Have you ever had a day that started with the best of intentions, but then the clock did something weird and you don’t get any of the planned morning things done? You’re not sure how, but you’re left saying, Well, today’s list just became Thursday’s.
No? Just me? OK then.
I recorded something yesterday and it’s out there today, so, please, enjoy:
It seemed a logical line of questions to me. Should we do this? What should we do? How should we do this?
And I’ll tell you a little secret, I got into one of these topics and I was just trying to keep the question on track and under control and thinking How can I do Christmas? Should we even be talking like this? and it’s a little bit heart rending. So, as you might imagine, the question wasn’t going so well.
But just as that happened an alarm on my phone went off. And that gave me the opportunity to re-frame and re-phrase the question. And Shandy Dearth, who is the public health professional here, is a total pro. Also, she’s got really solid advice and perspective and you should listen to what she has to say.
I got home tonight, shed the clothes that had been exposed to the elements of semi-public society, took the cleansing and decontaminating shower and came downstairs to a plate almost ready for dinner:
All I had to do was put the meat on the rice. That’s thoughtful, and full service romance.
Also, it was pretty tasty, too. And, I’m told, we’ll have a flaming onion tomorrow …
It was a studio night tonight, which is an excellent reminder for me to get caught up on studio stuff. Here’s a sports show from late last week:
And here’s a talk show, where they talked about the greatest of all time in all the big sports.
I think they should do a greatest of all times in lesser-known-in-America sports. Make them work at the show prep, and really stress having to sell the argument to an audience who already doesn’t think about Tom Brady or Michael Jordan or Lebron James or whomever.
You know what I need to know? I need to know the best flat to ever swim in water polo, and the greatest brakeman in bobsledding history.
Now that’d be a show worth sinking your teeth into.
Until we get that, please scroll back up and listen to that podcast. Please, and thank you. And wear a mask and social distance and stay home when you can.
I am judging high school and junior high news programs this week. There are some really talented young people out there. But we could always say that. Golly gee, kids these days!
Also, I have about 60 of these to work through, so I could say the same thing for the next few days.
Other kids these days:
Someone put a note in their calendar to look up this young man in 25-30 years and let's find out what awesome thing he's doing.
After work I stopped in at the library to pick up a book I had on hold. It’s just two blocks from the office. I walked in, strolled through the alphabetized hold shelves until I found the S area, considering the sign that said “Respect other users privacy, no browsing” until I found my name. And, being careful to not notice anyone else’s titles, I picked up my hardcover book. Oh, the joys of reading fiction. I don’t a lot, but I will over the next few days. Well, once I’m satisfied there are no cooties on the dust jacket.
There’s a self checkout. You scan your library card and input your password on the touchscreen three times. Because the first time you mess it up so convincingly you wonder if your password is, in fact, something else. Once you get that right, you just hold the book under the scanner. There’s no barcode, it just knows what book you have based on some RFID tag or a near field communication trick.
So now I’m done. Two minutes, maybe three. I did nod to someone, but didn’t have to speak to a soul. I left via the nearest door. I was on a different floor from the one where I entered. I knew that, because there was a stairwell at the beginning of this adventure. I exited on a different side of the building than where I entered. Spatially, I was aware that I would be facing a different direction from where I went in, because I’d traversed most of the place and turned left to leave. So walked around the building was no surprise, but I was, of course, still on the ground, even after that long staircase when I entered. That amused me.
Architects must delight in confusing people who aren’t paying perfect attention.
Got home, cleaned off the day, and had a nice long chat with my mom. She’s fine. Everyone’s fine. (If the extended family would take this more seriously, that would be better, but I can’t convince people of the obvious.)
We’re talking about how we can do Christmas, because Thanksgiving is basically off. Maybe we’ll Zoom over turkey leftovers. We’re going to concentrate on the small joys. Visiting is a gift, and everyone is fine and healthy.
So much Covid data to report on our campus. The weekly numbers came out today, and they ticked up ever so slightly, but they remain impressively low, especially considering the county, and particularly in comparison to the state, which is surging ahead with no headlights, brakes or seatbelts.
Also, you’ll learn in the A-block there about how IU’s testing labs are now open. They’re going to be doing something like 8,500 tests a week here now. It’s an extensive, impressive undertaking. The university has really pulled out all of the stops to look after its campus communities and help the cities they all live in. Remember, this is 100,000 students in nine campuses across the state. And while, ultimately, this is not the fall or spring semester any student — or anyone else wanted — the lengths the university is going to during a pandemic are commendable.
