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adventures / food / Friday / photo — Comments Off
3
Mar 17

We went West

We have successfully reached Napa Valley, which was our goal. We have checked into our hotel … oh wait, I forgot to mention our luggage:

When you pack in a hurry, you tend to pack a lot.

We’re going to be here for four days and I can put a week’s worth of decent clothes in one small roller. Years of practice, you see.

On our way up here this morning The Yankee and I both had a first:

We agreed — in fact we each came to this decision independently — that Whataburger was better. I said this online and people disagreed in varying degrees. This led to an entire conversation on the construct of taste, which I can distill, in this instance, to one sentence: How can people disagree when I am so obviously right?

Not there was anything wrong with In-N-Out. It just wasn’t the best thing in the world. It isn’t a top five burger, if you ask me. Here, let’s settle this. If you notice the menu at In-N-Out the wording suggests you should do the burger with either the onion, or without. So I chose the with option. The onion made the burger. And when an onion makes your burger, well, that’s just a kind of average burger. I did enjoy the fries.

Anyway, we made it to Napa. We checked in to our hotel. We registered for the big Sunday event. We met some friends. The Yankee is here to see four or five friends, and some of them I met tonight.

We went to Morimoto for dinner. That was worth trying. Tomorrow, I think, we’ll be lazy tourists. Sunday we’ll be busy.

adventures / IU / photo / Thursday / video — Comments Off
2
Mar 17

Another sign of spring!

Pretty soon I can stop counting, them, right? The signs of spring? It’ll just be spring. But, even still, even with that knowledge, you point in wonder:

And then you do the most sensible thing you can think of. You travel north:

And then west, because that’s better than going farther north in the winter. So we have arrived in California, by way of Minnesota. We flew from Minneapolis to Sacramento this evening. We passed over Reno and Carson City, I think. And we had the option of driving on into the night or staying at a hotel near the airport. We chose the latter. It was the wiser choice. We’ll go to Napa Valley tomorrow.

Tonight, a few things for you to watch, which some the IUS crews produced this week:

adventures / Monday / music / video — Comments Off
27
Feb 17

Dynamite with a laser beam

On Wednesday night we had a flat. And the spare was also flat. And the compressor was dead. (You don’t have a compressor? Every car should have a compressor. You never know when your spare is flat.) Anyway, a friend picked up The Yankee and she went to get my car and my compressor (every car should have a compressor) and I changed the flat, which had a nail, to the spare, which just needed air. And in the amount of time that took I could feel the symptoms — scratchy throat, glassy eyes — coming on.

So I’ve had sinuses or allergies or both since then. Lots of decongestants, very little breathing and all the weird medicine head and light fever sensations since then. And I really, really like to breathe.

Anyway, there’s not a lot here from the weekend because we had a casual weekend.

We did see this show, however, which was a lot of fun. Brody Dolyniuk covered Queen tunes with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. We had dinner Saturday night at an Irish pub and wondered what they would open with. I believe it was “I Want to Break Free.” And then what do you close with? “We Will Rock You,” of course, unfortunately. In between they did a wide range of the catalog including “Under Pressure,” which I don’t listen to much anymore. (I think it is better that way. Maybe it becomes something more special. Maybe I can always, then, keep track of where I heard it last. The last time I was at a Jason’s Deli, alone, eating one sad little dinner. It was right after David Bowie died.) They did a chill bump-causing cover of “Who Wants to Live Forever.” I mean just stirring. And, also, this, just before the end, which was of course a singalong:

There’s only one Freddie Mercury, science will tell you about that. But you can still catch a good show inspired by him.

adventures / Friday / history / Indiana / IU / photo — Comments Off
17
Feb 17

You can decide which parenthetical note is best

Yesterday I wrote, for too long, about a blue jean jacket. (“Rosebud … “) I also learned that they were back in style. As if they should have ever left …

I looked for a picture of me in the jacket, but I don’t have one. I’m sure they exist though. And then, this morning, we saw definitive proof that they were back. This is a morning show our students shoot:

On the left is one host. On the far right is another. Obstructed from this angle is a fashion columnist from the campus paper. And she is talking about the outfit being worn by the young woman on the middle right. Denim on denim.

Different colors, she intoned seriously, so that each stands out from the other.

We had a name for that once upon a time, and, as I recall, it was a look to be avoided. But everything changes.

We were setting up cameras before that. This has a name, but I forget what it is. So let’s just call it cool:

I did some of the other things that make up a normal day at the office. I helped some folks practice weather presentations on the green screen. I had lunch. At 2:30 I finally got caught up on the day’s email. I talked to students. I also gave a tour of the building today. And after work we went over to Nashville, the little artists’ colony about 20 miles away, for dinner.

We had a date! The Yankee found Hobnob Corner, which has been around since just after the Civil War as a dry goods store and then a restaurant. It felt like a cracker barrel. The people were friendly. The decor was rustic. The walls were covered with photos of the history of the little town. (White settlers came in after an 1809 treaty. Farming and forestry ran the isolated area. By the time the 20th century rolled around deforestation ruined the agriculture because of poor practices leading to wide scale erosion. Roads, the Depression and the CCC, then the artists showed up. The town has three traffic lights, which is all of the lights in the county. They enjoy tourism as a big part of their economy.) My favorite photo was of a parade from 1900. I thought it might have been a prohibition parade, or a women’s suffrage march. But I just found a site with a similar photo that might be of the same parade, and it is labeled there as Decoration Day.

But they have some pretty nice dining there. Try the Duck Breast with Orange Maple Glaze with butternut squash risotto and sauteed kale. (This is the only acceptable way to eat kale.)

We’ve been over to Nashville once before, in the daylight, in the summer time, when things were open. I’m sure we’ll go back. There are always new shops to see and 24 restaurants to try and dates to be had.

adventures / friends / memories / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
14
Feb 17

My sun-eating Valentine

Some pictures are worth remembering. Some pictures you just know perfectly. I have about 13-plus years worth of snapshots on my website. And after Lauren, earlier today, posted a picture of the two of us from our 2013 trip to Ireland I wondered if I could recall the first one of her I uploaded.

The sun-eating one, I figured, had to be high up the list. And so I went back through our early months of knowing one another. I scrolled through the people we knew, most all of whom have kept us around, since then, until there I was, 12 years ago. February 2005. I remember the night I took this picture going down the highway, and that one is probably from a library, because I have always liked repetition in my pictures. These next two are at a Super Bowl party in Five Points we were invited to.

The Patriots beat the Eagles in that game. Paul McCartney was the halftime show. (I had to look this up.)

And, oh look, here are a few sunsets and clouds. And there she was. The 10th photo I uploaded in February 2005, the first one of her.

We were in her car. I know precisely where that was, two cities, two jobs (for each of us) and one car ago. She was probably taking me home after work one day. We were carpooling at the time. We’re traveling north, to soon turn west.

That next weekend we got invited to a dinner party — (thanks again, Laura!) and sometime after that we realized we were getting invited to places. That people in our little world thought of us as a package deal. I skimmed through the rest of the 2005 series of photographs. Jamie shows up, and so does Greg and Brian. Look, there’s Justin and RaDonna and Wendy, too! There are family shots in there, also. There are pictures of colorful people that you pass by in life. There are blurry, low-res, sometimes underexposed pictures in the collection. There are trips and sports and bands and Lauren figures into most of all of those pictures, somehow, even though she’s not in a lot of them. That’s how you remember, though, the circumstances and the stories and the time you went to the place and saw the thing and tried the unusual item on the menu. “Who” is how you remember those. Some are worth remembering. Some you just know perfectly.