My class visited Alabama Media Group today. I saw old friends, nice folks with whom I used to work that I don’t hardly get to see enough today. I didn’t even see everyone that I still know from al.com, but I saw enough of them to build that sense of melancholy of friends on hold or, the silly notion of being placed on hold. Silly because we are all still moving, because perhaps one day some of those circles will become concentric again.

Alex Walsh, an economist who does data journalism for AMG, was one of the people who spoke with my students.

We learned that on Friday everyone at AMG will go home, as usual. And, on Monday, they’ll all show up at their new office in the Young & Vann building.

The layout will be different. There will be less floor space in general and more room for collaboration. It is meant to be more open and inviting to the public. The new building will probably re-shape the culture of the company in ways they don’t understand yet. I suggested they need to install a Waffle House.

Then I’d have more reasons than friends to go visit.

Hit the pool tonight. I did it despite, for most of the first half of the thing I was trying to ignore my brain, which was urging me to get out of the water. My collarbone hurt. I drank a bit of the pool. The pool was closing soon. You’re surrounded by other people plodding along.

I don’t know how to process the information that I am faster than someone in the water. (I do not know what is happening.)

So I didn’t drown, but I did swim 1,750 yards. That’s still a mile.

Showered. Had dinner at Chic-fil-A and then visited Walmart. So I have a half-dozen new Walmart stories.

No?

Things to read … instead, then. This is another one of those quick, link only versions. But they are of high quality:

Birmingham police confirm man committed suicide this morning in downtown parking deck

If you are what you tweet, meet a ‘moron’

Online videos claiming to show missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 are actually malware, security experts warn

Social media monitoring widespread among college athletic departments, public records survey shows

The Changing World of the CMO

Number of farms dropping across Alabama

Study: Alabama roads improving at slow pace

And, finally, New version of MST3K is coming back to television. Some of those circles do come back together. Truly, these are halcyon days.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2014 at 11:59 pm and is filed under collarbone, I do not know what is happening., iPhone, journalism, links, photo, swimming, things to read, Wednesday. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.