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Samford

iPhone / photo / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
29
Nov 11

A cold 39 degrees

I am not ready for this:

Likely I wouldn’t have noticed, cold as it was and concentrating on returning to some warmer spot. But my eyes were alert because my ears had just heard a “Christmas tune” by Babyface. And if you aren’t ready for sharply decorated trees, you are simply unprepared for major key tonality that is trying to hard.

Why does every musician these days feel the need to record a Christmas record? I suppose it helps them fill in the last two tracks of their “greatest hits” effort, which is widely viewed as a way to fulfill the last project on a bad record deal. This is the penance for recording “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in a Hawaiian shirt in July.

So, yes, the tree displays were a surprise.

It has been observed that Thanksgiving is the day where we go from complaining about Christmas arriving too early to complaining that it is arriving too quickly. More and more this seems apt with retailers as worried as they are.

Last year we saw Christmas bric-a-brac at Labor Day, so this, after Black Friday, and at a mall no less, is almost passable.

But Babyface?

Got some things done today, but not enough. There is now a list. Forty percent of it has been struck through. I had an hour-long printer jam. This required opening the front door, pulling out the toner and retrieving a piece of paper. From the rear of the printer I retrieved three pieces of crumpled paper. From the front again I pulled, and tore, the side of another sheet. Back to the back, then, where I pulled out some component that has important looking latches. I took the back door completely off. I contemplated building a catapult so I could fling the printer over the mountain, but it is not worth cranking the tension in the ancient weapon.

Instead I just meekly went back to printing

Also held class. This is a challenging part of the semester. Some people have not yet mentally returned from Thanksgiving. Others have already flown to Christmas in their imaginations. I blame the lights in the trees.

friends / Monday / Samford / video — Comments Off
28
Nov 11

Back to it

The break is over. Reality returns. And so the emails are landing in my inbox, their replies whirring back again. I would like to find out one day how much time I spend in the various email accounts. I would like to find out and then immediately forget that piece of information.

When science gives us personal neuralizers, or flashy-thingies if you will, we’ll have really done something as a culture.

“I didn’t need to see that … ”

Flashy-thingie.

Of course we would need an idiot-proof these things for home use. One wrong move and you could zap away your entire education.

Anyway, it was a cold day, but I kept myself warm with grading.

It was also a dreary, but I brightened the day with, well, not much really. It was quite the dreary day. Nothing was fixing that. I don’t mind Mondays, but the dark by 3:45 Mondays I could do without. A big layer of dryer lint covered the sky from horizon to horizon all day long. Together the two, and a light drizzle, would have been utterly demoralizing.

So inside I stayed. Half the week’s class prep is done. There is still grading to do. It does pile up, all the things you ask students to do.

Our Friend Jim joined us for dinner, so we went out for corn nuggets at Niffer’s. He was in town to pick up a new mini-refrigerator for his new office. Or so he said. He picked one up last year, too. He says that the best place to get one is in a college town, which makes sense. But having the need for two of them, I suggested aloud, does sound a bit suspect.

You can’t make jokes about lining the inside of a refrigerator in public without people leaning in a bit harder. He defused the situation by letting it slip that he is an Alabama fan.

Ah. Well then. So long as he isn’t carrying Spike.

And everyone was relieved, returning to their meals.

Flashy-thingie.

Auburn / family / football / friends / memories / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
24
Nov 11

The best game I’ve seen at Jordan-Hare

Holiday travels this week, so we’re padding this out with videos and memories. But there’s a theme! This is Iron Bowl week after all. So let’s talk about football all week. Happy Thanksgiving!

Honestly, this entire week on the site has been an excuse to work up to this picture. (Also published, and well-received, on dearphotograph.com.) Since Thanksgiving is a day of family and friends, I’m putting it here.

The photograph was taken in the spring of my freshman year at Auburn. My mother brought my grandmother, and her lifelong friend to campus to visit. They toured the campus, saw the arboretum, took photographs with Tiger VI and even got to “sneak” inside the stadium.

