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We went to a football game today:
We were treated to a very nice sunset midway through the thing:
Prior to the game, we saw these guys again, the 2004 undefeated Auburn team. It was neat to see their recognition. They were a lot of fun to watch as players:
They’re all watching this package on the big screen:
Another free commercial on the basis of a photo, a story and nostalgia. I should get a free meal for this, I think.
The sign, it seems, is getting a makeover. The old neon has been stripped out. And pulling the gas-holding-gas has just shown the smear of age and wear and rain and paint. I love that sign. There’s just something about that pig face, blissfully unaware what is happening to his real life counterparts inside, grinning stupidly despite the messages often on display on the marquee just below. Hopefully they aren’t replacing the whole thing.
The Yankee and I had our first meal there — Friday was Pie Day, I said, and she said yes. I used to eat there frequently when I was still broadcasting. It wasn’t far from the station. I’ve dined there with a lot of friends. I ate there with my book tonight. I’d swam a mile and a big baked potato sounded right.
It was just the thing after only a brunch. The editorial staff at the Crimson dined with the media relations folks late this morning. I took some leftovers to have fruit for lunch, but I’d swam a mile, you see, and I can look at a body of water and get hungry. Real and hearty food was what was required tonight, and there was no Italian to be had with friends. So I had a baked potato with a book.
Things to read … becausing reading always brings around friends. Just get comfy with something great, and someone will come along to interrupt.
Learning How to Score a Job Using Social Media, for Beginners is a free email-based class, if you’re interested.
A friend sent this. I hated telling him he’s going to have to find someone else to see it with. A 15,000ft descent, sheer drops and 300 deaths a year: Welcome to Bolivia’s Death Road, the terrifying route tourists love to cycle
Ukraine: Russian forces in major rebel cities:
A Ukrainian official said Tuesday that Russian forces have been spotted in both of the major rebel-held cities in eastern Ukraine.
The claim by Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s national security council, came as the country’s defense minister said Ukraine’s armed forces are expanding their strategy from just fighting separatist rebels to facing the Russian army in a war that could cost “tens of thousands” of lives.
Lost in America: Visa Program Struggles to Track Missing Foreign Students:
The Department of Homeland Security has lost track of more than 6,000 foreign nationals who entered the United States on student visas, overstayed their welcome, and essentially vanished — exploiting a security gap that was supposed to be fixed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
“My greatest concern is that they could be doing anything,” said Peter Edge, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who oversees investigations into visa violators. “Some of them could be here to do us harm.”
Yet another of the core competencies that DHS was created for … and it is less than a sterling success.
3 free iOS apps for visual storytelling:
(J)ournalists do not necessarily need a big budget, banks of editing software or even a desktop computer to create appealing visual stories.
These three apps for iPhone and iPad all allow you to create beautiful visual stories on the move without any special gear.
Even better, each are easy to use – and free.
When you said free, you had my attention. Shame that meal wasn’t also free.
Did I mention the rain? It rained at the tailgate. The hot summer day turned into an impressively humid one. And then the sun came back out and we baked ourselves in the shade.
We loaded up on sunblock, went into the stadium and watched most of the game before the lightning came. Lightning means delays. And so they took everyone off the field. They asked the fans to go hide. Most of them did. The storm cells with the lightning passed.
And just before the teams came back on the field to resume play, the rain finally came. The stadium speakers blared rain-themed music, the hearty students that stuck around sang along:
That raindrop at the end of the video is pure art, no? Purely accidental art.
We’d talked to a guy earlier who recalled when he was in the student body during the great monsoon of 2009. He said that game, the West Virginia game, was the best day of his life.
I recall getting rained on once or twice when I sat in the student body. I did not have the same recollection of good cheer. But the football wasn’t quite as good at that moment, either.
Anyway, this was before the storm, the cheerleaders wave those giant flags after scores. They are quite cumbersome, even on a still day:
And this is the storm as it wrapped around the northern end of the stadium. It was an impressive site:
A few weeks ago I wrote about one of the signs in my grandparents’ part of the world. The old Coke sign had been there all my life, and finally it faded beyond recognition. And then the city elders, or the Chamber, or the Coke people, someone, repainted it.
This is a few years into the new version of that sign, and it still looks obnoxiously bright. For some reason all of the Coke signs of the world should be distressed or full-on ghost signs.
Except for this one, in Cartersville, Georgia, which Coke has authenticated as the original outdoor Coke sign and restored.
I took that picture in 2006. I wonder what it looks like today. Here it is in 2012.
Just down the street from the new-old Coke sign is one of the best signs ever:
I don’t know what a deer-turkey is, but I’ve always been curious to find out.
If you notice the last line it says “Drive a little to save a $” and then there’s a picture of a deer head. So they do either taxidermy or emoji. Who can say?
Anyway, said all of my sad goodbyes and sad and extra hugs and then hit the road. Stopped at campus, where we got new computers installed in the newsroom and in my office. Signed paperwork, delivered paperwork and hit the road again, for home.
Dinner with friends, and then a quiet night with the cat.
I don’t know what you were doing two years and two days ago, but I was having killer headaches and singing the praises of ice cream therapy.
Also, we dodged a solar bullet. How a solar storm two years ago nearly caused a catastrophe on Earth:
On July 23, 2012, the sun unleashed two massive clouds of plasma that barely missed a catastrophic encounter with the Earth’s atmosphere. These plasma clouds, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), comprised a solar storm thought to be the most powerful in at least 150 years.
“If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces,” physicist Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado tells NASA.
Fortunately, the blast site of the CMEs was not directed at Earth. Had this event occurred a week earlier when the point of eruption was Earth-facing, a potentially disastrous outcome would have unfolded.“I have come away from our recent studies more convinced than ever that Earth and its inhabitants were incredibly fortunate that the 2012 eruption happened when it did,” Baker tells NASA. “If the eruption had occurred only one week earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire.”
Who knew?
Rode my bike for the first time since the race last weekend. I needed a little break, I took too long of a break. So today I just pedaled through the neighborhood and then up and down the time trial course and over the back of the big hill, mostly mad at myself for being off my bike for so long.
It is always that way. I’m never disappointed in a ride, but I always regret not going.
It wiped me out, though, which was predictable and sad at the same time. I could have gone for a few laps in the pool, but I had no energy. My diet has been off, I think, because there is always something, or two things, that can be done incorrectly at any given time.
He said, while eating sliders for dinner with friends.
We went to visit Kim and Murphy. We took cupcakes, they made delicious tiny burgers. We watched QVC and no one really seemed to know why. But I can tell you all about the luxury deluxe makeup organizer. It comes in your choice of one of three colors and can hold 30 of your favorite lipsticks at a time!
I should have applied for a job at QVC years ago, surely.
Do you like blooper? Everyone likes bloopers. These were a bit difficult for me to wrap my mind around, because the show is so often grim, but here are what are apparently rare Game of Thrones bloopers:
Dear Internet: Let’s make a pact. If you embed every YouTube video that you find interesting, and I embed every YouTube video that I think you’ll find interesting, we’ll never have to go to the actual YouTube page and read those comments.
Hope you are planning a wonderful, comment-free weekend.
