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Samford

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3
Mar 11

A silver lining in home repair

Anyone know what this is?

After my class today, we had a nice presentation by a small group of students on advertising, one stood stuck around a little longer than usual. We talked about interviewing and resumes for two hours.

I’ve come to conclusion that the most rewarding moments of teaching aren’t in the traditional classroom environment.

So I’m packing up my things for the night and find I have a voicemail. A friend’s in-laws are in need. It seems they’ve had a catastrophic pipe failure that will require re-doing a room. And they’ll need tile. Lot’s of it. The local Lowe’s only has so much, but others near me had more, so I was sent on a mission to buy them all out.

I could sympathize in emergency repair, so I found myself visiting three Lowe’s tonight — I had to pick up a new garage door opener for our house anyway, so really only two of the store visits were for someone else. The very patient people working at the front of each store called their tile-needing customer and let her pay over the phone. I must have $600 worth filling up my entire back seat.

Got home to a delicious turkey wrap from Amsterdam, and then loosened the two screws from the old garage door opener. Opened the new one, wrapped the wires around the contacts, tested my installation (A success!) and mounted it to the wall.

This home repair only cost me $8.

Now let’s review:

When we first moved in we broke the thermostat. That cost $50.

Then I broke the shower head trying to fix a drip. That led to a larger problem which required plumbers, a drywall saw and an acetylene torch. It should have cost us about $1400, the plumber said, since it was a weekend. Fortunately the house warrant and the new shower head stuff cost us around $100.

And then we woke up one weekend to find the frozen contents of our refrigerator hanging out in liquid form on the floor. That cost us $50 (thanks home warranty) plus whatever we paid for ice and dry ice to preserve our perishables.

(We’d been in the house for two months by then.)

Then, in October, the dishwasher broke. Fifty more bucks. (And our second in-house electrocution.)

Then it broke again in December. We had it repaired during the holidays. Yep, $50 more.

This list does not include the bird feeder or the cable/Internet problems.

January we had a month off from from fixing anything, but lately the garage door opener died. For a few days we’ve opened it the old fashioned way, with the remotes in the cars, but now we’re boldly living in the 21st century again.

On the other hand, we haven’t had to re-do a room because roots destroyed pipes and brought a sewer into our home. So there’s that.

errands / journalism / Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off
2
Mar 11

About being out

Churned through the remainder of my stack of papers to grade today. I’m now all caught up, which seems a small miracle when I considered the pile of things to work through.

Also had a sit-down with the boss today.

Had a meeting with the editor-in-chief of the paper this afternoon where we critiqued this week’s edition of the Crimson and started thinking about the last six issues of the year. They go by so fast, but I’m always proud of how far the staff progresses in that short amount of time.

Had a meeting with the sales manager, too. She’s selling things that need to be sold. That makes everyone happy. As a salesman friend of mine says, though, you can always sell more. Sales: not for the faint of heart.

All of these things seem safer than my errands of late.

Know what else isn’t? Walmart. I went there late last evening and, I can’t recommend it. I like to compile a short list of things to seek out, lest I feel I’m braving that parking lot for only one item. Two things — a garage door switch and a particular type of bottle — I could not purchase there last evening. A third I decided against. That worked me down to cards and candy. This is why I sat at that weird light and made an almost-unprotected left turn.

Also it means I’ll have to visit a home improvement mega center later in the week. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, because it might be worth a full-length essay all of its own. Come back Thursday or Friday for that.

Just as fun, though, was taking my life into my own hands tonight. I’m walking from a parking spot across a lane of parking lot traffic to get from car to the door at Jason’s Deli. A car is coming through the parking lot lane and accelerates toward me. This was shocking to me as I am not in a drama/action film, but merely a mild-mannered professor carrying a book about the history of the House of Representatives. (Really, this is the person you’re aiming at, dude?)

Fortunately his aggression was all for naught. He was driving a Volkswagen. If he had more than four cylinders that could have become messy.

Which makes you think, high speed accidents will decrease when we all inevitably buy those magic unicorn cars. Incidences of road rage will skyrocket because it’ll take you four minutes to clear an intersection, but there are always trade offs in life.

Like this. I’m going to end this now so I may begin watching The Tudors. I’ve just finished the first two discs of Rome, Season Two (see how I deftly avoided the Roman numerals there?) and am in a television period piece frame of mind. I’m so comfortable with the notion of period pieces I won’t even mind when they obviously veer from history to try and tell a tale.

(But I’ll surely tell you about the egregious oversights. For example: Henry isn’t this young when these things happen. But look at those clothes! It must be legit!)

Samford / site / Tuesday — Comments Off
1
Mar 11

The thing I didn’t do, outweighed by the things I did

I was supposed to do a little video for the site today, being the first of the month and all. But I forgot, and will forever blame the jump from the 28th to the 1st. Sure, I’ve experienced this dozens of time in my life, always at the same time of year, arriving with rote predictability. That doesn’t mean I’ve accurately predicted it.

Take my watch, for example. It is from an American-owned company. It runs on kinetic energy. It is powered from Swiss components using Japanese machinery. I must still remind it to make the leap from 28 to 1.

So there’s no video to start off the month. Just as well. The purpose of those videos is to have a little fun and take about 10 minutes shooting the thing(s) that will characterize the new month. I’m not sure how to show studying, writing and fretting over proposals and defenses any differently than I did in January. (It was artful, go back and check it out.)

