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adventures / family / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off
9
May 22

A few weekend photos, and cats

I had the opportunity to watch the School of Nursing graduation on Saturday. Their ceremonies were in our building for space reasons, and it was neat to see all of those happy, bright young people getting ready to go do some hard work.

Nursing is a calling. All of the good ones are angels, and the rest are certainly working on it.

I noticed for the first time, on the way into the building, this blooming lilac (syringa oblata).

Just in time for summer!

We went for a bike ride this weekend, and I was sucking wind hard enough on the second half that I was able to take a photo to add to the irregular Barns By Bike collection.

And I marked Mother’s Day with a nice call and these classic photographs. I think this was my first snowfall.

We might have been overdressed. If I knew the date I’d look up the weather so we can laugh at the faux fur hooded parka my mom is wearing. But, instead, I just had a nice chat with her. She’s enjoying a weekend getaway vacation, and we enjoyed a nice long chat yesterday evening.

And now it’s time for you to enjoy the weekly check-in with the cats.

Here’s Phoebe doing one of the things she does best.

That cat relaxes so hard. I’m not saying she’s lazy. She has an intensity to her naps heretofore unseen by mortal man.

Poseidon was enjoying a little time in the window this morning.

Better than licking the blinds. He loves blinds. And every day I don’t have to take some broken blinds down and waste an hour buying and installing new ones is a victory.

That’s a three-blind window, and I have replaced each of them because of that cat.

Poseidon, like a cat does, also likes to get in all the places Poseidon isn’t supposed to be. These are strictly inside cats, so the evenings when we are cooking out Poseidon wants to go outside in a most desperate way. Someone has to hold him.

Enter the cardboard boxes they enjoy.

Phoebe was all too happy to play the role of the watchful warden. She stayed on the top of the second box the whole time he was in there. For most of that time he was purring happily away, too. And we didn’t have to worry about him while grilling.

cycling / IU / photo / television / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
4
May 22

Coldest 62° ever

I believe I had the last meeting of the semester today. Things aren’t over, but the meetings are. And the activities are wrapping up this weekend. Once those tasks are complete, we’ll be doing … summer things.

Personally, I think everyone needs a few weeks off, unscored against their vacation time. It’d do everyone a world of good after the last few years. It’d be useful for the year to come.

Just you wait, someone is going to say this out loud in a few months, but you heard it here first.

But no one listens to my ideas.

Makes the meetings fun.

Here are some more of the programs IUSTV has produced at the end of the semester. I’m told there’s still maybe one more show to roll out this week.

They are still editing and producing shows during finals week. It’s impressive.

Robert Steven Mack is interviewing American Enterprise Institute’s Dr. Zack Cooper, about China’s relationship with Russia and the U.S. after the invasion of Ukraine. Pretty hefty stuff.

Riley and Alex follow the fan shenanigans — I’m just going to call them fananigans — during Little 500 weekend. It’s real atmospheric stuff. Fun, enthusiasm, silliness. What a campus should be — at least part of the time.

It took me two episodes to get it, but I’m a slow learner. That show grows on you in a hurry. I’ll miss it over the summer, but I hope it comes back even bigger in the fall.

We went for a bike ride this evening. She had to do hill repeats. Usually, when I even hear the phrase “hill repeats” I lose two or three miles per hour off my average. But I checked my numbers just before we started the hills, and just after, and I managed to hold everything steady throughout the up and down and up and down and up and down of the hill repeats.

There will be harder, longer hills later. I’ll be slower. The above paragraph will not apply to that experience.

Here we are — well, here she is; I am behind the camera — after those hills, and weaving through the last two neighborhoods before the house. In the last one we found ourselves in an impromptu sprint. We were doing the mid 30s and I was running out of gears.

I was probably working harder at it than she was.

She’s fast.

photo / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
3
May 22

More moving pictures

I was mistaken about the number of shows still left in the tank for IUSTV. I thought there were two. Here are four. And there’s at least two more still to go after this … So I was off by six.

It’s not the greatest miscount of my week, I am sure.

Anyway, let’s watch some stuff. IU Fanshop, which is a show just about being a fan (the most important thing at the park, by the way) they’re talking to people at a softball game. There’s even an appearance from The Yankee in this show.

They also went out and heard from all of the people at the Little 500 races. This is a two-part feature. Here’s part one.

And here’s Not Too Late. Mia interviews some guy named Captain Torrent, a movie pirate, who’s really leaning into the bit. Also, there’s a pet safety segment.

And here’s the morning show, The Bloomington Breakfast Club, with their season finale, which I wrote about here on Friday.

I got in from the office, narrowly avoiding the many traffic hazards along the way. For a time I cataloged them. How many dangerous or nonsensical or stupid things can you find in 4.5-mile trip. Quite a few, as it turns out.

