Helped clean the garage. We have a too-small garage. But, then I think that every garage should have about 20 more square feet. And laundry room. Almost every laundry room needs to be larger, but I digress.
We have a little punch out in our garage, allowing basement access. And in that area we also have two 7-foot-tall shelving units. But it was all in the way, according to my lovely bride. I’m not the best with conceptualizing spatial arrangements, but I didn’t think it would provide the space she thought. But it is spring break and it was her idea so that’s what she started and I joined her for that and, wouldn’t you know it she might be right.
We’ll find out in a few days of using the new configuration, I guess, but the first impression looks promising.
I gave it the first test today. The bikes are now parked where the shelves were. And I went on a little ride this evening, just to spin my legs. It was down the chipseal road past the winery, onto the little cut through that has some of the newest asphalt around, a downhill stretch of two-tenths of a mile of pure ribbon, and then back up by the local park and into town, where I let the traffic decide my route. I was going to turn around once, but had to take a right because of what was behind me. And I was going to turn left later, but had to go straight because of what was ahead of me.
The last five miles were about getting out of town and through two neighborhoods and back home.
There is a nearby Strava segment, and I have the second fastest time on it. I should have the fastest time on it. This year, I’m breaking the record, which was set in 2020.
In my first try of the year I was one second off my PR and 11 seconds off the record.
I left maybe three seconds out there from a wobble, not taking the left-hander perfectly and sitting up a little too soon.
Felt good, until the end.
Even if that’s close to right, I need to improve by a lot. But there will be plenty of opportunities to improve. There always are.
Yes, we are in Chicago. Spring has arrived here with us. (It will snow here this weekend.) But today is beautiful, and if there’s one thing I learned in the Midwest, it is that you live for the day, because tomorrow could be an entirely different kind of problem.
But this trip is great, because we are with friends and colleagues, most of whom we haven’t seen in a year. Sadly, some aren’t here for international travel reasons, but maybe in a few years more reunions will be had.
We had lunch with friends from South Florida and UNC-Chapel Hill today. Lovely, lovely people. The sort you should see more than once a year. Two, maybe three times would be much better — and still keep me at low risk of being found out. We walked down to an Irish pub, where everyone working there was Irish, or at least had worked out a good accent. I had the shepherd’s pie, because I’m a sucker for the stuff. In the back of the joint, near the restroom, was this sign.
I glanced at that, thought, They oughta know and took a good picture.
Down the street was a bike shop. My lovely bride had a meeting and I had nothing to do, so I walked down there. Look! Bikes!
The application of that bike lane warning was hasty, and there’s probably an end-of-the-work-week story that isn’t that good, but I had a two block walk, which gave me plenty of time to invent a better story.
I went to the bike shop to look for helmets. I’m due a new helmet this year. Past due, in fact. And they have one I like. And since it’s not at my local store, and I had a few minutes I figured, why not? Except while this store had it on their website, they didn’t have it in the shop. Now, it’s a small enough place that everyone sees you come and go, and so I felt a bit silly about being in there and walking out without buying anything. I need new fingerless gloves, so I bought some. They made a sale, I didn’t leave empty handed, everyone was happy.
And I saw Didi the Devil! He’s a German superfan. A car mechanic by trade, holder of 17 world records for bike inventions and he’s been on the side of the road for all the big races in Europe for 30-some years now. The story goes that in German broadcasts, the old 1 km to go flag, a red triangle hanging above the race, was called “The devil’s flag,” and that inspired the costume. The riders say it’s good luck to see him in the race.
I’ll never see him in a race, of course, but I do see him when I watch the races. And since I’m talking about bikes tomorrow, maybe he’ll bring me some good luck.
The photo was taped to the customer-facing side of the receipt dispenser, so if I had not gotten new gloves I wouldn’t have seen him today. The guy that made the sale flipped that photo up and showed me another one taped beneath it. Double good luck to all their customers who know what they’re looking at.
After the day’s pre-conference work, we went out for dinner with a friend from St. Bonaventure. We headed to another pizza place, but it was a two hour wait for some mysterious reason. Looked dead, sounded quiet. No one wanted a wait like that, so we went to Billy Goat’s Tavern.
It was legendary before it became a bit on SNL.
