memories

adventures / IU / memories / photo / television / Thursday / video — Comments Off on Look at this lovely sign, and all of these fun videos
9
Dec 21

Look at this lovely sign, and all of these fun videos

The question isn’t “Can he pad out a full weekend from his short trip?” The question is “How long should he do it for?”

I think at this rate I could drag it out another three or four days, but we’ll wrap it up tomorrow. Wouldn’t want to be too showy, right?

We walk by this theater every time we visit Savannah. I really do enjoy their signage. And as we walked by in the daytime early in this recent trip I said I’d like to see it again at night.

On the last evening of our trip we made a special walk back over that way. It’s nice when you can accomplish some of your humbler goals.

Oh, did you notice the snowman in the box office in the first photo? I think he’s there every year.

Did I shoot video of all the blinking lights? Of course I did! Do I have something planned for it?

Not yet! But eventually!

Meanwhile, here on campus, it is time to catch up on all the videos we’ve missed in the last week or so. There are quite a few, so settle in. And, no they won’t all be for you, but there is something for most everyone here. Allow me to interest you in one or two.

This is a sports talk show, and they’re breaking down the end of the regular season of college football. This was a really enjoyable show.

More sports! This is the show that starts at the radio station. Here they are talking about Indiana football and basketball. After they do it live on radio, they take the cameras down and put the footage up.

The late night show goes full holiday! And partial Grinch. And there’s an important post-credit scene, so you’ll want to stick with it.

Speaking of the holidays, it’s time to decorate gingerbread houses. And you can get present-shopping tips from the morning show crew:

Behind the Curtain looks at a new student film. Yes, an honest-to-goodness film. Some people are still shooting on that. As I am not an expert I assume the reason has to do with “artistic choice.” But there’s much more here on all of that.

And here’s the news show I watched on Tuesday night. I mentioned that our meteorologist signed off here. She’s been with the show since her freshman year, but now she’s graduating. A senior at the green screen, but a freshman at the desk. The circle is also revolving. And, because it’s a news show, there’s a lot of news here.

Time for the haps and pop culture … haps …

Remember, Tuesday, when I told you about the all female a capella group, Ladies First? They sang two songs on this show. And there’s a nice interview with a few of the members of the group, as well.

That show has done a good job of varying up their guests and that’s a nice little feather in their cap. This semester they’ve also had an Olympic silver medalist Andrew Capobianco, a student from the university’s Latino Cultural Center, the student government president, local mask makers, and more. They’ve also shot all kinds of people-on-the-street pieces and lots of studio fun. They’re always hustling, which is a lesson that serves us all well.

And that’ll do for now.

Tomorrow, we’ll be freshening up the front page of the website. And there will be a few other things to help point us to the weekend. Be sure to stop back by!

adventures / IU / memories / photo / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on The persistence of chlorophyll
8
Dec 21

The persistence of chlorophyll

Just a bit of the nature from Savannah. A lovely Southern Red Oak (Quercus falcata) was near our place. I love how the green of chlorophyll is fighting it out with the red of inevitability here.

Such spirit! Whereas this fruit tree looks like a cheap Renoir knockoff. But the joy

Some of them, I think, don’t even turn there. But this little bit of color right here made me realize: I should be in a place where the leaf turn takes place in December.

It’d be nice to be around these Maidenhairs (Ginkgo biloba), too.

It’s just fun watching their leaves fall.

And back to work today, hence my cool campus banner, there. This evening marked a turning of the page for these two guys.

I had them in a class in their freshman year, and I’ve had the good fortune to work with Will and Jackson for IUSTV sports ever since. My favorite thing — I mean the absolute best part of my job — is watching the freshmen grow and mature into leaders and, ultimately, the people they’re going to be. It’s a great time of change, those three or four years, and it’s a unique thing to be a very small part of.

Will is setting out to be a play-by-play guy, Jackson is going to be working for some big sports franchise before long. I’ll miss them here. We all will.

At the end of their sportscast, the producers put in a sneaky little package all about these guys. And as that rolled everyone in the control room came out to be with them for the final shot. I’m not sure if that’s ever happened before.

