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food / IU / photo / television / Thursday / video — Comments Off on How’d you sleep?
27
Jan 22

How’d you sleep?

We purchased a new mattress, and it arrived yesterday. My lovely bride got the thing upstairs without me. She took the old mattress off the box spring, put the new one on last night. A mattress, you would think, is one of those things you want to go down to the showroom. Kick the tires, lay on it for 36 seconds, and all of that. Well, where has that ever gotten you? A mattress that works for a few years before you buy a foam topper, which works for a few years. Eventually your sleep patterns leave impressions in all of that, so the foam topper comes off, and the now old mattress isn’t much better. And how many times have you done all of that?

So she found an online service. Good reviews. Excellent return policy, and time will tell about their guarantee language — and whether the company has any longevity under this business model. She did this unilaterally, because the old one has been bothering her the most, she’s a bit more particular, and that’s how it works. Whatever makes you, quite literally, more comfortable, dear.

The new mattress, I learned last night, is a little taller. You need a running start. And as we discussed this afternoon, the biggest and most immediately noticeable thing is that you can just, sorta, roll over. Not every muscle group needs to be activated to make a common turn from back to side.

If the new mattress does that alone it’d be a win for internet merchants everywhere.

As for the first night’s sleep part, it seemed unremarkable. Pretty much the ideal, right?

All that sunshine from the last few days has regressed to the mean. And that’s just … mean.

The day, being a Thursday, slowed down a bit compared to the earlier part of the week, and I managed to put in just eight hours, so it the net perception was: null. Many people worked from home because of close contacts to Covid-positive people, and I have to figure out how to do that, without invoking karmic problems.

I spent part of the morning working on a podcast. Today we enjoyed our usual once-a-week Chick-fil-A takeout lunch. The afternoon’s highlight was probably cleaning up some Google Docs and preparing for a Friday morning meeting.

After a few days of doing everything rapidly it is nice to luxuriate in spending too much time on one thing at a time, is the point.

The television folks have uploaded two of their most recent sports shows for you. Here are all the latest highlights on all the coolest sports around here.

And here’s another sports show, featuring different perspectives and probably more fun than you should have outdoors in Indiana in January.

There will be another studio talk show online tomorrow. And another simulcast TV-radio project after that. There are also all of the online chats they do. The sports media students simply don’t stop anymore. It’s impressive when you consider the rest of the demands on their time.

The daily duds: This feature is going away because I realized that the goal was pointless. I was trying to document looks so I wouldn’t reproduce them too quickly, but that’s impossible without a proper indexing system. So today I’m just showing off this lovely pocket square my in-laws got me for Christmas.

Also, that’s one of my favorite sports coats. It has character and comfort, which is to say that, once you get past the print, it’s super soft.

And tonight’s dinner, because it looks healthy enough to brag about.

That’s three nights in a row of healthy things. We’ll have to blow this up tomorrow.

IU / journalism / photo / site / television / Twitter / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on We return to television
26
Jan 22

We return to television

This was the view the first thing this morning, as I walked into the building thinking of the to do list of seven big items that needed attention today. These were the seven things that needed to be done, around all of the small things that sneak into your day and chip away at your time and attention. Somehow, those seven things became a list of 10 things.

I managed to get eight of those things done over the course of the day, and pronounced that a win as I headed into the studio this evening.

That’s a sports show, because it’s Wednesday. All of their shows will be uploaded later this week. I’ll be sure to share them here.

Meanwhile, here’s a show the news division shot last night. They got everything in they’d planned, and they ended on time. Now we’ll start adding extra things back in.

I’ve learned a few things working with student media over the last 14 years. One of them is this. Resets are fun — they haven’t been in the studio since December, and they’ve changed directors, too — but building on momentum is an encouraging sign of the program’s health. I’m proud of them for that.

Patron saint of IU journalism, Ernie Pyle, would be proud of them too. He told me tonight that I can’t complain about the long hours — a 10-hour day, today, after yesterday’s 11-hour day — because he’s on deadline and, as you can see, Ernie is still banging keys on his Corona.

He’ll be there when I go in gray and early tomorrow, too. Because he’s a statue.

The daily duds: Pictures of clothes I put here to, hopefully, help avoid embarrassing scheme repeats.

It is difficult to make this suit work.

But I occasionally do enjoy trying.

I’ve lately realized this is a silly feature, and it’s going away, but not today. I’m going to end on a strong one.

cycling / IU / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on Full speed once again
25
Jan 22

Full speed once again

There’s a window near my office … not my office, mind you … that affords you this view.

That was this evening as I was on my way to the studio, which was after I’d recorded video for someone, which was surrounded by doing social media for others, and after I’d given a tour for someone, and that’s just how the week is going. Happy to do it; wondering when I can get my work in. Mostly worrying what important thing I’ve inadvertently neglected, or outright forgotten.

But, hey, when that’s your worry, life is pretty good, right? Give yourself some grace and all that.

He said, at the end of an 11-hour day.

Tomorrow will be 10-or-more hours long.

I decided it was time to start adding a bit of time back into the bike ride. The route I’ve been doing lately takes 45 minutes. If I could make it take 44 minutes I’d hit my goals there, which I’ve rambled on about here recently. Only I don’t know where to pull in those last few seconds. It’s a fun mental challenge: when to do what. I’m eyeballing it, shooting from the hip and playing it by ear. It sounds anatomical, but is in no way scientific.

So I found a flat route and added a 15 minute easy ride at the end of my bigger effort. Ahhh, London, where it feels like you’re going slow at 19.

