Woke up before the alarm this morning. This sometimes happens. Usually, when it happens, it is because my alarm wasn’t set especially early that day. Today I woke up by a distant meow. It seems I’d accidentally closed the cat into the home office overnight.

He was fine, but I felt bad about the whole thing of course. Our cats, however, are incredibly forgiving. A few moments later he was cuddling and purring and, thereafter, underfoot. There’s a lesson in there, and don’t you know I spent most of the morning apologizing to him anyway.

I did a few other things with my morning and early afternoon, small things. Things that don’t even build momentum to larger things. So, in retrospect, I should have done more. I’ve had the good fortune to gear down the last few days as we approach the end of the semester, but, starting this weekend or so it’ll be time to look ahead, speed up and start making choices my students will have to live with until May. It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

Two classes today, as has been this semester’s Thursday routine. Today was our last time together. Today we screened their final projects.

I’d broken them up into groups, based on their own interests and dislikes in crew positions. Each group had to then create a two-minute public service announcement. They’ve had the opportunity to work on this for about a month. Some of them have used some of that time wisely. The pre-production part of the assignment demanded it. One group may have produced their entire video project yesterday.

All of the projects had their strengths. Most were quite creative, one or two were perfectly straightforward. I enjoyed watching them all. My favorite part is talking about them after we screened each one.

I asked the people not involved the project we watched to share some thoughts. It’s always a lot of fun to hear feedback from others, and gratifying to me to see them all reaching for something constructive and critical, but in a positive way. After almost four months of putting up with me, they’d bonded together in sympathy. Then I would ask the group members what they would do differently if they had to do it again. And then I would offer some observations. That can be as big or as little as you want it to be.

And that was it. I gave them the last big speech of the semester, reminded them of basic school-type things they needed to hear and thanked them for the semester. “Bump into me around campus. Catch me up on what you’re doing. It’s up to you. Now get out of here and go make great things.” And they all left.

The second class wrapped at about 6:30, and so I walked to the car in darkness, just before 7 p.m. There’s a peculiar feeling on a college campus on a night during finals. It’s lonely and sleepy, but alive and awake. It’s tired and full of energy. It’s full of wonder.

Or maybe that’s just me.

I drove back the long way because I missed the left, again. But I saw a lot of Christmas lights that direction and I wondered what Monday night will feel like after that class ends.

I was listening to the “Sound of Lies,” which is the next stop on the Re-Listening project. I’m playing all of my CDs in my car, in the order in which I acquired them. This is the 1997 record from The Jayhawks, and the third of their albums in a row. I bought “Sound of Lies” and the previous one, “Hollywood Town Hall,” on the same night in 2004. I bought them because, that day, I’d gotten my acceptance letter to graduate school.

That letter left me 12 days to prepare, and these records were the soundtrack, and a huge part of the musical foundation of the next year or so.

Marc Olsen had left the band. Secret weapon Karen Grotberg had been with the band a few years by now. Tim O’Reagan had settled in on drums. Gary Louris was essentially the sole front man. Probably that’s the point of the terrible cover art. But don’t judge a record by the liner notes. (It was the 90s, after all.) It does not sound like the 1997 you remember. And, as I discovered it in 2004, it was better.

The first track.

If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you put pablum and cliches into a lyrical form … it turns out you actually get a catchy little number.

Without distinctive moments — and, really, I spun this disc so much that it’s impossible for just one event to stand out — some of these things just fit into my memory as driving here or there. Or the car in the sunshine. In this case, it’s a lot of driving in the dark. I don’t think that’s a metaphor, but it must be something.

You want the best track on the album? You want the best track. This is fundamentally, subjectively, perfect.

O’Reagan is doing the background vocals there, and that’s just the appetizer. Also — and no one tell my lovely bride, because this is stealing her gimmick, but … — I butcher a lyric in this song every time. The way I sing it is so nonsensical it works. But probably not as well as the actual line.

But back to Grotberg. She puts in these amazing vocal runs and plays the piano. None of this works without her, and I’ll be humming this for days. It’s all her fault.

Does everyone know what the sound is at the beginning of this song? Least favorite song on the record. But it does have a random Nick Cave reference. Nick Cave, I think, is everywhere, if we but look for him.

Matthew Sweet, just a year or so removed from perhaps his biggest hit, sings on this track. I only mention that here because we’ll hear from him in the next installment.

Here’s the title track, #12, the last song on the CD. It probably should have come up earlier, because it’s a weeper to end on.