They did a costume feature on the pop culture show and I can’t get over how awesome minimalist M&Ms are.
If you didn’t watch that, you should. They did blindfolds and had to guess what their reporters were dressed up as. So now you’ve got gloved, masked, blindfolded hosts. It was pretty silly.
Do you ever do that thing where you start a project on your website and work on it for a while and collect all the parts the project will need and continue to work on it and then think you’re finished with it? And then come back three years later and realize you weren’t finished?
Oh, that’s just me, huh?
Well OK, then.
Guess why this building is important:
It is important because it means we must return to the historic markers section of the site. This is where I where my bicycle all over the county to find the historic signs and take pictures of them, and the place they’re highlighting. I did this one years ago, but realized only this evening, while I was cleaning some old photos from my phone, that I’d never published them.
So go check out The Gables, which is a building that now holds a restaurant, and has some important local history in it. Also, the guy that owns it is a joy, and his food is pretty good, too. It’s just up the street from my office.
Hoagy Carmichael, who is the focus of this particular historic marker, has a statue on campus, and if I had a statue project on the site it would be one of the feature attractions, because it’s an amazing statue.
And the really good news is that we can get four or five more days worth of content out of old pictures and places I’d already thought I’d addressed! So look for another historic marker update next week.
More tomorrow. Until then, did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? Phoebe and Poe have an Instagram account. And don’t forget my Instagram. Also, keep up with me on Twitter.
Have you ever had part of a day just vanish from memory? You know you did things, but you can’t really recall, precisely or vaguely, what those things were, even on the same day?
Welcome to my Tuesday!
I know I got up and puttered around the house and caught up on all the things I read in the news cycle and then at some point went to the office and did office things. I even held an office hour! Virtually! No one showed up.
I watched some videos and pounded out the emails and … anything else I could type about it would just be guessing at the routine. But it was there. Maybe that’s what it was fluorescent light-guided routine.
It’s a studio night for me, which reminds me to update you on some of the recent productions. And here they are now:
The spooky late night comedy show:
By the way, we learned this weekend that Not Too Late, which is the show above, earned an Honorable Mention in the national College Media Association’s Pinnacle Awards. A fine recognition, indeed. It’s a fun little program they’re building over there in Studio 5.
Meanwhile, and elsewhere … notably in Studio 7 …
Big Ten football is back and the subject of this longform talk show.
More sports! Now it feels like fall on campus:
And if you’re more of a morning person than a scary late night person, well I’m sorry we aren’t compatible in this respect, but, nevertheless, there’s a show for you as well:
And that has us all caught up on the last few days of television. I think. They also produce remote programs and social media and something like five different podcasts this semester. There’s a lot going on, is the point, even in this semester where there is, necessarily, less going on.
Forgot to mention: I updated the front page recently. Go check it out. It looks like this:
I have a several new photos I’m going to work through there. I’d like to have some random script do it, like the banners on this page. Around here, we are big fans of visual variety, as you might have noted. And the more you can automate that, the better.
Why not just use the same code?
Aren’t you a clever reader, you clever reader.
I’m tinkering with that. Maybe it’ll work. I might have to try something else to avoid breaking too many other rules on the site.
Why don’t you use javascript?
No thanks.
But —
Look, we’re trying to get away from that around here.
It’s something of an industry standard and —
Oh, believe me, construct I created just to have this conversation with myself, I know. But there’s some bloat and loading and security and some mobile-user issues and I’d just rather have a CSS and a PHP style solution, if you please.
Well, when you put it that way … why not just use the same code as this page?!?
Attended a virtual meeting today were the future of the future was definitely not decided. We did hear about other meetings, however. Seminars here, movies there, presentations and workshops from near and far. Everyone is keeping busy as best they can.
After the meeting I recorded some audio. And after recording the audio I took it to the office to edit. And then some of it was uploaded. It is a cycle and it has its place. Keeping busy.
The afternoon was a bit slower than the morning, then. I was able to catch up on email and the news and many of the other attendant things that make up normal days. Even in abnormal times, they’re always there. Always there.
Returned to the house after work and went for a bike ride. It was an easy hour. I pedaled alongside The Yankee as she condensed two days of webinars into an hour of highlights. I could ride like that all day. She talked, I tried to keep up. Usually her training rides are designed to be more brisk. She rides harder and I … try to keep up. So it was a pleasant thing to do, riding along, listening to the conversation.
It was gray and humid and moist. Yes, both adjectives are required here. It was 64 degrees when we left and 61 when we got back in and for some reason I could see my exhalations. It was the first “I can see my breath!” ride of the year. The dew point was very high.
