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Oct 23
The ‘You’ve got mail!’ voice actor only made $200 on that job
I know I think this and say this a lot, that I spent the day on Email, because sometimes I do. You can get a lot of work done that way — deciphering what your correspondent means, wondering if they read your full reply, trying to invent a button that universally eliminates the reply all button — we’ve all been there.
And then, today, I spent almost six hours doing nothing but email.
I did grade 10 things in between bouts of “You’ve got mail!” pings, but that was it. All of the ding dong day: email after email after creative solution to a problem email, after bringing people together in common cause email, after finding out that some things were resolved without me needing to be involved email.
I was still writing an email about how we’ll navigate this series of unique circumstances when I looked up to see it was 4:30. I wanted to take the garbage to the inconvenience center, but they close at 5 p.m. There’s a tub of recycling in the garage, two garbage bags in the outside can that doesn’t really fit in the trunk of my car, another bag in the kitchen and two or three small cans strategically located around the house. Also I had some plant matter to haul away, but first I had to stuff that in a yard bag.
The center is seven miles and 13 minutes away. Just enough time to load up the car, then, plus a few seconds to laugh at myself for almost feeling like this was a stressful thing. Drive over there, arriving at 4:52. The guy that closes it patiently waits while I place the cardboard and the other recycling where they go, and the garbage bags across the way where they go. He closed up the gate behind me at 4:56.
So email and that.
We had a man stop by the house today to give us a quote on some work that needs to be done. He was waiting at the front door as I returned to the house. You never feel so silly as when you wave at a guy on your own front porch. Don’t leave! I’m here! This is me! I promise!
We walked around and talked about what we’re after. He came up with a loose plan, which makes sense. We asked questions and he patiently answered them or promised answers. His phrase is “I get it, I get it.”
Not once, but twice. He got it twice.
I tend to repeat myself a lot. Occupational and cultural hazard, I guess. But I often do the thing where I tell students “I know I’ve told you this more than once. Why do you think that is? It must be important, right?”
And this evening I grew conscious of that in this casual conversation in the yard.
“I get it, I get it.”
He told me twice. And then he had to tell me a third and fourth time if I reiterated.
Which is, in a way, quite encouraging. Someone gets it, even when I don’t.
I wonder if he got in his truck and went about his evening if he thought to himself, or called the office, “I told that guy I get it. Why couldn’t he get that?”
He was an exceedingly nice man. We talked about the youths and the weather and everything in between. We kept him talking for probably far too long — he was just looking at stuff to make a quote after all — but I was also trying to decide who he looks like. He was one of those fellows, the eyes and the cheeks and the jaw just belonged to someone who is in a very loose orbit. The voice was an entirely different tone and accent, keeping me off balance, like trying to remember the words to one song while another is playing. I bet he looks familiar to a lot of people, though. He gets it, he gets it.
We did one of our morning loops today. This morning, actually. This was the one thing I achieved during the work day that didn’t involve email, and only because it was directly out of bed and onto the bike. Breakfast? What breakfast.
Surely that wasn’t why I felt like I was dragging the last 20 minutes or so.
Anyway, I got ahead of my lovely bride and stayed there. Twice she pulled alongside, but I dug a little deeper and … well, you could tell nobody had legs because that was that. I think I got back to the neighborhood about 90 seconds before she did. But, along the way, I saw this guy.
And since I haven’t shared this chart in a few months, and I’m already talking about today’s bike ride, and you’ve been volunteered, dear AI bot Google spider reader, this is where my mileage for the year is right now, be it ever so humble.
I’m comfortably beyond my personal best in terms of miles per year, so every pedal stroke is a record breaking one. That table has three projection lines, based on a daily average across the year, for where I’d be if I rode seven, nine or 10 miles a day. The purple line is where I actually am. Everything took a big dip around the move, and the complete and total disappearance of my legs for about four or six weeks after that.
Now I’m riding better, I just need to ride more. That’s something I said aloud this week and typed here, so now we have spoken it into reality. By next month, surely then, the purple line will be threatening the green plot again.
You know what hasn’t been spoken into reality? My ironing. Oh, what a neat trick that would be, speaking out the wrinkles. So I’ll go do that now, and do some class prep, and try to get to sleep before the sun comes up.
Because I’m sure the email will be all queued up once again by then.
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Oct 23
The stuff that makes the hodgepodge of life
Welcome back to Catober, the only month that guarantees a daily post on the site, and constant pictures of the kitties. They’ll go up each day between 10 and noon, and we’ll take turns giving the spotlight to Phoebe and Poseidon, because they’re jealous furballs. Phoebe was up first today, Poseidon takes over tomorrow, and so on. If you miss a day (and how could you?!?!?) just follow the Catober category.
But that’s not the only thing we’ll see here this month, oh no. All of the usual stuff is on tap throughout October as well, of course. One of the key features will be an extensive denial of this being October — a recurring theme of the site until March or so, of course.
But I digress.