The place is steeped in Chicago history. This is beneath the old newspapers, and so all of the reporters and the people that wanted to be seen came here. The walls are covered in the city’s history. The picture frames jammed next to one another like a wood and glass wallpaper.
We first visited in 2008, when we were there for another conference. We stopped by at lunch time, when the line wraps around the restaurant and the old man was doing his cheezborger shtick for his guests. That guy is, or was, the life of the party, and he knew it and reveled in it. He could also take one look at you and guess what you were eating. It doesn’t hurt that it was a relatively small menu, but he could just tell. It was great. Also, the borgers are pretty good burgers.
At the time of night we visited, it was quieter, the night crew didn’t need to do the gimmick. And there was plenty of room to sit and have a quiet meal. Also, the borgers are still pretty good burgers.
Now I’m going to go finish my presentation. I have to deliver a concise 12 minutes on this research tomorrow. It’d be better if they would allow me 14.
Today was the day I was to put my contracting packet behind me. I’ve worked on varying versions of this for weeks, and I reached the finish line, both in what I could do and what I could tolerate, last night. It’s a helpful process in several respects, but it is also time intensive and there are other things I need to be doing.
So I went to campus today because a colleague who is on this particular committee wanted to see what the new CMS the university is using looks like. He’s been frustrated by the rollout of the new process, which is function of where you are standing. Most of my confusion with the process has been of my own doing. There are a few things that they’ll improve on for future versions of this process — you have to go through this every few years — but that will surely improve. My colleague’s perspective shows him some other things. The guy is a rock star, and he’s been incredibly helpful through this whole process. It might not be that every department has a guy like him to help the new people, which would be a shame. He’s definitely been a huge and helpful part of this for me. So I brought him an afternoon coffee and we sat down to look at the new upload system.
I stopped at Dunkin. And then I couldn’t get into the parking deck at work, so I had to drive around while his coffee cooled and looked for a parking space. I wound up parking some ways away, and walked in, while the coffee kept cooling. I assume that’s what it does. I don’t know anything about coffee. And, really I just wanted to get to the office on time and get my packet uploaded and move on to anything else.
The new uploading system we were testing has been perhaps the easiest part of the process. Even still, there were a few unexpected things. Nothing that can’t be overcome. Also, they had my title and department wrong.
So I couldn’t complete the process. Perhaps tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day I will put my contracting packet behind me. It better be tomorrow; the thing is due tomorrow night. It’s complete, and the only thing left to do is upload the files. Most anyone can do that and I am what they call tech savvy.
1785, slang, “practical sense, intelligence, knowledge of the world;” also a verb, “to know, to understand;” a West Indies pidgin borrowing of French savez(-vous)? “do you know?” or Spanish sabe (usted) “you know,” the verb in both from Vulgar Latin *sapere, from Latin sapere “be wise, be knowing” (see sapient). The adjective, of persons, is attested by 1905, from the noun. Related: Savvily; savviness.
I guess that’s why.
Anyway, got home, took care of about three weeks worth of email, and then celebrated by doing … not much else today, and enjoying the reflective glow of having this behind me.
And then I went downstairs and basked in the glow of the Zwift screen. I decided to try a race. I think I’ve done three races, now. The first one I don’t even remember. I did one a few weeks ago in a group I had no business being in. The field split up right away and I managed to come in at the front of the second group, with two other people who were pushing me on the last climb.
Today, I chose a flat course, and I followed Zwift’s suggestion. The game will tell you where you should be racing based on your recent performance. And based on my performance I should be in the category that’s one step above physical therapy.
When the time came to begin the group all spun into action together and I found myself right at the front of the ground. I took a photo for proof, because who would believe it?
Second place! I stayed right up front for about seven miles, about 70 percent over my threshold and wondering how long I could stay there. The answer is: about seven miles.
The front of the field left me behind, I faded in the last mile and the next group came up to race me to the line.
And then I rode on for another 10 miles, at a much slower pace because it turns out I was also under-fueled, just to see how long it would take to lower my heart rate. Not too long, it turns out. That’s cardiovascular quality for you. Where it went in the last few minutes of that race we’ll never know.
And the long-range forecast suggests that next week I might be riding outside!
I’ve got nothing much, and we’re woefully behind on the CDs, so guess what? If you don’t like this you should come over and do some grading for me so I can do something more fun, that’s what.