This evening I tried working on three projects. And two of them went nowhere. I need to replace the button on a pair of blue jeans and that’s harder than it should be, apparently. There are a few methods to this, the Internet tells me. One destroys the denim, which seems besides the point. Another is poorly described. The third is pretty straightforward though: Grab the button on either side with pliers and unscrew the thing.
Well, that didn’t work tonight. I managed to ruin another button from a pair of ruined jeans, and since it was dinnertime anyway, I put that project once again on the back burner. We’d cooked everything on the front burners anyway.
I wanted to make a little carrying sling for a small bottle of hand sanitizer to keep in the car, but the initial plan didn’t go according to … well … plan.
So, back to the drawing board, which I don’t have. Maybe that’s the problem. I shouldn’t draw things up in my mind. The specs are never that good up there anyway.
But my third project, it has real potential.
I have to use my university ID for various things on campus. It’s a key, it grants printer access, you check out books with it and so on. I’ve recently decided that maybe I don’t want to carry it around in my wallet. Maybe I don’t want to pull my wallet out every time I need the card. Too many cooties, and who knows how repeated hand wipes will treat the leather.
So I’ve had in mind a few different things I could make as a minimalist card holder. And I’ll probably wind up trying several of them out before I ultimately settle on one. So tonight I started working on the first idea which will be a slimmer version of my homemade business card holders:
I had some leftover wood from those projects which were already perfectly cut to size. To create the depth I ran the jigsaw over the thinnest paint stirrer I could find. Now the glue will cure overnight. Tomorrow evening I’ll sand the thing down and try to find some way to make white alder wood look interesting. And, when it’s done I’ll show you this solution. Because every project comes down to having material to put here, for you, dear reader.
Here are some TV shows the TV people did. This is the morning show, and they are on location, and that seems like an early time of day for a spot like that …
All the stories came together for the news team this week. I believe I counted seven produced pieces within the episode and 10 or 11 different voices all told. This is the pace we’d like to keep for every episode. Sometimes we’re more successful at it than others.
And there’s a really cool little feature in the pop culture show. Carillons are oddly fascinating, once people are reminded to think about them. And a student who has an abiding interest in music sought out the story of the impressive instrument that you can hear on the IU campus.
And that should be enough for now.
More tomorrow, though. And, until then, don’t forget to catch up on Catober, since Phoebe and Poseidon are putting on quite a show. And did you know they have an Instagram account now? Phoebe and Poe have an Instagram account now. Keep up with me on Twitter, and don’t forget my Instagram. There are also some very interesting On Topic with IU podcasts for you, as well.
You have to like the colors. The colors are rather glorious in this, our peak time of the leaf turn.
It turns colder tonight, and we’ll have a few cool days. At some point, eventually, it has to rain — there’s a moderate drought on just now — and then the rest of the leaves will fall and it’ll be stigs and twigs and the long, boring sigh of a gray, drab winter.
But those colors are something else today!
We visited with our friends Mike and Kate for a few minutes this evening. I dropped off a bunch of milk jugs that they’ll use to start some container planting project. They’ve got a quiet spread out beyond the suburbs and we stood in their driveway and enjoyed the waning sunlight and the nice warm air and a view of a few acres of trees and their company for a few minutes. Many jokes were made! Some of them at my expense!
Even their neighbor came over to say hello. He said his wife had recently retired from 45 years at the university library. Nice fellow, the neighbor. I see him when I ride through that area on my bike. He’s always outside puttering around with something. That might be the wife’s doing.
After he left we stood around and talked about their upcoming trip to see family. What an exotic adventure they will have this next week. I wonder what that’s like. Going places. Staring at different walls. Hearing different creaks in the floorboards. Pitching in with some little project at their place, rather than your own. Seeing people.
Sometimes it is nice just to see people. Well, some of them. You’d like to see them more. In limited and carefully controlled doses. But, as they say, 2020.
This came up in our visit. Why is this the hip thing to say? Why do people think that January 2021 is going to be any different from Apritoberember 2020? And what do New Year’s Resolutions even mean anymore?
Something to think about, alas.
Here are some shows the news team produced Tuesday evening. New anchor, a first-time interview and other fun stuff:
And here are some programs the sports gang put together, that I forgot to include late last week:
Tomorrow they will produce more sports. I’ll be there. I’ll share them here. Tonight, I don’t have anything else to share, except for the dishes. If you’re interested in helping there, come on over. I’ll be sure to give you plenty of social distancing.