Here’s my month. Later I’ll defend the now legendary comprehensive exams. And then I’ll be writing on my dissertation proposal, which will hopefully be completed next month. There’s also work and teaching and grading and getting ready for the spring conference season and wonderful, glorious Spring Break. (Which will, no doubt, be filled with many of the preceding things.) And that’s March. Aside from calendars and stacks of notes and books … there’s just not a fun video there. On the other hand this will require something extra creative to shoot for April.

Today, then. My class visited Intermark Group, which is one of the public relations/advertising firms in town. I studied in the doctoral program with the wife of the CEO. Very nice people. This class takes a few trips — we’ve done a local television station and later we’ll do a magazine publisher — and it gives the young students an idea of what all is out there in the profession. They had a really nice visit today because the people at Intermark are so accommodating and enthusiastic about their work.

The students met one of their interactive guys, two of their media staffers (including a Samford graduate), a traditional PR practitioner, a social media expert, the senior creative guy and some of the nice folks in their video studios who walked them through how they produce commercials and things. It was a good tour.

Also, they have an Airstream inside.

And so it was that the first picture of the third month of the year of our Lord 2011 found on this site was a vintage restored recreational trailer which has been outfitted as a conference room. Our host said that whenever anyone wants to do a story on the place they want to talk about the Airstream. Whenever clients come they want to meet in the Airstream.

Wouldn’t you?

They also have a section of wooden bleachers where they do their large group work. She said they came from a local elementary school, but I could have sworn they were from my high school. Gave me a shiver just thinking about it.

And then it was back to the office as the student-journalists put together their newspaper. I started grading. I’m officially one-half caught up there, working my way through the mound of assignments that came in while I was off campus last week. I’ll make it through the rest tomorrow.

I could shoot a 30-second video of a red ink pen. No? April, then.

journalism / Samford / weekend — Comments Off
19
Feb 11

On-site, outta sight

SEJC business meeting this morning. I’ve been to this conference twice. This is my first business meeting. I managed to get myself on an awards committee.

Not sure how that happens.

We had a sandwich luncheon today, including keynote addresses by WAKA-TV’s Stefanie Hicks and Jeff Sanders, both Troy graduates, and their colleague Glen Halbrooks. They all gave the students wonderful advice, the most important parts being “This is a hard business requiring long hours and not the best pay. Work hard. Say “Yes.” Be patient.”

An award was given to the journalism educator of the year, who has been doing this for an incredible 42 years. I do believe they caught her by surprise with the honor.

The journalist of the year award was given to Alex McDaniel of Ole Miss, for whom this was a well-deserved honor given the last year of journalism on her campus.

Mississippi won the overall competition. They always seem to do well, bringing lots of talented students (151 participated and I think at least 95 of them were from Ole Miss) who place well in the competitions.

Samford had another nice day, too. One student placed third in the editorial competition. Another won the radio anchoring competition. Exciting stuff.

And then the drive home. Less exciting.

But I stopped at Crowe’s Chicken. My students were kind enough to indulge me the detour. I haven’t been to Crowe’s in more than a decade, but this is the place for chicken fingers. Yes, yes, I know all the others. Zaxby’s is fine. Whatever. I went to school and live in the town where Gutherie’s started. Tenda-Chick is wonderful.

But Crowe’s. Oh, Crowe’s. Sam Cooke was playing on the radio when we walked in. And that’s all you really need to know.

The place looks like a dank old Hardee’s. (At least the one where we stopped. There are apparently two of them?) It smelled of chicken like your Southern grandmother would make. And if you don’t have a Southern grandmother, I well and truly apologize for how life has short-changed you in this simile.

So I ate Crowe’s as we drove by Sikes and Kohn signs and nut huts. The Wiregrass experience doesn’t get more profoundly accurate than that.

We made it back to Samford much faster than the trip down. The students slept or studied. I dropped them all off, returned the rental van, wrapped up my trip with the paperwork and Emails that bragged of the students accomplishments and started to do a little more comps work myself.

And then I decided to head home.

There was a steak waiting.

So The Yankee and I had a delicious steak. And that was pretty much the night. She had a bike race this morning (and is claiming third place) and I’ve been traveling for a few days. We’re exhausted, party people.

Friday / journalism / Samford — Comments Off
18
Feb 11

Best of the South awards banquet

Just so you know …

The SEJC’s Best of the South awards banquet was tonight. This featured the Troy Jazz ensemble, a wonderful story by our organizer who stole the show with a dance with his wife, a First Amendment keynote speech by Student Press Law Center director Frank LoMonte, turkey, brisket and perfectly acceptable peach cobbler.

(Hint: Almost all peach cobbler is perfectly acceptable.)

Also, there were the Best of the South award presentations.

These are awards for which we submit in the fall. We send off a bunch of nominees covering a wide range of specialties across the print discipline, television, online and radio. This year we did not send as many as we normally do because of time constraints, but nevertheless we had an excellent night.

Out of 331 entries covering 24 categories with submissions from 29 schools, Samford students claimed seven honors in categories like best magazine writer, best press photographer, best radio journalist, best research paper and best magazine page layout designer. Exodus placed third in the magazine contest. The Crimson placed eighth in a talented field.

On the night Samford’s name was called as much as any other school in the state. Our students are doing something right.

We celebrated with Dairy Queen. And then I went back to my room to iron and work.

Tomorrow we’ll find out how we did in the on-site competitions and return to campus.