On the end of that little course the Zwift designers added a little sprint segment. There’s a little green light on the ground telling you you’re entering a sprint, and there’s a banner in the distance. Just before that light a bunch of other rides sped right by me, and so I decided to chase them. And then I decided to catch them and pass them. My cool down ride ended with a 34 mph sprint.

Which wasn’t the point, but in the rare moments when you can feel like a sprinter, take the moment to feel like a sprinter.

(I am not a sprinter.)

On subsequent rides I’ll start putting a few extra minutes here and there. Very progressive, hardly scientific.

Phoebe is the appropriate amount of impressed.

And since we are a day late on the weekly check in with the kitties, we can show you our progress with Poseidon and brushes. It is a work in progress.

Note the blur. He, too, is moving fast.

He also likes my toothbrush. He jumps up on the vanity, stands on his back feet and tries to grab it away from me. I recently replaced one that had an all plastic handle with a toothbrush that has a rubberized grip. He is less impressed by that. It’s the plastic, of course. He can’t get enough of the stuff, and we’re constantly on heightened alert to keep it from him. I like to imagine, though, that he’s taking a keen interest in hygiene beyond his regular self-grooming.

The daily duds: I sometimes put this here in the hopes of somehow avoid embarrassing scheme repeats — so far so good. But, today … Auburn is the top-ranked basketball team in the country and they’re playing tonight, so we’re flying the orange and blue.

You can’t see it, but on the bottom of the tie there’s the ol’ interlocking AU.

Basketball school.

Covid-19 / Friday / IU / photo — Comments Off on May your weekend move more slowly than your week
21
Jan 22

May your weekend move more slowly than your week

Bright and early once again this morning, headed in for a first-thing-this morning meeting, and was rewarded with a bright and clear morning for my effort.

I run a small Friday morning meeting and 80 percent of us were in attendance, a success given these pandemic times. The rest of the people are all students and, at the end of their second week of classes, they are all in full-on “Let’s just get to Spring Break mode.”

Oh, but aren’t we all?

When that meeting wrapped I went into one of the television studios, because there was television to produce. We will see the first shows on Monday, or thereabouts, but I was taken back by a philosophical conversation that evolved while we were transitioning between shots.

The host of the film show was discussing his move to wear suit coats this semester, because it is cold, you see. But he likes the cold. Prefers it. But he also likes warm temperatures. He might even prefer that, we decided, as he leaned into the bit. And before long he found himself saying that he imagined a place where he would be all the temperatures at once, and what would that feel like? Would it feel like anything at all?

Which gave us the moment to wonder what the absence of temperature would feel like. Certainly it couldn’t be room temperature, for obvious reasons. It also wouldn’t be the cold vacuum of space, for similar adjective-driven logic. So what would it feel like, the absence of temperature? And I found myself wondering about that for the rest of the day.

Mind you, this is a group that debates about which prepositions make the best puns.

After they’d wrapped up their second show in the studio I was able to retreat to my office to do office stuff. Until it was time to go into another studio to teach a few students how to use a new software setup.

It was there that I realized that, for the next week and a half, when I have to be in tight quarters with any of these people I will ask them if they were at the Purdue basketball game. If they rushed the court. You can find the footage online. Lots of people. Filled the stadium and then filled the court. The only people wearing masks were the cheerleaders.

I don’t know any of the cheerleaders right now, but, it turns out, I know a lot of these other people who enjoyed their moment of fandom. The rest of us are doomed.

If there is an outbreak I wouldn’t be surprised. Of course it might be difficult to find in the current trends. Of course “what even is an outbreak?” is now a thin rhetorical device. Well, here, it’s …

Computer, enhance …

We’re breaking records across this state, and locally, every day now. Consider that for a moment. Two years in and we are still breaking daily records of most any metric you’d care to examine. It has all led to some interesting stratifications. (Further complicating apathy and exhaustion.) I could spell this out, but I’m sure the same is happening around you.

Around my family, it is happening again. The testing positive part, I mean. Someone with youth and vigor and the general healthiness that most of us are blessed with in our younger days is out doing things without regard for the impact of others, then brings the disease to their older, infirm relatives.

And not for the first time, because we can fix neither indifference nor selfishness.

(Which is as kind as I could be toward specific family members after two re-writes.)

Anyway, near the end of the day I had a pleasant conversation with someone I don’t normally have the chance to talk with. That chat ran longer than I realized and so I left the office at about 5:30.

I worked late all four days this week, then.

Next week I hope to only do it twice.

The daily duds: Pictures of clothes I put here to, hopefully, help avoid embarrassing scheme repeats.

This is a new jacket. Bought it in the fall, cut the tags off last night. And it’s a shirt I bought ages ago, but have maaaaaybe worn once or twice, and a new pocket square. I like all three of these things.

Just not together.

IU / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on Another long day
20
Jan 22

Another long day

Without even intending to, I managed to stay in the office late for a third night in a row. But I got out by 7 p.m., so that’s an improvement?

“Improvement.”

Not that anyone acknowledges such things, or even notices. Makes you wonder, sometimes, why you spend so much time under the ol’ florescent lights.

Well, first of all, it’d be too cold to be outdoors just now.

Anyway, the extra bit of the day that shook up the routine today featured interviewing a bunch of students and a lot of Zoom meetings. And I learned how some new hardware and software will work together in one of our new studios. Not that I have high or demanding expectations for January, in general, but that’s almost enough to make for a banner day.

Except for the extra hours.

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