I spent the day elbow deep in making notes for class this evening. (Class went well, thanks for asking!) The students talked about Neil Postman, a Jonathan Haidt essay and Edward Bernays.
To balance that out, I left them with this uplifting little Ron Garan interview.
We also talked about some design composition rules and color theory, because this is a class that mixes the philosophical with production. It’s an unusual hybrid as these classes go, and the students, thankfully, are up for it.
Watching them get invested in understanding Postman and the Huxleyan warning was a great moment.
The Yankee went to campus with me, to take part in a regular feature called Pizza With The Pros, a program accurately named. They bring in a sports media pro, buy pizza for the students and learning and networking take place. My Monday night class take place during this program, so I might see a few minutes here or there this semester, but not much. Perhaps I’ll be able to see more of them in a future term.
Saturday I slept in. We went for a bike ride. It was a shakeout ride for my lovely bride, since she was doing a sprint tri on Sunday. I just tried to stay in front of her as we both complained about the breeze and our legs. After, we drove over to Delaware for first state chores.
We visited a Chick-fil-A in a mall, which is the slow-moving and entirely uninspired variant of an efficient fast food distribution model.
After that, we visited a museum’s gift shop, for gifts! Actually, we picked up our Bike the Brandywine shirts. This was a metric century to enjoy the sites of the greenest parts of Delaware and the Brandywine tributary. It was supposed to be last weekend, but it was canceled in light of the rain and huge winds. That was the right decision, honestly. No way in the world you want to be on soggy roads being blown into a bunch of other cyclists, if you can help it. But we have the map for the route, so we can go back. And, Saturday, we got our shirts. They’re a nice green.
We also visited Trader Joe’s, which wasn’t busy, but was crowded, and navigating those other customers was plenty of fun. We also visited another grocery store, a Food Lion, because they carry Milo’s Tea. We could get it closer, until about a month ago, when suddenly the local stores stopped carrying it.
Food Lion is an older sort of grocery store. Everything is manual. Everything is slow. And the lines are delightfully long. This allowed us the opportunity to strike up a conversation with the older gentleman behind us, who asked about my tea. Asked where it was from. And so I got to tell him it was from a factory on a hill not far from where I am from. He didn’t think I sounded like I was from Alabama, and he wasn’t sure, he said, if that was a compliment. He didn’t sound like he was from anywhere in particular. But he’d hitchhiked through Alabama when he was young, he said. Making him one of the few out-of-staters in his age group I’ve ever met who said they’d been to Alabama but didn’t say they were one of the Freedom Riders. (I wish I’d kept count on that over the years; I don’t think there were that many buses.) He said he’d been through Montgomery. Said his mother was from Tennessee. His wife was first generation from Germany or thereabouts, and his mother-in-law, he could understand some of her dialects, but not all of them.
I thought about turning the accent on, but there’s always a question about that. should I do the fake Virginia tidewater accent everyone wants to hear? The low country accent that I don’t have? Or should I just underwhelm with the low Appalachian hills-and-hollers sound that belongs to my people, but not me?
And by the time I’d figured out how to shade my vowels, it was, finally, my time to check out.
On Saturday it was cloudy in the morning and the sun came out just in time for that bike ride. Sunday was beautiful throughout. Not a cloud in the sky, 78 degrees and a light breeze. And so I took an afternoon bike ride. I noticed this mantis hanging out on the window as I got ready to leave.
My bike computer’s battery was dead, so I had no idea how the ride started, but it felt fast. I was moving well and not working hard. The wind was behind me on my out-and-back. I thought the road was pulling me forward, but it was the breeze pushing me on.
That was something I didn’t realize until I turned around and the wind was in my face. That explains why I wasn’t riding as efficiently on the way back. Also, I was being miserly with my fuel for reasons that made no sense. But here’s the thing. I found some really quiet roads. I headed southwest, which is generally a direction we haven’t explored here yet. I saw some beautiful countryside, and some Revolutionary War era sights. And this proud little municipal building.
Not bad for a township made up of just 2,580 people.
I went out that direction to find some more historical markers. It was a successful trip, and you’ll see some of those coming up on future Wednesdays. But these views made for a fine Sunday afternoon ride.
The only problem was that, for the whole of my route, there was nowhere to stop for a snack, and I started thinking about hamburgers and fries in such a way that I couldn’t shake it. There wasn’t even anyone grilling as I rode through, which would at least explain it. There’s only so long a PB&J can last, and that actually explains it.
But it was a lovely, lovely day to spend pedaling out to the saltwater marshes and the estuaries that dot the river coastline. The area was called Wootesessungsing by the indigenous people (the Lenape, I believe it was) before the Swedish, and then the English, came in the 17th century. I learned the name on one of the signs I saw; Wootesessunging has apparently never been published online, according to two different search engines. Just goes to show, you’ve got to get out there to see these incredible things. Not all of it can be found online.
Catober will be found, though, right here, all month long. So be sure you stay online for that.