And so we’re not ending on it. Instead, I’ll backpedal to track 11 because O’Reagan wrote and sang “Bottomless Cup” and I listen to this song over and over and over again when this CD is being played.

Whenever there’s a track that has Tim O’Reagan’s name on it, I feel like I could take a master class on song writing. He produced one solo record, in 2006 when the music industry was imploding, and I should pick that up one of these days. Hang on. There, it’s in my shopping cart.

Anyway, The Jayhawks are playing right now, and touring again next spring. Oh, look, they’ll be near me in May. I might have to be there.

But that’s for a different day — and not our next visit to the Re-Listening project. Up next, here, we’ll have a supergroup of sorts.

I get these monthly emails from Strava, the exercise tracking app. Well, that’s one of the apps. Every month they try to encourage me. Look what you’ve done! You’re doing great! (Even if you’ve done less!) Look how many people you congratulated for their efforts, too! And look! A few of them gave you some pats on the back, too.

They call theirs kudos, because every social app has to have different word for this. I’m afraid, or excited, I can’t decide, that this will be what ultimately limits the growth of the social media data mining industry: running out of ways that we can all say we saw each other’s post, image or exercise.

Anyway, November was a good month on the bike. A record-setting month, for me. Most miles ever! By one mile! And I did that with the busy holiday week and some bracingly cold weather. “Bracingly” means stimulating and invigorating, so “bracingly” might be the wrong word to use there. Anyway, a big month, and also, I had a few achievements on Strava, itself.

December will likely be underwhelming, in comparison, but that’s OK! It’ll be exactly what it can be, which is exactly what it needs to be. And it’ll also be a cap to my best year ever on the bike, in terms of miles. And, somehow, for some reason, I am still riding outside. In December.

For a few more days, anyway.

But not today. Today, we were on campus.

Finals begin this time next week and so, for today’s classes, this was our final regular class together. Most people were able to stay awake. I think. I might have nodded off once or twice myself.

We talked about video graphics today. I had 13 pages of notes to share. Twelve of them were good pages. I probably should have stopped at a dozen. The slides were quite fun, though, and it allowed us to put a nice little bow on the class.

This semester these classes learned about camera controls, camera movements, audio capture and had some studio time. They made a commercial, beginning the lifelong journey of editing and post-production. Just recently we talked lights and graphics and some of the other tools and techniques like file management, group work and deadlines that go into media productions. Right now, they are working in groups on fake public service announcements.

From the snippets I hear, there is a lot of enthusiasm for that project. Some people seem very entertained by it. That part might be the best part of all, particularly for an introduction class.

Let’s go back to the Re-Listening project, where I am listening to all of my old CDs in the car, but in the order in which I acquired them. These aren’t music reviews — no one needs that — but an exercise in sharing great music, digging up some old memories and padding out the blog.

Today’s album debuted in 1995. I bought the thing in the summer of 2004, and I don’t know why I waited that long, but I’ll plead poverty. I don’t remember the first time I heard “Blue,” but it was in the 90s. And I remember playing that song, and a few others from “Tomorrow the Green Grass” on college radio a lot.

You’ll remember “Blue.” Everyone remembers “Blue.” For a time, everyone had a cover of “Blue.” It was the proto-Wagon Wheel. You might not recall the video. I certainly don’t. Ignore the obvious pretentiousness of 1990s music videos and soak in some harmonies.

Some hack writer around that time write of them:

At the intersection of country and jangle-pop lies a dusty old house. The upper-midwestern architecture is out of place with the scraggly ground surrounding it. Paint is peeling and flecking from the white porch railing. The planks of that porch are old and should be aged, but they’ve been worn smooth by bad-assed boots. There’s a swing, but it rarely swings; a ceiling fan that never turns.

When it rains — if it rains — the precious fluid falls in big dollops onto dust so dry it long ago gave up. The roof on that porch is tin — what else could it be? — the shutters could use some work and the whole structure got on its knees for paint three or four seasons ago. It has had lots of residents, that dusty old house at the intersection of country and jangle-pop. Its foundation is sturdy, its lines clean, its soul still dreaming.

The music coming from inside: The Jayhawks.

Whoever wrote that is cheesy, but it isn’t wrong. Not really.

I might have written it.

If there was ever a band I turned my stereo up too loud for, this was one of those bands. There were a few of them. That song was probably the reason why.

The band was a four-piece back then. Mark Olson was still in the group, this was, I guess, just before the first time he left. He’s splitting time with Gary Louris. Marc Perlman was there, of course, and Karen Grotberg was still on her first tour of duty. It’s a high quality quartet, but the percussion on the CD is a session player. Tim O’Reagan didn’t join the group until the subsequent tour. For my money, he’s been the player that makes the band work ever since.

