weekend


12
Mar 11

The umps changed their shoes

At the baseball game last night the guys one section over from us ridiculed the first base umpire mercilessly. He had bright, shiny, new shoes. They liked them very much. Today the umps had solid black shoes. Apparently the fans had gotten in their heads.

As the game today ran into the middle innings those same guys realized their shadows were falling on the mound, upon which they made shadow puppets for the opposing pitcher. They got in his head pretty well, too. All for not, the seventh ranked Arizona State has won two games in their weekend series against number 23 Auburn. Hardly matters. We shivered last night and enjoyed the sun and the shadows today. We’re sitting near a man who’s been buying season tickets to Arizona State baseball for 40 years. (They’ve had a great program for a lot of that time, their fans know their stuff and this particular bunch are vnice people and were complimentary of their trip to the plains.)

Today he was talking about how the college game is better than the professional game. The players don’t have to play hurt. It is a faster game. You can’t get seats like ours, about seven rows above first base, in the big leagues. I eat peanuts during the whole game and sit near people who are critical of the umpires’ shoes.

Got my bike back today. Took seven days to replace the crankset. By contrast I’ve had a radiator replaced in my car in half the time. But they apologized for the delay and thanked me for my patience. They didn’t charge me for labor on replacing a tire tube. They did charge me labor for replacing the crankset. We hadn’t discussed that.

So I think I’ll become a bike expert and learn how to fix everything myself. Because I can’t afford this business all the time.

Got my oil changed today, too. The guy asked if I wanted a new air filter. I said no. When the bill came it was about 15 bucks higher than it should have been. “You wanted the air filter, didn’t you?”

I’ll remember that, sneaky, duplicitous Express Oil Change man.

Then there was baseball and then home for steak and ironing. And then there’s tomorrow. No one’s especially looking forward to that.

(And don’t forget to spring forward.)


6
Mar 11

Catching up

Reagan

I didn’t really take any pictures this last week. Not sure how that happened. I always sit down and inspect the camera roll and the media cards and try to find something worth putting here. But today I’ve found not much of anything.

So there’s that Reagan stamp picture, which you can find (along with several other things) on the new LOMO blog. Do check it out.

I’ll surely do better this next week.


5
Mar 11

Happy Birthday!

That’s one of my mother’s favorite songs.

She might have heard that version as a very small child.


27
Feb 11

Catching Up

Bike

My new bike. Now if the pedals would show up …

Allie

So I walk in and there she is, hoping onto the counter and sliding into the sink like she’s always there when we aren’t around.

You want video?

Tins

Found these at Piggly Wiggly in Tuscaloosa while spending four days there taking my comprehensive exams. This made me happy.

Shadows

Shadows on nets. Sounds like a poorly titled romance novel, no? That was from earlier in the weekend, but Auburn won 2-0, on the strength of Derek Varnadore’s dominating 13-strikeout game.

Scale

This is at the farmers market in Opelika, using my iPhone’s Lomo app. Have you seen the LOMO blog yet?


26
Feb 11

“Is he OK?”

I’m a laid back guy. At least I like to think I’m calm and easy going. My friend Brian made me this graphic six or so years ago. I’ve always taken it as a compliment. It could be that there’s a grave insult here and people think of me as a hot-head, these things could go either way, but I choose to believe people think I’m reasonably pleasant to be around. But we all like to think like that. It is better than the alternative of your friends thinking you’re Charles Bronson paired up with Dirty Harry on a Really Bad Day.

“And that’s when he’s on time.”

So I like to think that I’m normally very consistent and living in that green level. This morning, at about 3 a.m., I was on the dark yellow.

Because, you see, this has been a long week. And when I settled in on Thursday night I got a little rest. And then on Friday I discovered I was rather tired. So it only seemed logical to get a good night’s sleep because I hit the wall at the baseball game and found myself not even hungry for dinner thereafter.

So we came home with our extra pizza and I pretty much made my way directly to bed last night. And then the cat meowed awhile. Meow isn’t the right word. Howl doesn’t really describe it either, though it comes closer. There is no word that describes the urgency “Lassie fell in the well after Timmy and it looks bad and this time I didn’t even push, I promise. Come quick, really!” But this is what we deal with every night, and this tired-before-9 p.m. night was no different.

She’d quiet down and I’d doze of. Repeat. She’d quiet down and I’d dose off, but in some uncomfortable position.

I dozed off and woke up deciding to visit the restroom. So I got up, got the dizzies, took a knee and thought about it for a minute.

I came back to bed wide awake, which just makes me think Lassie should take Timmy out beyond the county line, really.

There’s nothing worse than staring at the ceiling, because when the mind wakes up the rest of you must too. The alternative is at least doing something. Because of this I only go to bed when I’m good and truly exhausted. I’ve been sleepless before, so I stay up. I’ve been so tired I couldn’t go to sleep before, and that’s annoying, sure, but this takes the cake. I was so tired I couldn’t stay asleep.

So I got up and cleaned out an Email account I never use anymore. I created some space on my server by cleaning out some old files. I caught up on a little reading. I changed the front page of my site. I found that graphic above from 2005. I built an entirely new blog.

Meet LOMO, the page I’ll update only from my phone, featuring only pictures I’ve taken with the lomographic filter. Trust me here: You need another diversion, particularly at 4 a.m.

And around 4:40 this morning I finally tried going back to sleep.

So here we are, another beautiful weekend day. Another glorious day at the park:

PlainsmanPark

The Auburn Tigers won 3-2 today, bringing their series to a tie with the rubber match tomorrow. Wonderful day to be outdoors.

We also visited the farmers market — which appears a few times in the new LOMO blog, do check it out. We bought fruits and vegetables, because they are cheaper there, but not the gummy bears, which were far more expensive. We hit the grocery store, stocking up on items for the next few days and then the cupcake shop because you must sometimes be indulgent.

So that was today, which started in the early parts of yesterday and will carry over until the cat stops telling horrific tales sometime in the early a.m. hours. Tomorrow I’ll have to be productive again, but only after the baseball game.