Tuesday


18
Aug 20

But don’t analyze the marker

Among the many systems of keeping your life organized, you have to create strata so it all makes sense. And I have many systems. Calendars chart meetings and long term reminders. Index cards chart a day full of chores and meetings. My inboxes are tasks demanded by others. Word documents create a running list of fluid, ever-changing instructions to myself, half-baked ideas and strips of things I’ve copied and pasted. Notebooks hold life’s real mysteries: things that were important in the moment and adjudged to be of lasting significance, or at least worth treating like a mysterious message when I run across it again at some future point when the past is more than foggy.

But for everyday, in-the-moment reminders, the trust sticky note can’t be beat. You can get an hour or two’s worth of tasks on one with ease. They stick to a desk or, sometimes, a wall, and when you’re doing the peel-off process gives just enough resistance to mark the achievement. (And they fold up nicely into paper footballs, but that’s a different sort of benefit.)

Devoid of context, they are simultaneously enlightening and and mystifying.

Every day, sticky note. Every day.


4
Aug 20

Tuesday is getting even with me

I worked on campus yesterday. And I’m feeling it today! It was the sort of day that makes me glad I went to college. It was a highly physical day. We moved furniture. I sweat a lot. I only hurt myself twice, and on two separate tables.

One, I was trying to flip over a table and dropped it squarely on both big toes. You walk that off, in time. The other time, we were moving tables, via under-sized hand trucks, from one building to the other. This was a half-mile odyssey upon which only one table was destroyed. It wasn’t mine, at least.

It was sunny early, and then turned gray by midday.

And when we left at around 4 p.m. we were heavily invested in dodging rain drops. And that’s probably the part that left me the most achy today.

Probably not, but let’s go with it!

Anyway, it was nice to see people, at least the part of them between their masks and hairlines. It was nice to pitch in on a big project and make some progress on it. We were replacing furniture in a computer lab and rebuilding some edit bays and the like. Later this week we’ll go make some videos. It will almost feel like normal, if that’s your sort of thing.

I visited the grocery store on the way back to the house yesterday. I mention this only because the sport of mask watching seems to be obligatory at this point. The only people I saw sans-face covering were young people.

College town! What could go wrong!?

The only people I saw wearing masks incorrectly were three older ladies whose noses were born to be free, dagnabbit. What could go wrong, indeed.

I picked up the five items I went in for, stuffed them all in my semi-impermanent fabric shopping bags, forgot to look for the sixth item I was considering and made my escape, through the continuing rain. I was in and out in five minutes, and avoided both the mask deficient utes and the mask inefficient oldz.

The nicest part of all of this is that I loaded up the car with new music today. And, considering how much time I’m not spending in the car right now, it could last a good long while.

I predict you’re going to see more about this story in the next week or two.

The home state is also rocking the good personal decisions, I see.

That’s unfair, as generalizations go. Not everyone who is sick should be characterized as making poor choices. But a great many people seem to be intent on ill-informed decisions and it’s easy to sweep others into that group. To that subset of people, I apologize.

Perhaps you’ve already seen the instantly famous Axios interview. If not, you might. Either way, you might come away with some questions about what it contained. Seth Abramson put himself through the ringer to unpack the whole thing. It’s really something else. Do him a favor and reward his dedication to an unsavory job by reading about it.

And do me a favor by checking out these other places. There’s a lot more on Twitter, and I hear Instagram is popular these days, as well. Also, you can catch up on the work podcast On Topic with IU as well.


28
Jul 20

Posts this good don’t need titles

And now, two pictures of the same thing. This is in our foyer. And the sky and clouds were nice.

A bit later, I decided to take a photo of the wall, because sometimes you just have to blow out the sky and show off the color of walls that you inherited with the house.

One day we’re going to get that painted. It’ll be a professionally done job. First we have to settle on a color.

I got to talk political campaigns with a guy who studies politics today, so it was a good day. We were racing against the clock, trying to get this recorded before his kids found him and demanded he did Dad things for them.

He thinks schools are going to be a huge campaign issue this fall, which is probably true. I especially found that interesting considering the vote will be in November. He’s also talking about where the campaign donations are coming from, and the mail-in process.

We never did hear from his children. I was hoping this would be the episode that it finally happened. I always tell people on this program we’re just trying to get out the expertise, but I would absolutely highlight that sort of interruption. It’d be charming and real. No one has tried that yet, have they?


21
Jul 20

This is thin, I know

This is how the week is going so far. I kicked three consecutive field goals in the office last night.

And then I shanked one off the left upright and the football skittered off the desk and across the floor, which is a pretty good average for me.

I had a nice short run today. I’ve decided to just do one-milers for a while and see if I can get down to a respectable pace once again. And, from there, I’ll put some distance back in. Who knows if this is the right way to go, but I figure running less might mean I can, ultimately, run more.

For the briefest moment I had a running partner.

Here’s one thing you should know by now, but just in case you’re new here (and, if so, my apologies for this first impression) or you’ve forgotten: she’s faaaaast.

More on Twitter, check me out on Instagram and more On Topic with IU podcasts as well.


14
Jul 20

Three backyard pictures

That wasn’t the theme when I started this. I had a weekend photo to use, and a day’s post to pad out. What to do, what to do? There’s always a photo post waiting to happen.

And with three new photos and a slow Tuesday with few accomplishments to point to, I put a little branding tag on the pics. Time to try something new, I figured, and then I uploaded the photos.

And that works! Three photos! I can write around that! Look at the text layer! How over-done and gimmicky! I wonder how long that will last! Or how long it will be before I change the font? Or the size? Or I have to work around a picture with poor negative space.

Which was when I realized: I took all of these pictures in the backyard. And, if the backyard wasn’t somehow the height of adventure recently, that’d probably mean something. But, alas.

We have a little tree with a lot of character:

And we have other trees that are just casual foreground. This photo is really about how you can still see at almost 10 p.m. this time of year.

It’s my favorite part of the place, easy.

That was earlier this evening. And this was soon after. Darkness had fallen, we stood out in the yard to look up. The International Space Station was soaring overhead.

There are five people up there. I get to see it occasionally, and that never gets old. We are up there.

Space still excites people. Excites me, anyway, even if it is just from the backyard.