Monday


4
Mar 24

An important story of diving strength and grace and power

We held our first backyard activity of the new year this weekend. We put a fire in the fire pit.

As ever, the order is tender, kindling, firewood.

  

It took a while, because someone put wet wood — and not the kindling and firewood I’ve been storing out of the elements for just this purpose — in the firepit, but pine straw is eager to burn and when I got enough of that in there you could hear the water sizzling away until, finally, we got those relaxing looking coals to stare at.

It was a good way to mark the weekend, a great way to start the outdoor season, which should run right up until December if last year was any indication. March to December? I’d take that, happily. It was sunny again today, but rainy or damp, and cool, for the rest of the week. We’re just waiting for the mercury to climb a few degrees higher.

OK, here’s the last photo from our recent trip to Cozumel. I’ve rationed these out for two months, and that’s better than I expected. (Don’t worry, we’re going to be able to stretch out the remaining videos for a good long while, too.)

This is the photo where I once again thank our trip planner and my dive buddy. Dive buddies serve a lot of roles. They point out stuff you might have overlooked. They help verify the stories you come back with. These days, of course, they help document the adventure. And they also help ensure your safety. (Or whatever.)

And I want to tell you a story about my dive buddy. In Cozumel, you do a lot of drift diving. You drop off the boat, go to the depth of the dive profile and just let the current take you … that way. The boat above follows your bubbles and picks up in another place. When you do it right, this is peaceful, easy, diving. It is one day diving. You learn quickly that, even on a light current day that the water is in control. And so you make your peace with it. You’re going this direction. You’ll see some great things. You’ll miss some things. C’est la plongĂ©e. Or, I guess, eso es bucear.

You don’t swim against the current.

So we’re going along on this one dive. The six divers and the dive master, Max, an Italian who has worked and dove all over the world. We’re all stretched out in a line, lingering here, drifting there. I’m about the fourth one back. My lovely bride is one or two people ahead of me.

Coming the other direction is a beautiful eagle ray, which migrates through that region in January and February. You see it, you admire it, you swim on. My dive buddy turns around and swims after it to capture video footage. Max and the other four divers are impressed. She’s swimming against the current, probably 100 yards, closing the distance on a creature designed for this environment.

Max this worldly, long professional, very cool ciao Italian man, looks at me his eyes as wide as his mask. The expression for “What?” works in any language, in any part of the world, under any body of water. I shrugged and nodded.

A little while later, we happen upon a turtle, and that tortuga is also swimming opposite us. The Yankee again turns, closes the distance, passes the turtle, and gets in front of it for another photo or video opportunity. We’re at the front of the group this time, and so she swims upstream past the other five people, who are in disbelief. When she finally turned to join us once more, they were still watching. I gestured to her to show the muscles. Everybody else needed to see the gun show.

And, look, she wasn’t even breathing hard.

After the dive, Max and I are the last ones in the water, waiting to climb on the boat. He said to me that he’d never seen anyone do that, and certainly not twice. I guess he’d never been diving with a varsity athlete, a three-time Ironman, a five-time USA National Championship triathlete and a FINA world championship swimmer.

It was, without a doubt, impressive, but not surprising. Not to me. I’ve been surprised by all of it before. And I need all of the air in my tank just to keep up with her.

We’re still working on her fire-building skills.


26
Feb 24

Everything here is terrific

Friday’s snapshots I did not share … because I was busy sharing other things. (I began a look at a 78-year-old yearbook. Did you see that? You should check it out.)

My office window faces the western sky and I happened to glance up just in time to see this explosion of color above the treeline. Grab the phone, down the stairs, out the door and stand on the porch to take this photo.

And then right back inside, because I believe I was barefoot. The neighbors must think things.

The lilies are still going strong. The purple flowers, the ones with names I do not know, are well into their romantic wither and wait stage. But these guys are still offering a powerful fragrance.

It is a promise of spring to come, and it is coming soon. Surely it is now. I walked outside today and thought, This feels great! And it could be that I was standing in the sun, that I’d just gotten off my bike and my heart rate was still elevated or that 54 degrees in late February feels like a treat. It is more of a sign of things to come than a symbol of things lost. Later this week the sunset will set after 6 p.m. You can’t help but feel optimistic. I’m wearing blue and yellow to class tonight, because it is officially time for spring colors.

The cats can tell, too. I don’t know that they can. I assume they can. If they are attuned to the seasons we have enough windows for them to figure it out. They’ve seen a few birds return and there’s a squirrel or two outside tormenting them know, so maybe they know something is up, seasonally speaking. But I can’t say that for sure, of course. They haven’t told me.

I shouldn’t make them out to be readers of the Farmer’s Almanac or anything. Poseidon, after all, is still content to hibernate.


This is his cabinet. It was easier to move things around and put his little blanket in there and, when he’s being a pill at dinner time, just remind him that he has his own space.

And, then, at other times, this genius … well … you can tell for yourself.

Phoebe is not impressed by him. Not the first little bit.

