Auburn « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Auburn

Auburn / football / I do not know what is happening. / podcast / running / swimming / Thursday — Comments Off
3
Sep 15

Two podcasts and a breakthrough two years coming

Here’s a podcast I did with my old friend Chadd Scott earlier this week. He’s launching GridironNow.com tonight, a site that will cover SEC football like crazy, and he’s asked me to take part. I’m honored. So I’ll be writing occasionally and podcasting regularly, I hope. Here’s our first one, where Chadd previews the Auburn football season:

He’s pretty sold on them. I have some reservations.

If football isn’t your thing, then this podcast that I recorded today with journalist Andre Natta might be more your style. He tells us about a proposal in Denver that will help ease college debts:

Don’t play both of those at once. The awesome noise might be too much for your computer’s sound card.

I created both of the songs in the podcasts, by the way. That leaves me only 48 steps removed from being a true renaissance man.

Also, tonight, I swam 2,700 yards and then got in a nice, easy four-mile run. My last mile was in 8:05. That’s not fast, but fairly respectable for me, I suppose. But, again, I did it after my biggest swim ever and a four mile run. Plus I took 21 seconds off of my last mile yesterday, making this my favorite new game.

Most importantly, in my last few swims it feels like that’s just starting to click, finally. Finally.

Auburn / baseball / errands / friends / photo / weekend — Comments Off
9
May 15

Brown shoes in my size, the second hardest thing to buy

This morning it was laundry. This afternoon it was errands. I had to buy shoes. Buying a specific kind of shoe in my size — and at a price I want to pay — is sometimes very difficult. This is one of those times. But, on the third store, I picked up some nice brown casual shoes that might feel comfortable.

Since we’ve started doing triathlons I’ve come to think of the comfort of my feet as a very important thing.

I also bought some new running shoes this week. I just eclipsed 400 miles in the old shoes and they were letting me know. Three times in a row I went for a jog that turned into an aching-calf shuffle. Well, you don’t have to tell me a fourth time. So that’s two new pairs of shoes in one week.

Didn’t get all of my errands done. The loafers took too long. So we’ll push that on to next week. Today there’s baseball. And then dinner, with friends. And we met our friend Sally Ann and her niece.

We all dined with our friends Jennie and Jeremy, who we bumped into by chance:

Oh yes, I bought a selfie stick today. You’ll soon see why.

Auburn / baseball / Friday / friends / photo / Samford — Comments Off
8
May 15

Last day of class

Last two classes of the term today. I gave a quiz consisting of when their finals were due and so on, the traditional end-of-term easy few points. I gave my not-at-all famous end-of-term speech. The brain is like any other muscle, I say, and you must use it. In our case, write. Write for publication. Write for yourself. Just write. Writers write.

There are a few other points in that speech. Thank you for your patience, I hope you’ve learned as much as I have. (I always learn a lot, even as the person leading the room.) Deadlines matter, I remind them. And I remind them again that it is OK to be passionate about where their interests are taking them, and so on.

In the second class a student pulled up Boys II Men and I tried to hit the back post of the song with the speech.

I forgot about the last chorus and missed the post.

But the speech is good.

Afterward, as I was wrapping up still more grading and various on-campus errands I ran into one of our students who is leaving us at the end of this term. He was there with his father. The student gave me a hug and introduced me to his dad. That’s not a bad way to wrap up classes.

And I got home just in time to shoot this from the car, hustling as I was to the ballgame. There’s nothing quite so nice as a good sunset on the plain. This blurry, out of the car window, cell phone shot isn’t representative of that, but the feeling of being home can’t be described in words or pictures anyway:

At baseball, it was time for rally sunglasses. Almost everyone in our section participated:

Shame the rally sunglasses didn’t work. Ah well. Get ’em tomorrow.

Auburn / baseball / video / weekend — Comments Off
25
Apr 15

Sleepy Saturday

I’m not ashamed to say it. I slept in. Very, very late. We went to a baseball game.

Before the game I sprawled out on the floor to stretch my back and shoulders and promptly fell asleep.

At the park we sat through a brief weather delay, during which I shot this video:

It is a Hyperlapse video — and you don’t hear about those much any more for some reason. That’s a little over three minutes of clouds moving directly overhead. I slapped some music on it and uploaded it from my phone because we live in an interesting time where you can record video on a super computer that spends most of its time in your pocket. And not only can you record video there, but you can speed it up, slow it down, edit it and do any number of other great things to that video, all from your telephone.

And then I uploaded it to YouTube because we live in an interesting time where we upload a lot of things to YouTube. And now it is here, because this is where all of my things land.

When play resumed we saw Auburn sweep their first conference series in three years, we went for dinner and then came home.

I’m thinking about going to bed at a reasonable time, too.

It has been that kind of day.

adventures / Auburn / baseball / Friday / friends / photo / Samford — Comments Off
24
Apr 15

A tiger of a start to the weekend

The life of a costume character is pretty weird, if you think about it.

The life of a costume character is pretty good, if you think about it.

That all started because she pointed out that Aubie seemed to have some lipstick on his fur. He had something pink staining the mouth area. There was also something with a light peach shade. Who knows where it all comes from, girls, kids, cotton candy, a comic bit he did, the random impulsive smooches that a costume character steals.

Two classes today on broadcast scripts. That meant two more class preps and will somehow double the stack of papers I need to grade.

Ran late getting off of campus, but that just let me run into Katie, an old Crimson editor I worked with a few years ago. She has a photography business now. She was one of those you never worried about too much, good things were always in her reach.

We went to a cookout after the game and shot the breeze with a half dozen friends. Had a great time of it, too. Probably because of the food, which was pretty incredible. No one thought to bring any bowls or spoons for the beans, so they stayed on the grill, but the chicken and the deer were terrific. The company was great, too. I bet the beans would have been delicious.

Aubie didn’t show up at the cookout, but he could have and he would have been well fed.

The life of a costume character is pretty good, if you think about it.