As I mentioned, this is homecoming at Samford. The festivities start today, and the alumni are returning to campus:
There is a bonfire tonight. And a concert. I talked with some of the students supervising all of that. Apparently the facilities folks take care of building the bonfire and lighting it and there are professionals to tend the blaze and the area is respectfully roped off so no one can do anything silly like falling into it.
I asked how they are going to light the fire, and this might be the part where they could improve the theatricality in the future.
There is a building nearby. Someone could leap off the building, swinging from a rope attached to the adjacent flagpole and drop a torch over the bonfire fuel, just like a rope swing over a lake.
No.
Whomever throws the javelin on the track and field team could throw one into the stack of wood.
No.
They could make a play on words about the opposing mascot and have a great visual joke with that.
No.
The head coach could light the thing.
No.
They could do the archer thing, like in the Barcelona Olympics.
No.
The star running back could somehow carry through an incendiary — of course you’d want him to be able to safely escape the thing.
No.
Someone from the Air Force ROTC could fly —
No.
We could launch something from the president’s home, which sits adjacent the campus on the mountain.
No.
Well, they didn’t say no to all of the ideas. They said they’d “take some under advisement” so I wouldn’t be surprised if one of those happened next year.
Maybe a zip line from the president’s home.
(They have fire hoses and all the various safety equipment you could think of on standby just feet from the bonfire site. They think of everything. Except zip lines.)
As part of homecoming my department holds their autumn advisory council meeting. These are alumni and other local industry leaders who we interact with to make sure we’re headed in the right direction, get ideas from them, see if they can help us find extra money and so on.
I prepare a bunch of documents that we give them. Our students’ successes, our department’s growth, our challenges and what the faculty are doing. An abbreviated list of things I’ve done appeared in that document. Pretty good year:
We had dinner tonight with a friend. He’d helped us bring the new washing machine home earlier this week, saving about 80 bucks. (Shipping is expensive, even if the store is three miles away.) He’d told us about a place he’d taken a date. Cajun.
Naturally I wanted to go. He agreed it was good enough to have again. So off we went to Jimmy’s, a restaurant I hadn’t heard of in a place I wouldn’t have thought to look.
Apparently they ship in the bread daily from New Orleans, which is ridiculous. Also the seafood comes in every morning, and the shrimp I had agreed. Just wish they’d given me more.
That could have been the 16 miles and the fit test I did this morning. Apparently the bike I was riding can measure this, so I did a V02 Max test and it fell within the excellent range, as described by The Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research.
Thing of it was, I don’t think it was the workout that limited me, but the circumstances. I did that on no calories and with no water. Next time, I’ll bet my number will be higher.