We are 13 albums behind in the Re-Listening project. This is the one where I’m listening to all of my CDs in the car, and in the order (more or less) in which I acquired them. More or less because all of them are in CD books. Remember those? And I recently discovered that I got two of the books out of order. None of this matters.
This is the second time I’ve written about Memory Dean in the Re-Listening project. The first time was in 2022, which was just at the beginning of this silly exercise. It hasn’t been a regular feature here, but it has been fun. Memory Dean, their independent album that they were selling out of the back of their trunk in 1993. The obscure “In My Father’s House There Are Many Mansions” album was half studio production and half live shows. And, in truth, was probably originally a cassette. I got it because a college buddy of mine knew the band, introduced me and gave me that one in the rare disc trade. Memory Dean is a group from Georgia, where my buddy was from, so he could get more copies. He liked a CD I had that really only had one good song on it, by a band that was local to me, a band who’s name I can’t even remember, so we swapped.
In 1997, “So Complicated” came out, their third release, their first as a full band, having added a rhythm section. And they were finally on a small, independent label, Capricorn Records, originally out of Macon, but by then a Warner Brothers imprint running in Nashville. Somewhere around that time I picked it up.
Here’s the title track, which, on the basis of this driving power, they released as a single.
That’s much different than what Memory Dean had sounded like for years in all the little venues across the Southland. It was too guys and two guitars and some good times and singalongs. And there’s some of that on “So Complicated,” too. The problem, for us, is that almost nothing from this album is online. Go figure.
But here’s a demo of track six, which probably should have been the lead off track for all that it signaled about this record.
Despite the new direction, there are some re-orchestrated versions of stuff that had been on their first two releases. “Ghost,” for instance, came out on their previous effort, and it’s in the classic format.
The only thing missing is the Bubba Riff.
Similarly, “Dying to Live” made it on here, too. And it’s a better title than anything else.
Their last release, according to Discogs, was 2001, which is about right. They still played, and then they played sporadically. From what I can tell it was probably special appearances or venues with historical or otherwise convenient ties. It looks like they haven’t played together since 2021. Shame, really. They had a good niche and a fanbase to go with it.
Then there’s this other, even better niche. I don’t recall when I got this, but it was probably in a bargain bin, and it was an absolute steal. When I got it, I probably thought something like “Everyone needs a little Otis.” My apologies for not clearly remembering my inner dialog from more than a quarter of a century ago. I’d like to distract you from that failing with Mr. Dock of the Bay himself.
That’s straight out of the Stax catalog, and there’s nothing wrong with that. This album comes to us from 1968, is still timeless and remains one of the best records ever pressed into any format. Otis Redding’s seventh studio album, and one of the many many posthumously released titles. The last stuff he laid down for this were recorded two days before the plane crash that killed him in December of 1967.
A lot of the tracks collected here some B-sides or things that, by now, are well known to us. “Glory of Love” was basically a standard, and it became a top 20 hit in 1968, four decades into its life here, but I did not know, until just this moment, that Redding had a video for this one, and it is almost 60 years old now. And, aside from a little problem of warbly tape degradation that was sneaking into this before it was digitized, I might prefer this version.
The guy just looks so effortlessly cool there, that even back then in what have to some of the earliest days of what we think of now as a music video, there’s just two shots. I assume the cutaway in the middle is to cover a lip syncing flub.
The Huckle-Buck came to us from Tin Pan Alley (and so I really am curious about the song selection here now) and this is what a crossover hit sounded like after it had crossed back and forth a few times since the 1940s.
Here’s the original, which topped the R&B charts for 14 weeks, if you want to get really historical. And if you hear rock ‘n’ roll here, from 1949, you’re not the only one.
Proving once again that I need someone to create the living breathing flow chart of music, what a site to see that would be. (Music history of the 20th century would be, probably, my fourth interesting area to study, if I could keep all of it straight in my head, or if someone developed that chart. I imagine it like a family tree.)
Speaking of sites to see, this song and the dance craze that came with it mainstreamed enough to make it onto The Honeymooners.
The Tin Pan Alley aspect of the song comes in with the lyrics, of course. Roy Milton sang it first, and he drove the song to the number five spot on the R&B charts.
Frank Sinatra did it soon after and could only push it to 10.
But you wanted a blues standard, I heard you say? Otis Redding is your man. Here he’s got a post World War I vaudeville-style piece that has aged remarkably well, for now being more than a century old.
