pointed out they seemed to have some sort of communications breakdown between the morning crew and the afternoon crew. They pointed out how much the tires were going to cost me and I was going to get my car fixed. I would be the last one of the day. I apologized for that, hoping it wouldn’t keep them there late, but also making the joke that I hope they did it right because, you know, the guy has PTA or a softball game or what have you.

And then this man decides to play the age game. I was just thinking to myself the other day, You know, no one has played the age game in a long time. Maybe you’ve outgrown that sort of thing.

This guy who, and I get it, took a bit of exception to my do it right joke, says “I bet I’m older than you. How old are you?”

Really?

So I told him. And he told me how old he was, which was meant to be some sort of prima facie evidence that he does his work right. The general utility of his morning colleagues aside, I had no reason to doubt this. The urge to play the age game notwithstanding, I am not qualified to comment on this man’s dedication and pride in his work. I couldn’t bring myself to point out that plenty of people who have a decade or so on me are perfectly capable of doing a lousy job, but I’d already counted to 10 and this guy wanted to put two tires on my car and go home. What’s more, he looked great for his age. So I apologized for my joke and we laughed about it.

Half an hour later I got my car back — I wandered around the store and tried to not look bored — and the tires feel great. That gentleman knows his craft, and I hope he hit a triple or really proved a great point in his parent-teacher meeting.

And that he told them he was 47 while he did it.

Alabama / cycling / errands / football / iPhone / memories / photo — Comments Off
7
Jan 13

“Now yellow waxen lights Shall wait on honey love”

That’s Thomas Champion, by the way.

But what a day of beautiful light:

That was in the afternoon, sitting in the backyard enjoying the shadows passing through the grass. That was after lunch and a very brief bike ride and some school work. It was before a trip to the big box store and the big warehouse store.

On the way home we saw this light:

It isn’t cold, it isn’t hot, it isn’t really anything at all, just bright and golden and perfect. What a lovely day.

Then the football game happened. In three BCS games the last four years Alabama has outgained their opponents 1,176 to 670 yards. The Tide have outscored Texas/LSU/Notre Dame a combined 100-35. Tonight was a demolition, an anti-climax. A coronation, really, after the SEC championship game.

At halftime Notre Dame’s coach said the best plan was for Alabama to not come back out in the second half. He might have been understating it.

After the game the sideline reporter Tom Rinaldi said to Nick Saban: “Enjoy it if you can.”

All of that said so much.

So my Notre Dame shirt that I got last year during our trip to South Bend was as helpful as I thought it would be. Death, taxes, Saban; Alabama is a dynastic juggernaut.

Beautiful day, though.

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17
Dec 12

This plumbing has happened before, this plumbing will happen again

For the seventh time in our two-plus years in the house I undertook a plumbing chore this evening. The working mechanism in the tank of one of our toilets had forgotten how to turn off — a plastic tab having turned to dust or what have you — which threatened an overflow and so on.

The good news is that this is the third one of these I’ve replaced in the last 18 months. At least it is easy.

The big thing is keeping everything dry. You have to drain the tank, and then climb between the cabinet and the porcelain and work your way through two plastic bolts. These were made in China, of course, so they are the best plastic money can buy.

And then there’s the water dripping, because a little drip is better than a lot of sponge drying. After that the new device, which will surely find some way to crumble before 2014 arrives, goes in.

Seen another way this is really an exercise in defying the Mayans, who were big on plumbing:

A water feature found in the Maya city of Palenque, Mexico, is the earliest known example of engineered water pressure in the new world, according to a collaboration between two Penn State researchers, an archaeologist and a hydrologist. How the Maya used the pressurized water is, however, still unknown.

“Water pressure systems were previously thought to have entered the New World with the arrival of the Spanish,” the researchers said in a recent issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. “Yet, archaeological data, seasonal climate conditions, geomorphic setting and simple hydraulic theory clearly show that the Maya of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico, had empirical knowledge of closed channel water pressure predating the arrival of Europeans.”

I had no idea I’d find that story when I started the Mayan joke.

Anyway, after a few attempts, the washer was seated. The newest fine plastic from China was in place and tightened.

Also replaced some light bulbs in the other bathroom, because electricity with wet hands is fun for everyone! And because if you’re going to one of the home improvement stores you may as well combine your misery. The bulbs are on the primary aisle when you walk in and the cheap plumbing stuff isn’t far away. Naturally, since I knew exactly what I needed tonight, I ran into two staffers who offered to help.

“Yes. Can you just wait here? Soon enough something I don’t understand will inevitably break in my house.”

We did our Christmas cards tonight. I was responsible for the stamps and the return address. The cards look great, because my lovely bride picked them out. I think everyone most in our address book is getting one.

Everyone else is getting an email with a JPG attachment.

Then I made a Christmas card for Allie. I’ll put it here tomorrow.

Tonight I also added several new banners for the blog. Many of the new ones are a departure from the thin 900 by 200 pixel design. Tell me what you think. (And reload to see more. Or see them all in one place, here.) My next trick will be to organize them in something that resembles a seasonal classification.

Oh, hey, there are new things on the Samford journo blog:

Maps that tell stories

A few lessons from Newton media coverage

You saw the Newtown picture now read the story behind it

There’s also Twitter and Tumblr and this, the complete Star Trek trailer.

See you tomorrow. Remember: Allie’s Christmas card will be here.