It speaks, I think, to the place they have helped build over all of that time. Which means they’re leaving us something stronger than they started with, that we’re better for the experience.

I don’t know how many 21-year-olds get that, I doubt I did, but it sinks in eventually.

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

It was new tie Wednesday. And an almost new pocket square. It was one of those clearance purchases that help get you over the line for free shipping. You know the ones, there’s a carefully calculated formula that always puts you three bucks under that line, so now you have to spend another 25 minutes looking for something that costs four bucks that you actually like. But it saves you 34 bucks! Or whatever the shipping would cost. So you click, click, click until you find something and then you think “Ha! I spent more! I showed you! I win!”

They know exactly where they’ve got us with that carefully calculated formula. (But I would like to understand how that pricing structure so often almost works … )

Well, sneaky actuarial type person, I did win. I like this one a good deal.

adventures / Friday / memories / photo — Comments Off on A Friday in Savannah
3
Dec 21

A Friday in Savannah

First things first, we had to have breakfast at Clary’s. Longtime readers know we always go to Clary’s. Usually we go multiple times per visit for the delicious breakfast and friendly staff. We are doing all of our dining outdoors this visit, and they don’t have many tables on their sidewalks, but after the briefest wait …

Clary’s is something like 118 years old now. Luther Clary founded it as a drug store. Later it became a soda shop and, eventually, the diner we have today. And it figures heavily into the Savannah lore.

We got a little table overlooking Jones Street. This allowed for the traditional Clary’s photograph.

Here’s the first one, which was from our second visit. This was 16 years ago.

Here’s another visit, and from the same table, this time in 2007.

And here’s a photo from the same table on a 2012 visit.

We go to Clary’s a lot.

We’re not just here for the food this time, of course. There’s a 10K that six of our group of nine are running tomorrow. Anne will be the winner.

She’s a natural born runner. And the rest of the group have been putting up some really nice times in their recent runs. Whereas I … well, to say my recent training has gone poorly would be an insult to poor training. The run is tomorrow and I’m just going to have a nice time and try to not be the last person on the course.

I walked seven miles or so today, though, and that counts as training, right?

adventures / friends / memories / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on Travel day, friends day
2
Dec 21

Travel day, friends day

I’m going to warn you, there will probably be crying, The Yankee said to me at the airport.

We got up this morning, drove to Indianapolis, put the car at a park-and-fly facility and caught the shuttle to the airport. This was our view.

Checked a bag, breezed through security and boarded the plane. It quickly got above these oddly bright-and-dark clouds. The plane turned south. We were flying south.

When we arrived in Atlanta, The Yankee said that to me. Because after we’d disembarked from the plane and changed terminals we met up with some friends coming off a flight from Nashville. Maybe pushing people out of the way in the jetway was Sally Ann, who we’ve known for seven years. They’re besties and made a beeline to one another. A great many hugs were had and tears were shed. Someone standing off to the side watching this got a bit weepy as well. I gave the bro hug to her husband, who we have also known for several years, but this is the first time we saw them as husband and wife. They got married during the pandemic, but did it on their own, because of the pandemic.

We all got on a plane together, their seats serendipitously right behind ours, and headed further south, to Savannah.

We got off that plane, gathered our luggage and caught an Uber.

This is our town, as you know. The Yankee and I took our first trip here. We kept going back. We got engaged here. We got married here. And now we’re having friend reunions here.

Down in the heart of the historic district our Uber dropped us off at the house we’ve rented for the weekend. I climbed out of the car first. Emerging from the house was The Yankee’s other bestie, who practically floated into my arms. There were more tears. We’ve known Anne and her husband Bill, who flew down from Maryland, for five or six years, but we haven’t seen them since just before the pandemic began. Also inside the house was an old friend of mine, Andre, who drove over from Birmingham. We’ve known him for 15 years or so, but haven’t seen him in ages. During dinner, takeout, Stephen and Brooke stopped by. They’re spending the weekend in a nearby hotel. I went to college with the two of them, meaning I’ve known them for almost a quarter of a century. We haven’t seen each other in far too long.

