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17
Oct 22

Peak autumn weekend (The one with the leaves)

Here are a bunch of photos from what turned into a lovely weekend. (Next weekend is forecast to be nice, too, but the leaves and the sun worked out this weekend and you don’t count on that twice in a row around these parts.)

I went for my first bike ride in, quite a while, actually. The Yankee insisted I go ride. I think she’s tired of me hovering and worrying over her. So I had a 31-mile pedal and it felt like the first ride in quite a while, actually.

I went down the best autumn road in town. This is our seventh autumn here, somehow, and I’ve only taken this road twice. Some things should just be used sparingly, ya know?

And with views like this, you could see why I wouldn’t want to spoil it, right?

And so I huffed and puffed and counted my blessings that I was able to ride this road on one of the best days of the season, just for a quiet few minutes with no cars and these views.

Here’s a video of it, which buffered and compressed poorly, it seems. I may have to try this again, but, really, it’s the light and color we are after here, and definitely not the bouncy part in the middle.

Woods at the bottom of that same road:

That old road turns into a fork, to the left is a gravel drive and to the right, a gravel road.

But when you’re on a road bike, and don’t have gravel tires, you can’t be too curious about what lies further ahead. It’s probably just another house or two, anyway.

Here are some other leaves. You can never capture autumn, not really.

You need to smell the leaves.

And you need the suggestion of chill in the air.

That flicker of the sun glancing and dancing through the leaves is helpful, too.

You need the sound of the breeze dancing through the trees.

And the crunch of another season under foot.

That’s what you need to really appreciate autumn, before it is all just sticks pointing to the sky.

Those parts are never in the pictures.

Even the ones from a fine Saturday morning walk.

Catober / photo — Comments Off
17
Oct 22

Catober, Day 17

Friday / friends / IU / photo — Comments Off
14
Oct 22

Just in time: the weekend

A busy week is over, a slow and peaceful weekend has been ordered and is now en route. You can track the package through late Sunday night.

My contribution to the cause today was this. I produced one more video we’ll send out to new students in the next few weeks. That’s four of these videos in the last three days. Now the videos are being edited. The videos, I am happy to say, were left in capable hands.

I’ve had a student work on these. She’s quite talented and I’m pleased that she’s taken on the role of being the project editor. Now I can just give her a few notes and, later, all of the credit for this effort.

We were shooting here yesterday, care to guess?

(Click to embiggen.)

Otherwise, today was fall break for students. So, even though I was working, it was a relatively quiet day. Just what I ordered. (You bet I tracked that package.) I think, though, I’ve hit various different stages in the last three weeks.

The Yankee crashed on Sept. 22nd and a week later had surgery. It was that day, after a week of very little sleep, when real, determined exhaustion set in.

The next day, her mother arrived and a little sleep happened in that second week, which helped a bit. Her mother left after a week. We were fortunate to have her here. Spirits were lifted and I returned to something akin to the normal Merely Very Tired.

Her friend, Anne, came to help this week. That’s been huge. She has basically taken over running the dinner show. Her help with the big and little things where she’s cheerfully pitched in this week was a game changer. I don’t know how to properly express my gratitude when she heads home tomorrow.

My lovely bride has now firmly entered recovery mood. A good surgery, time, good bones, her fitness, beginning physical therapy and Anne willing it to happen has probably done that. She is on schedule, but it’s a slow recovery and it isn’t easy. On top of everything else, she’s also pretty tired. Every time she moves at night she wakes up.

As for me, my circadian rhythm is such that I’d almost rather stay up all night than have a night’s sleep punctuated and interrupted by waking up. We spent two weeks waking up for medicine and I still wake up hearing her move most of the time.

So, in the middle of this week, an incredible sort of fatigue set in. I guess three weeks is the current limit of my first-stage endurance. (This is after the regular day-to-day stress, her bike crash earlier this summer, two other surgeries within the last year, the pandemic and whatever else … )

I stopped protesting about having help with dinner and only meekly protested when she beat me to the dishes last night.

So, after a semi-demanding week — and it should be fairly said that my bosses have been sympathetic and understanding about all of this — I am looking forward to staring mutely at the maple tree.

I’m hoping that, next week, she can finally get a full night of rest. Four weeks removed from the last one, she’s surely due. I might be, too.

Catober / photo — Comments Off
14
Oct 22

Catober, Day 14

IU / photo — Comments Off
13
Oct 22

More things from a walk

This feels like the busiest week of the term, he thought with some trepidation, fearing that the thought alone would bring more in some not-too-distant week. This week, then, was perfectly neutral and doesn’t have any more, or less, work or stress than any other one before it, he tried, hoping to balance the karmic imbalances, but he knew it was a fib.

My contribution to the cause today was this. I shot and directed two promotional videos we’ll be releasing to incoming students sometime soon. One was in a darkened gym — couldn’t talk our way into getting the house lights brought up. It’s a straightforward monologue and we’re putting a lot of B-roll with it. The fun part, of course, was the creative challenge of finding making regular B-roll look intriguing and new. Another was a different monologue in a small room with the same concept. We’ll put B-roll with the presenter’s voiceover. Two of these in one day is plenty of a creative challenge for me.

Yesterday I directed another video. That one was a two-camera tracking shot that works through three rooms and lighting configurations. One guy talks for about 90 seconds.

I have one more of these to shoot, tomorrow.

The still ripening fruit from a sycamore tree. I think I took this one because everything is yellow.

But I took this one because, even though the leaves are yellow, the petiole is red.

I wanted to concentrate on the chokeberries — rich in pectin, so a fine candidate for tasty jams and jellies — but then I noticed the fine hairs, the trichomes on the leaves.

Look at the snout on this guy!

Here’s the nearby poke sallet. These berries are slightly toxic.

Seems odd to see a dandelion this late in the year, but that could just be me.

Weeds are only weeds if you don’t want them there. And if they flower, I sorta want to see them stay where they are.

How can this one little branch have berries of all of these different colors?

I forget why I took this photo, but now that I’ve stared at it trying to remember, I found that I sorta like the chaos of it anyway.

Some sort of cotton weed, ready to let go and spread seeds in an empty patch of land.

The fight for plant supremacy continues, no matter what happened in those videos I’m working on, no matter how warm or cool it is, or how tired or energetic you feel. There’s something comforting about that.

Unless these guys are trying to work their way onto your property.