I like the idea of Phoebe having a noir mood, though. That has potential.

She’s lately taken to hanging out in the cat tunnel. This is a recent development. It was always Poe’s territory, but, now, he has to share.

She’s so meek and timid, we like when she asserts herself in this way. Poe has a cabinet. He can share the tunnel.

Saturday, my lovely bride and I went for a bike ride together. Usually our schedules are just a bit off, so this is a real treat, sweating and huffing and puffing and going nowhere fast in the basement.

She started the ride on Zwift a little before I did, so she had three miles in and I had to chase her for a long time to catch up. But there are our avatars, riding alongside one another, having a grand old time in the cool down phase of her workout.

I didn’t ride yesterday — making three days I’ve skipped in February — and I got in 22 miles this afternoon. Time for that end-of-the-month push to make sure I hit the outlandish and arbitrary goals I have set for myself!

OK, we’re nearing the very end of the photos from last month’s dive trip. But I still have a lot of videos. I figure we might do these a couple of times a week, just to see how much longer I can stretch out such a wonderful trip.

And I’m being sneak with it here, too. Because I am recycling the eagle ray shot I had from my last video. But, hey, my video, my site, my rules. And the eagle rays, which are presently wrapping up their migratory season through that part of the world, are a special treat.

But wait until you see what appears right after that beautiful eagle ray, in this very video …

And now I must go to campus, where we will talk about the power of social media and large group social dynamics.

Yeah, the video is better. Watch the video!


19
Feb 24

We had snow this weekend

The forecast called for waking up to three to five inches of snow on Saturday. It was promised to be the good, dry, powdery stuff. We looked up the amount of snow required of a snow blower — because we have a snow blower now — and the consensus was two inches. That doesn’t seem like a lot to me. Drive over it. But maybe you don’t want to. So we could shovel two inches. Only our new driveway is a bit long for shoveling.

The old driveway was a little more than a car length, which you could do with two shovels in no time, and by yourself in about twice the amount of no time. But this driveway is more imposing. We’ve shoveled it once so far, and the evening we did that it was cold. You think you’ll get out there and keep moving and get your heart rate up and your body will warm up, but that did not happen. Also, that was a good six or seven inches of snow and it had been on the ground a day or two when we got back to it. It took a while. We did enough. And that was enough of a reason to invest in a snow blower.

Which of course meant that it sat in its box in the garage for weeks because we’ve had perhaps the mildest January and February possible at this latitude. Now comes the Friday night forecast, and thank goodness there’s nowhere we have to go tomorrow, but still.

So we open the great big Toro box. There’s a snow blower inside. Imagine, for my Southern brethren, a push mower, but, instead of that place on the side where the clippings come out, there’s an ejection portal on the top. You can spin the thing so it can blow strategically to the left or right or, if you are an agent of chaos, straight up into the air. It’s shiny and new. Corvette candy apple red.

I was going to go get a quart of oil, because while we had gas, we had no oil. Except a 12-ounce bottle was included in the box. Good! One less thing to do in the half hour before the hardware store closes. So, let’s assemble the thing. This is what I did before dinner Friday night. Assembly involves five sets of nuts, bolts and washers, and then you put in the oil and gas.

There was a little matter of the nuts, bolts and washers, however. They were not included in the giant Toro box. So I spent a long, long time peering through boxes and tool boxes, tool drawers and other random places I might have put nuts, bolts and washers I’ve accumulated over the years. And what I learned is this: you don’t get as many extra nuts as you do bolts and screws.

Not only do you have to find them, you have to, of course, find pieces that will fit with one another, and the blower itself. Exactly what you should be doing at 8 p.m. on a Friday night before this week’s storm of the century. Two screws, bolts and washers were needed for the handle. I made that work. Three were needed to attach the multidirectional snow chute. Two on either side, done, but less confidently, and a third, which some does … something. You’ll probably only notice it when you’re rotating the chute or when the whole machine has rattled into action. Thing of it is, this Toro has a hard-mounted, threaded bolt post. I only needed to find a nut for it. Except I didn’t have the hardware.

Now, I figured I could tear the house apart and find the right size. But that nut, wherever it is, is doing something important already. So I strapped three bungee cords to the thing and pronounced it road worthy. The most ratchety, brand new, road worthy snowblower in three counties, I’m sure.

I decided to wait until the morning to fill it with oil and gas. I’ve done all this in good spirits, and why would I want to ruin my Friday night with issues of dripping, pouring, volume or viscosity? Besides, let’s wait to see what we actually get overnight.

We got about two inches of snow. The beautiful, wonderful, dry, powdery version. The kind that looked beautiful on the lawn, and could not stick to the patio, driveway or roads. And now we can find replacement parts for the new snow blower in our own good time. (Ensuring we don’t have to use it for a nice long while.)

Until then, welcome to our temporarily monochrome world.

Also, I noticed Friday night when I did a preemptive inspection of the fig tree, that the first signs of spring are growing in one of backyard beds. They’re a hardy sort, at least.

As I said, the dry, powdery sort of snow.

