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Friday

Auburn / Friday / friends / Samford — Comments Off
11
Jan 13

Your basic wonderful Friday

Do you have a high school senior? Are they interested in attending Samford University? Odds are I’ve called them in the last few days. I call a lot of students, all a part of our personalized, high touch philosophy.

Some students are very excited to hear from you. Some find this very awkward. A few have figured out they are enrolling elsewhere. “That’s great! Congratulations!” Some know they’ll be at SU next fall. “Wonderful!”

Some voicemails will let you talk all day long. I have a short list of things I like to share with voicemails. It takes about 40 seconds. Some will cut you off if you pause to breathe in or allow for writing down a phone number.

I can tell you this: In an age of text messages the art of covering the receiver so you can talk about the person on the phone is a dying art.

The best part, though, is talking to the excited student. Their enthusiasm is a little contagious. The second best part is the voicemail with the child doing the outgoing message. Those always crack me up.

So a lot of phone calls. Syllabus work. Other work. Emails, always the emails.

I stopped just in time to go to the gymnastics meet tonight. Auburn hosted Kentucky and perhaps should have won, but struggled on the bars and floor. The Wildcats took away the win 195.525-194.250. The guys behind us had never been to a meet before, so it was fun to hear them try to rationalize what they were seeing. The little girls always have a great time at gym meets, so it is fun to watch the kids dance and ooh and ahh.

They dropped Chick-fil-A cows from the rafters. I almost caught one, but the guy behind me — with a distinctive and unfair height advantage — got hit first. He earned a chocolate chip cookie for his efforts. I just missed a T-shirt thrown into the crowd. The Yankee was live-tweeting the meet for College and Magnolia.

We had dinner at Mellow Mushroom with a friend after the meet. We sat and talked the night away and it was all very wonderful. Walked outside near midnight in January in short sleeves and walked a block to the car. It nicely wrapped up a day which started with breakfast with a friend at the Barbecue House.

To ask for much more of anything would just look greedy.

Auburn / cycling / Friday / iPhone / photo — Comments Off
4
Jan 13

Restaurants, sunsets and the bike shop

We had lunch at Chick-fil-A, which was thoroughly uneventful. We were there because another place in town, where we have tried to visit now on consecutive days, was closed.

Big Blue Bagel, downtown, had a message on their white board yesterday. “Closed for the holidays.” It noted they would re-open on Jan. 3rd. Which was yesterday. I checked. But they were closed.

That’s one way to run a business.

So we visited for lunch today. Closed. The white board had a breakfast special, so someone had been there. Now the place was locked up tight.

There are no hours on the door. No hours on the website. That’s one way to run a business. One of the review sites says they are open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Maybe they are not open in between.

Oh look, they are for sale. And use frames! That’s one way to run a website.

So Big Blue Bagel has now officially broken Smith’s First Law: Don’t make it hard for me to spend my money with you.

I was on the fence about the entire thing, but then I read the reviews on the review sites. They get fairly well panned, which strikes me as a bit difficult to do in a college town. C’est la bagel.

Visited the library. Did library things. Got ran out of the library, because they close the library at 5 p.m. “You don’t need learnin’ that bad, boy.”

That’s OK. We walked out to see this:

We have some of the best sunsets in the world here. I’m biased, I’m sure, but I realized that in undergrad and I haven’t been any place that consistently shows off enough to change my mind since then. Tonight’s wasn’t even trying hard, and I couldn’t get into position for the big finale fast enough, but the sky is just gorgeous.

Orange and blue and all that. Pollutants hanging over Montgomery 50 miles to the west help too.

Picked up my bike. Everyone was in the shop this evening. My derailleurs have been adjusted. Almost everything works again. I can fix the last little bit myself, because I know how to Google this part.

If you know the right nomenclature you can fix most anything yourself these days. If you have the proper tools.

Spoke with the owner about the proper tools. Bicycle maintenance has an improbable amount of specialty equipment — turns out you can’t make every change with a crescent wrench — for most of us this is daunting and unrealistic. I expressed my interest in knowing more.

I’d like to appreciate the art of maintenance a bit. And are there classes for this sort of thing? I don’t want to be a guy who tears down the bike and greases the ball bearings, but I also don’t want to be the guy in the shop every two months with the next thing I should be able to do on my own. It seems counter-intuitive, I know, like that’s asking you to take money out of your pocket, but …

There are classes. He told me about a great one in Colorado, if I’m ever out that way. And he said he’d be happy to teach me more. Make a list of things you’d like to know, he said. We can haggle over rates for a private lesson, he said, using the modules this class in Colorado uses. It wouldn’t be just turning a wrench. This was an important point he wanted to make. This won’t just be “turn wrench here” stuff.

After all these years in school a few hours learning about spoke tension doesn’t bother me too much.

Now I just need to make a list of things I’d like to learn. And ride.

That’s tomorrow.

adventures / Friday / iPhone / movies / photo / Twitter / video — Comments Off
28
Dec 12

Look down, look down

Seen alone or with a friend, knowing the story or completely new to it, as a moviegoer or — as I did — with Broadway purists, Les Mis is good.

Russell Crowe, as Javert, is the weakest part of the performance. And he was reasonably acceptable.

The best part was this: Colm Wilkinson, the original Jean Valjean, plays the Bishop of Digne. It is a great part, and so obvious and well done, and everything is in good hands throughout.