They played a little tackle football, with my mother tackling her mother while Ms. Lucy was the quarterback and referee.

I love that picture, and this year at homecoming I took it into Jordan-Hare Stadium to take the picture of the picture. That’s almost precisely from the same spot, looking to the south end zone.

And what makes it especially nice, this new photograph, is that the two teams playing at homecoming were my alma mater, Auburn, which I love, and my employer, Samford University, of which I am also fond.

This is a charmed life, and so precious little of that has to do with football, but it is a neat way to mention it.

At the big Thanksgiving lunch today I offered the blessing for those that were there and those that cooked this delicious meal. I asked for us to take all of our free minutes of the day to consider the things for which we are thankful and I asked for our friends and loves ones who couldn’t be with us to be watched over and cared for in their absence.

On this day of giving thanks, it is foolish and whimsy to consider something as silly as football, even in a place where it stains the culture as it does here. We have so many things for which to be thankful. I hope you find yourself in a similar situation. And I want you to know I’m thankful for you — be you an old friend or casual search engine visitor — have a lovely day.

Auburn / football / iPhone / links / photo / Samford / weekend — 1 Comment
20
Nov 11

Catching up

At the Samford game, where all the girls say “Warrrr Eagle!”

Or is that a yawn? Hard to tell.

As to this guy, I have no idea. That’s not true. I have some idea. I think he’s from the 1970s and has a time machine.

This guy got into the game early, and stayed with it the entire afternoon:

Tiger claw. Looks a bit purplish, though:

I’m not sure if she and her sister watched any of the game, but both of their parents spent the entire four quarters with binoculars to their eyes:

Future’s so bright …

It was actually a bit warm when the sun came out from behind the clouds to check on the game. When the sun was off working elsewhere, however, and the wind was blowing in from the north, there was a bit of a chill. Altogether a lovely day to spend outside with friends.

The multiple tiger stripe patterns confuse other animals in the wild:

Mr. Penny does push ups for the team, and he’s a fixture on the wall in the north end zone. Great guy. He works in the local school system, is one of those people who you never see without a smile on his face and loves the kids he works with.

This last year the community raised money (some $9,000 that turned into tickets for the Pennys, new luggage and season tickets this year, and then they had to ask people to stop donating) to send him to the national championship game in Arizona. Wonderful story, which you can hear him talk about here.

“Mr. Penny said that.”

This little guy was not happy the early goings on of the game:

Everything all worked out in the end:

Meanwhile, at the movies, we watched that wretched film last week with a flat Edward and a homecoming queen:

My girls at play:

adventures / Auburn / football / photo / Samford / weekend — Comments Off
19
Nov 11

Samford at Auburn

Another beautiful day at Jordan-Hare Stadium:

Samford University’s football team traveled to Auburn for homecoming. My terrific employer facing off against my beloved alma mater. Both teams entered 6-4, and Auburn should have handled the game with ease. No matter what happened, though, I should enjoy the day, right? I’ve looked forward to this game more than any other this year.

There are so many common ties between the teams and the schools, even though they are very different sizes and have different specialties and different formational history. Both play similar styles of football right now, and there are a handful of familiar faces on the Samford sideline.

Also, if you read the site yesterday you saw that Auburn’s first Heisman winner, Pat Sullivan, was returning home as the coach of Samford. They honored him in the pregame with a nice little ceremony:

And then Samford gave Auburn all they wanted and more for three quarters. Auburn would win by a 35-16 margin, but it stayed very close far longer than it should have. But the Tigers won homecoming. Samford played hard, like you’d expect a Sullivan team to perform. The Auburn Alumni Band marched. And there was a little bit of history:

Sophomore Mike Dyer became the 10th leading rusher all time at Auburn on that very play. The guy he passed to take over the 10th spot? James Joseph, who coaches running backs at Samford.

Up next, deep breath, Iron Bowl.

Tomorrow: Crowd shots from the game.