And, as an extra bonus, it looks like it only came from the one direction.

The peach tree was doing just fine.

And the pear tree in the front yard had a good grasp of things, as well. This was a delicate snow, but it knew a thing or two about balance.

Or, if you want something more colorful, the flowers inside are still stinking the place up. These look like they should be dry, brittle and crusty.

Instead they’re soft and frail, like the sleeves of an old silk blouse.

The lilies, though, they’ve really come to life this weekend.

Back outside, our neighbor puts on the best sunsets.

Can I tell you how awesome that snow was? It was quite, pretty, dry and clean. By the time I went outside to take that sunset photo and walk around the back of the yard to put a few random sticks on the stick pile, the snow was all but gone.

By today, the only evidence of any weekend precipitation was in the perpetually shady spots.

The cats did just find with the winter weather. Here is Poseidon, in his warm kitty cave, in front of the space heater.

I don’t know why he always thinks he wants to go outside. He is too accustomed to all of the comforts of indoors.

Phoebe went another route to keep herself warm.

Both were effective. And now let’s bring on the inevitable sprint to spring.


12
Feb 24

You’re going to want to watch this video

Poseidon asked for a meeting this weekend. And, being staff to the cats, I was obliged to accept. The thrust of the meeting was this: He wants to sometimes go first in the site’s most popular weekly feature. Usually I operate on a “ladies first” policy, but he stamped around on me and made his point. So, this week, Poseidon will have the honor of the first check in.

You see, Poseidon is quite proud of his head-on-foot prowess.

And his hiding skills.

In that box is some poly sheeting which I need to put on the greenhouse. I ordered these sometime back, but I am waiting for the weather to warm up again — so maybe next week. Also, I might need still more parts for the job. Phoebe had the same reaction to that realization as I did.

But she’s ready to supervise from her supervising post.

My lovely bride picked up some flowers this weekend to brighten the house. They’re doing a lovely job.

Now they just have to survive the cats.

Let’s go back underwater. And we’ll do it with a video. This one is full of great fish. And there’s a wonderful up-close visit with a beautiful eagle ray. Don’t miss it.

And there are still a lot more photos and videos to come. Keep showing up, because I’ll keep posting them.

But, for now, I have to head to campus. Monday has once again gotten away from me.


5
Feb 24

For a brief moment, I was ahead, and now I’m behind

On Saturday, a finer day was never made, I tried the Cascadian Farms blueberry granola with a box of store brand raisins. Once again, the raisins were undefeated in augmenting the flavor profile of what I put in the blue breakfast bowl.

This morning, I tried mixing the first two varieties, Bob’s Red Mill Honey Oat and Bob’s Maple Sea Salt. I added raisins, of course. And, so far, the mix of these two have been my favorite. But I have also learned something uninteresting today.

Basically, photos of granola in a bowl all look the same. So my breakfast experiment will continue — this week I have to try other mixes and then soon I’ll perhaps go pick up some other brands and flavors to try.

You’re broken up by this decision, I know, but the kennysmith.org visual editor has sent out memos. Memos.

Another memo has just come down, in fact, reminding me to get on with the most popular weekly feature on the site. So let’s check in with the kitties.

It’s so cute when Phoebe covers up her eyes to go to sleep. She’s very serious about her relaxation.

Poseidon does it, too. Though, lately, he’s been interested in balancing on legs and feet.

We have a joke about the two of them, siblings. My lovely bride notes when they’re doing the same thing.

Come play with us. Come play with us.

Then I say, “You’re freaking me out!” Because it’s weird when they do the same things together. And she laughs. The cats are unimpressed, because they’re cats.

But, as you can see, they’re doing just fine.

We’d all be doing better if we were diving, I’m sure. Today’s feature from our recent trip to Cozumel is a video. There’s some great footage here, including a closeup of a turtle.

  

And, of course, we’ve many more photos and videos to enjoy in the days to come.

I’m now on a nice little streak of consecutive days in a row on the bike. This weekend I set a personal best in that regard. Today, unrelated to that entirely useless notation, I received the monthly email from Strava. I always love this part.

That’s about right.

On Saturday I had a big ride. A long climb from virtual sea level up beyond the virtual snow line. This, Zwift calls the Epic KOM. It’s 5.9 virtual miles up hill. None of it is particularly steep, but it does not relent. About five miles in, you get above the virtual hot air balloons.

And then you reach the top of the climb. After that, there’s a bonus climb, a .68 mile ascent averaging 13.6 degrees. If i am not mistaken, that’s still the steepest climb on Zwift. Strava tells me I’ve done it seven times now, and regret each visit. Saturday was my second time up that climb in a week, and perhaps my third best effort up the thing. (In January of 2021 I was minutes faster, according to my ride notes.) Also, the view at the top is pretty nice. If you can still see straight when you get there.

So that was 30 miles Saturday. I got in 28 miles late last night. And I did 22 miles this afternoon. Somehow, this is how the day got away from me. So, now, I must return to campus.

If you’ll excuse me …