Yesterday an SUV and a UPS truck were each parked on a two-lane, one way road. That means the road was … I’ll wait while you do the math here … blocked. There was also the zipping around people guy. And, later, the person who almost had a violent lesson in how roundabouts work. And we haven’t discussed yet the pedestrians.

It’s an everyday adventure. As I negotiated part of that route today, in the always-neat simultaneous sun and rain, the local radio host was doing his annual bit about the city getting lighter this summer. The out-of-town students are beginning to scatter as they wrap up their finals. We are saying all of our goodbyes and starting to think about having parking spaces and being able to make a left turn in just one red light.

Today I barely made it through a straight intersection in one light. A few months with almost a third less of the cars and people wouldn’t be a bad thing. To say nothing of the buses.

The buses are their own sort of danger.

Scenes from a walk. The golden groundsel (Packera aurea) is back and showing off.

And the dandelions are happily back as well, seemingly everywhere that hasn’t been mowed recently. The public properties don’t get cut every week, which means a lot of puffballs.

The foliage on the trees are on their way, supposedly.

At least the clouds are dynamic, right?

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
2
May 22

Happy May

We went for a bike ride on Saturday. Lovely day for it, but a bit of a breeze, by which I mean a headwind in every direction. Also, she’s well on her way back to being fast again, just five weeks removed from leg surgery.

Which means it’ll be difficult to keep up with her in a week or two. Which means I’ll be in trouble in a month or so.

I must go faster. Somehow.

If it isn’t a fast ride, though, I just linger off the back and turn it into a scenic spin. There’s always some way to win.

We went to the softball game on Sunday afternoon. (At least it was breezy!) It was a good one to see.

Scoreless after seven, Indiana and Illinois went to extra innings in an excellent pitchers’ duel. IU had a chance to win in the 10th, but couldn’t score on a squeeze after finally advancing their first baserunner to third.

In the top of the 11th the Illini scored on two RBI singles to right, but IU was ready for their moment. Suddenly the bases were loaded and senior Brittany Ford drove one to the warning track in center.

Indiana won 3-2 in 11, avoiding the sweep at home and improving to 26-19. IU will wrap up the regular season at Nebraska next weekend.

Let’s check on the kitties, which remains our most popular weekly feature. They’re doing great, enjoying the actual sunshine we’re experiencing now, and yet still cuddling for warmth like we’re in the depths of winter. (I was even able to wear shorts this weekend, at the beginning of May.)

Phoebe likes walls … for some reason right now.

And if a wall isn’t available, there’s always a bit of furniture she can swim up to.

Isn’t she cute?

Poseidon likes the weekends because The Yankee makes a late breakfast and that gets the oven warm and he can take naps on this stovetop cover and enjoy the radiating heat.

That’s the routine.

“WE WANT SOME MEATLOAF!”

“THE MEATLOAF! WE WANT IT NOW!”

adventures / Bloomington / IU / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
25
Apr 22

If you’re keeping count, this is week 17 of the year

Let’s get this week started off the best way possible, by recounting our weekends! It’s as good a way as any to work through the reality of a Monday, I suppose. So, most importantly, how was your weekend? Great and warm and as precisely relaxing or fruitful as you planned, I hoped.

Mine started at the track. I left the office to catch the end of the Women’s Little 500. I briefly talked with the race director on Wednesday and it didn’t occur to me until later that I should have asked him why they start the thing at 4 p.m., when most of us are working. We ran into a guy we know who is a professor at a nearby school. We’ve had dinner with him before, worked on a paper together, used to hang out a bit socially, when that was a thing. This was the first time I’ve seen him since before Covid. Since then he’s bought a house, gotten married and had a child. The kid is already solving mid-level mathematical equations apparently. Time flies.

On Saturday was the men’s race. They take 200 laps around the track that surrounds the soccer field. Here’s the start and finish.

There were just three crashes. One was small and early in the race and the three or four guys that got tangled up in it popped right back on their bikes. One other I missed, and the guy seemed to be OK-ish when they hustled him off the track. And the last was in turn four of the white flag lap. They never threw up the caution flag — perhaps they have rules about that, or they just messed up — but this one was in the lead group. One of the guys was still crawling off the track when the remains of those hard-charging riders came back around 30-some seconds later. Most importantly, the group of eight contenders was whittled down to three or four guys, and that was the race.

Also, if you are wearing your best overalls, but somehow forget a shirt, a copy of the newspaper is highly adaptable.

Let’s check in on the cats. Here’s Phoebe at play in the cat tree.

And here’s Phoebe catching up on her time in the sun.

You can’t see it from the angle here, but Poseidon is sitting with his back legs on the sofa, and his front legs on me and his torso is hammocked in mid-air.

He seems to think that’s comfortable.

He also seems to think he’s a model.

I saw this car on Friday. I’m still surprised this was the first time I’ve seen this car around here. You think you’d notice that. It does stand out.

And, finally, a bloomington tree in blooming bloom.

Spring is upon us, thankfully.