All of these people have been a part of our weekly Covid video chats. I’m not even sure how they started, but they did begin very early in the pandemic. There were about 17 people, far too many to be heard and understood. It was the first loud thing we’d heard after two or three weeks of silence, and it was joyous just to see the chaos after days of stillness. Over time a side chat evolved, show notes, we called it. And as these things tend to happen, the group worked down to these people, who we are here with now, the usuals. We said, at the beginning of this year, that we should all get together when this was over. We set this weekend, around a 10K run and lots of pleasant, smart, thoughtful people. We were naive, of course, about the timing, but they’ve all been careful with their health, and those around them. They’ve all been vaccinated and received boosters and they’ve been cautious with their activities, just as we have.

It was a delight to sit around a large table and watch these seven other people. They are loud. They are funny. They are boisterous. They are incredibly smart and talented and successful people. They are all our friends.

It was a great coming together. A meeting. An introduction.

They’d never met, not in person, before tonight.

And now we’ll have a long weekend to enjoy, together.

adventures / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off on Catching up through the mirror
8
Nov 21

Catching up through the mirror

Back to that maple tree I found at the entrance to the neighborhood on Friday. It’s still lovely, for now.

I’m just a big fan of that little batch of red right in the middle of the tree. This guy has character, and I should pay more attention to it through all seasons.

Because I like the smudge of colors in blurry photographs, this is how I’ll wind up remembering the tree:

And because this is my site — my name’s right there on the top, and everything! — here are a few more pictures of that tree.

It has a lot of character.

How can you not love that punk rock red?

Back to my backyard. I’m thinking of making a custom jigsaw puzzle. Would anyone like a copy of this one?

All of those leaves fell out of this maple. Like it sneezed, or brushed some crumbs from its coat.

The evening light on an evening walk. The Yankee has started running in her post-surgical recovery. Next Tuesday is four weeks, and we did an easy mile on Sunday evening.

I spent the rest of the weekend on the sideview mirror right project.

You see, our garage is shrinking, and for the second time my lovely bride has clipped the side with her mirror. The first time, eight years ago this month in our old house, she just shattered the glass, which, it turns out, was easy enough to replace.

Recently, she tore up the plastic mirror assembly. It hasn’t sat correctly since and the power mirror function was ruined. To use the mirror you had to hunch down from your normal driving posture. I wanted to fix this, because I like vehicle safety.

Buying the mirror was the easy part. I found a perfectly matched after-market mirror assembly for $39. It was black. (Her car is not black.) She did not want to drive around with a mismatched mirror. And neither of us wanted to pay a body shop for even a small job.

So I … got to paint the mirror. It started as shiny black plastic. I had to hit two stores on Saturday to find the can eight-ounce can of the matching stuff. I sanded the plastic. I applied three coats of primer.

Then I put on three coats of paint — lunar mist, is what the manufacturer calls it — and too much top coat.

Somehow, this is the first thing I’ve painted since childhood.

I found a seven-minute video on YouTube teaching me how to replace the driver’s side mirror. The length of the video encouraged me, because of course the actual process is much easier after the helpful mechanic over-explains it all. The process requires a flathead screwdriver, a socket wrench and three nuts and bolts.

Now it’s time for the two respective moments of truth. They came at me quick, almost too fast to process, let alone celebrate. First, I kept the glass clean from all of that paint. (I’d also only painted my thumb once, and made three small errors throughout the application process. We’re calling this a win.)

The next big victory was seeing the power mirror action working again. When she hit the garage it severed the cables inside the old assembly. The new assembly, of course, has its own wiring, which is in great shape. All I had to do was plug it into the car. And the mirror moves just as it should.

The paint job, for someone who never paints, isn’t bad. Maybe I’ll try to buff it down next weekend. Right now, it’s safe, and that’s what counts.

And that it matches.

I told The Yankee that I’m saving the old mirror for next time. But, hey, if you have to whack a mirror in this car, now I know how to do it. I built up a great deal of confidence in my ability to do the job.

Which makes me dangerous.

Like her backing up.

I also told her I’m cutting a notch out of the garage wall, like the old cartoons leaving a body silhouette when they went through a wall, so the mirror can pass right through.

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