This is pretty incredible, too:

Typically, the soundtrack for a movie musical is recorded several months in advance and the actors mime to playback during filming. However, on this film, every single song was recorded live on set to capture the spontaneity of the performances.

Saw that this evening. Beforehand I got a shave. The professional kind. The someone-else-has-sharp-implements-aimed-at-your-face kind.

This was a unique Christmas gift my father-in-law and I received. He made the appointment, we went down to the salon this morning and saw this sign:

I knew about this association of barbers and blood letting, but this was a good time to be reminded. Especially so soon after my fall haircut experience where my local barber almost took off my ear. It clearly got to him. He got me out of his chair quickly, without finishing the haircut, which was why I had a great feathered look for a few days as my hair got to a certain length.

Alas, there would be no hair cutting today, just face shaving. And this is how they do it, as my father-in-law went first, I could watch with detached cool from the sofa in front of SportsCenter.

Getting a professional shave (my first) as a Christmas gift. The door says “The experience brings you back.” So will “No nicked veins.” Heh.

— kennysmith (@kennysmith) December 28, 2012

The first step in this pro shave (I’m next) is to recline 180 degrees, cover and place under harsh light. The client looks mostly dead.

— kennysmith (@kennysmith) December 28, 2012

There is skin moisturizing, a towel over the eyes and then the lather. Don’t Fear the Reaper is playing in the salon. I’m not kidding.

— kennysmith (@kennysmith) December 28, 2012

There seems to be some moving of the nose as the razor comes near. That’s promising.

— kennysmith (@kennysmith) December 28, 2012

Now comes more lather. Blue Oyster Cult is off the air, replaced by Phil Collins who can’t feel a thing from his head down to his toes.

— kennysmith (@kennysmith) December 28, 2012

Now the post-shave balm. The towel over the eyes never came off, which I believe is the international signal for “GET ME OUTTA HERE.”

— kennysmith (@kennysmith) December 28, 2012

Now the client is mummified under a stack of warm towels. A man’s face is extremely sensitive, despite all those westerns you’ve seen …

— kennysmith (@kennysmith) December 28, 2012

I think this part is the face massage. I’m guessing that by now you are either asleep or wondering why you don’t do this everyday.

— kennysmith (@kennysmith) December 28, 2012

And now the face gets powdered. Didn’t see that coming.

— kennysmith (@kennysmith) December 28, 2012

And the finished product … that is one good looking face. Which means I’m next.

— kennysmith (@kennysmith) December 28, 2012

My father-in-law reports: “That was amazing … I’ll definitely do that again.”

— kennysmith (@kennysmith) December 28, 2012

My shave is complete. Didn’t get nicked, better than I can say of my own efforts. If you haven’t had a full service shave you should.

— kennysmith (@kennysmith) December 28, 2012

She only missed one spot. Also better than I do.

Have you had a professional shave? The next time you have a big event coming up you should consider it.

family / Friday / photo — Comments Off
21
Dec 12

A week of ornaments, day 3

Some of our favorites …

What are your favorite ornaments? Write about them in the comments.

adventures / food / Friday / iPhone / memories / music / photo / Samford / video — Comments Off
14
Dec 12

Our last day, a travel day, a tragic day

If you have never been to Savannah — or if you’re only now planning a trip because you’ve read about it in this space or if you’ve never been to this particular place — do yourself a favor and go to lunch at Mrs. Wilkes. Go early in your trip, because you will want to go back.

Don’t even worry about Paula Deen’s place. This is better and you’re welcome.

Under our tree, where we always spend our last afternoon before leaving town. We spent a day under this tree on our first trip here in 2005. We got engaged under this tree a few years later. This is the view I had while working up the nerve:

A guy walked by, one of the panhandling welcome committee members, and offered to take our picture:

The Yankee composes a terrific photograph similar to the view I shared above:

On River Street, where few tourists are to be found even on this beautiful Friday, there was a busker:

Who doesn’t love a good busker? This guy sang a capella all weekend. Just him, his hands, his money bucket and a bottle of water. You could hear him a block away. Sounded great, too.

And back home we drove. We’d been reading all day about all of the terrible senselessness that had taken place in Newtown, just 20 miles from where The Yankee grew up.

Meanwhile, police found the bodies of a woman and two kids in a small apartment just a few miles from my campus. So there I am, middle of the night, driving through the countryside and calling media relations people, editors, police departments and the campus safety office, trying to make sure that this had no Samford ties. Seems it did not.

Covering that during the semester break would be a challenge. I’m sure our students would have done a respectful job. Wish you saw more of that from Connecticut out of cable television today. There’s been far too much misinformation and misidentification (problems originating with overwhelmed law enforcement agencies) alongside conjecture and quacks that have been shuffled in front of the cameras (strictly the media’s fault). But all of that belongs in a different rant.

As of this writing they are up to 26 fatalities there. It is hard to all of this, so sweeping and terrible in its scope and consequence. There’s precious little peace and even less understanding, I’m sure.

I think of the voids, the big hole in the community that stands out for years in a wide tragedy. I think of all of the little empty places found in all of those families when someone is so unexpectedly pulled away. That lasts for generations.

Found this on one of our local merchant’s Facebook page:

If you would like to mail sympathy cards or letters of support to the school, the address is:

Sandy Hook Elementary School
12 Dickenson Drive
Sandy Hook, CT 06482

Please copy/paste/share widely. Sending a card is something small but it’s the least we can do!

Here’s their website.