Well, O’Reagan, and also Grotberg’s magical ability to fit in all over the melody.

Olson’s wife, the legendary Victoria Williams plays on the record, as does the great Lili Haydn, who was the virtuoso person you called if you wanted a violin for your rock ‘n’ roll project. You can hear on the song above.

This was The Jayhawks’ fourth record, but the first one I bought. (There will be many more, and some of them right away.) And there’s a Grand Funk Railroad cover right in the middle. I distinctly remember discovering that, a mixture of “HeyWhatWow!?!?!”

There’s a fair amount of stylistic exploration in this record, and none of it seems wasteful. You have to put that up against what was happening in music in 1995 — a year dominated by Garth Brooks, Van Halen, Boyz II Men, Springsteen, 2Pac, Lion King, Live, Ice Cube, Hootie & the Blowfish, Michael Jackson, Selena, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Coolio, Alanis, Mariah Carey and The Smashing Pumpkins. These guys, if you could find the record, would stand out. Several decades on, not every song is my favorite — that’s coming on another part of their discography, when they strip things back to the essential elements — but every one of them is still worth a listen.

My lovely bride and I saw them when we were first dating. It was an over-and-back trip to Atlanta, my first and so far only time seeing The Jayhawks, and the show that told me I was too old to do all of that in one day and go to work early the next morning.

Happily, they’ll be on the road next spring; some of those shows are already sold out. The next time they get close, I’ll be there to see them again.

The next two CDs in my collection are also from The Jayhawks. I bought them in August of 2004, on the day I was accepted into graduate school. I saw it as a little celebration, and that was some reward to myself. But that’s for the next installment of the Re-Listening project.

Oh, sure, today, when I have to be inside, it can be 20 degrees warmer and sunny. Isn’t that just the way of it? Of course it started out cold, ’tis the season, somehow. But by the time midday rolled around, by the time we got to campus, we were assured a beautiful day. And I got to spend the rest of it under fluorescent light bulbs.

Which was usual, but also mildly amusing today: we talked exclusively about lighting for film and television today. Hard light, soft light. Three-point light systems, key lights, fill lights, back lights. Four-point light techniques. High-key lights, low-key lights, silhouettes. The inverse square law (Intensity = 1/Distance-squared). Reflectors, infusers. I had compiled 10 pages of good notes to share.

And then, I did it again in a second class.

After which, I met up with a few colleagues and we went out for dinner. Italian. We talked, among other things, about music, and nostalgia. It was delightful.

I had the opportunity in that conversation to talk about the Re-Listening project, but I did not bring it up. There was an almost natural spot for it to fit in, and while I could have wedged it in, I let the moment pass. I’d much rather tell you about it, dear reader.

As you recall, the Re-Listening project is where I am playing all of my old CDs, in the order of their acquisition, in my car. These aren’t music reviews, but a fun jaunt down memory lane, a good excuse to put some music here and, of course, a good way to pad the site. Today we’re back somewhere in 2004, listening to the debut album from Los Lonely Boys. You’ll remember “Heaven,” which went to the top of the Billboard AC charts. So they had good airplay. They appeared on Austin City Limits and who all knows where else that year. A lot of people bought this record, it went double-platinum in 11 months. Willie Nelson raved about them. (This was recorded at his Pedernales studio.) And that part, and that single, are why I bought the CD.

That song won a Grammy.

And, friends, of all the records you might purchase on the basis of one song getting airplay, this is one of the better ones. I haven’t listened to this in a while, but when it came up for the Re-Listening project I was struck, once again, by the musicianship, and the joyful nature of it all. Also, the harmonies are pretty tight. But, first, you have to hammered by that blues guitar.

Also, this band is not a one-trick pony.

Most prevailing memory of Los Lonely Boys, we were at a small dinner party the year after this record was released, and a few of the songs made the playlist. That night was the night when our little clutch of grad school friends started considering The Yankee and I a couple.

Mostly, this whole album demands a drink with a lot of condensation on the glass.

This album settled comfortably in the nine spot on the Billboard 200, and finished on the 2004 year-end chart at number 44. In a display of it’s staying power, it was on the year-ender for 2005, at 85. More albums followed in the next decade — some with big commercial success — and a ton of touring. They just wrapped up a national tour, in fact, but they’ll be back on the road in January. Check them out of if they come near you.