Remember, I said I got this because I figured everyone needed a little Otis Redding. But what you get out of this album is an education. There’s music from all over the country and spanning three or four decades of the best American art forms, 11 tracks in all, and 10 of them are spectacular. It closes with one of Redding’s own B-sides, a soul-infused blues track that probably is due a remaster, but only so you can study every integral part of the thing.
Wikipedia tells us that “Ole Man Trouble” helped Redding capture the growing white blues/soul market. No citation was needed. Every time this song, or anything on this album plays, I feel like there’s a new sense of discovery going on between my ears. It’s not an ole man trouble, but a young man’s appreciation.
It will never not surprise me to remember that he died before this record was released, and he was just 26 years old.
And that’s 1,200 words on music you weren’t expecting today, but if you made it this far I know you found something you enjoyed. Go enjoy it again.
Let me tell you about last Thursday. I went to campus with my lovely bride. She had to teach. I had lunch with the provost. He does these occasional sit downs with various groups of faculty and you get invited once every three or four years. So you take advantage of it, for the delicious sandwich wraps, and some chit chat.
We went around the room, introducing ourselves, which is no less painful than when you did it on the first day of school, no matter how old you are. The provost said a few things, and then opened the floor to questions. One of our colleagues asked about the NIH cuts on grants and what effect that would have on the university. The provost answered that question, a long, thoughtful, encouraging answer. He and his office had put a lot of thought into this, which is great, since it is so new and, as he said, there’s still a lot we don’t know. (Which is one of the points.)
Then someone else asked a similar kind of question, getting into the nuts and bolts of that. What precisely the grants mean, how this overhead concept works, and so on. Not everyone is involved in this process on a daily basis, and so it was a good question, and he answered it well.
Then I asked a question about addressing students in the face of all of this uncertainty.
That took up most of the rest of the lunch hour, because there is a lot of that answer to still work on.
The provost is a sharp man, an engineer by training and trade. He believes in the university’s vitality in an easy, contagious, kind of way. We had a pleasant talk, and then he and I talked again after the lunch was over.
And then I went home and got back on this writing project. There was a draft of it due by Friday night. The draft of a project meant to describe my first year. It’ll be about 30 pages. To be fair to me, I’m really writing about four months, and not a whole year. But I’ll drag that out for tomorrow’s post.
Here are some geese I saw last Thursday during a work break.
Today, it was more grading, grinding my way through that Hogan reading I mentioned the other day. Bernie Hogan’s The Presentation of Self, that is. The abstract:
Presentation of self (via Goffman) is becoming increasingly popular as a means for explaining differences in meaning and activity of online participation. This article argues that self-presentation can be split into performances, which take place in synchronous “situations,” and artifacts, which take place in asynchronous “exhibitions.” Goffman’s dramaturgical approach (including the notions of front and back stage) focuses on situations. Social media, on the other hand, frequently employs exhibitions, such as lists of status updates and sets of photos, alongside situational activities, such as chatting. A key difference in exhibitions is the virtual “curator” that manages and redistributes this digital content. This article introduces the exhibitional approach and the curator and suggests ways in which this approach can extend present work concerning online presentation of self. It introduces a theory of “lowest common denominator” culture employing the exhibitional approach.
It is an interesting paper, and an interesting thing is happening with the students. When I taught it last semester I saved a file with all of my notes thinking I might recycle them in some future class. I write to the students about specific questions they think up while reading the paper. This crop of students, however, have asked entirely different kinds of questions. So I have about eight pages of notes that are no good. Meaning I have to write all new answers.
It’s a hard life.
I haven’t been able to ride my bike enough lately. Too many real world intrusions. But I got in a quick hour this evening. And I included a few miles in the quantum realm.
Zwift put in these extra features a year or two ago. They call them climbing portals, where the point is just going up, which I did. I assume, or I read and I’ve forgotten it, that the idea was to give additional climbs without spending all the development time of building the background decoration of the surrounding world. This also means they could alter these relatively easily or quickly. I don’t know if they will, or maybe they have. But I doubt both. Everything you perceive in the quantum realm is weird.
For example, in that photo, I’m actually headed back out and on the descent, bot that you can tell. But, believe me, the legs notice all these differences. Everything in the quantum realm is weird.
