Made it up to the 50s here today. It was glorious, even as I spent most of it indoors.
This morning we walked in the brisk morning air to one of those legendary neighborhood hipster brunch spots. Walked right in, sat right down. And despite the ” target=”_blank”>Flying Biscuit Cafe having 45 locations around the South, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it, let alone been there. I ordered the chicken and waffles. It was filling, which was the point. Pretty decent, but nowhere near as good as the entertainment.
There was a man sitting across the store, a loud talker, telling his breakfast companion about alien conspiracy theories. I was intrigued, right up until we got to how they are now among us. Also, he couldn’t keep which set of his physics he wanted to use. I wanted to go over and ask him what the aliens were doing here. What’s the goal? Domination? They flew here, they’ve got us on tech. Just hanging out? We can be laughably entertaining. Political refugees? That’s just bad timing on their part. Then I started looking around, like I was in a scene from Men in Black.
I mean, you never know, you know? Especially once you know they’re here.
I saw no aliens. But I did see my first robot car. Or should I say my first full-sized remote control car.
Then we saw them all day. The novelty wore off incredibly quickly.
I enjoyed this crosswalk. All four sides of that block had rainbow crosswalks, which was colorful and joyous and wonderful and, honestly, we need more variety in public life, and if some of it makes a statement about people’s rights, that’s great too.
Another fun thing is art that makes shadows that spell things. Reverse shadow type, very clever, and all you need is the sun.
We had a department meeting via Zoom. Almost as fun as a meeting in person. Students were nominated for prestigious awards. We considered plans for how they should be honored. All of that is fun. I always like how passionate faculty are about honoring students. We discussed departmental application and enrollment and numbers, which are all impressive. Other items now have pins put in them. Still other things were teased. We tease information among colleagues.
I do not know why we do that, but we do.
Also, I remedied some technical problems with my online class. Thoroughly productive in every way.
And then my lovely bride did a radio hit, via Zoom. A producer wrote her to set up an interview with Times Radio’s Henry Bonshu.
The topic was politics in sport. It seems there is an Olympics going on. She is a globally renowned expert in the Olympics. And while this has never happened before, there seemed to be some sort of controversy surrounding one of the Olympians. A British skier left a message in the snow. And so that was the interview. Click Bonshu’s name and you can hear the interview, which was heard by all of Great Britain. Scroll about 90 minutes into the show.
We attended the welcome party for the wedding. Saw the groom, who is the Yankee’s former student. We reunited with another one of her former students and had a lovely catch-up chat. I lot can happen in a decade, it turns out. We also visited with the groom’s parents, who we are friends with. They had a successful barbecue concern, but retired two years ago. And now both of their kids are married off and they’re just the cutest, sweetest people.
The mother of the groom was given carte blanche on what she is wearing tomorrow. No one had seen it. Not her son, not her husband. But she showed us a photo. She’s going to be stunning. I looked up from the photo, made eye contact with her husband and said, “Prepare yourself, sir.”
It’s a black tie wedding, and she’s going to steal the show in a very elaborate ceremony.
That’s tomorrow. Tonight, here’s a little art I saw on our evening walk. What do you think is going on here? I’ve no idea, and could use the help.
We — the cats and I — were watching BirbTV this morning. I might have, for a time, been more interested than the kitties. It was when this beautiful cardinal showed up. She waited patiently, and then waited some more. She approached the bird feeder, then hopped away to a distant branch, and then came back again. You’ll have to forgive the quality of the photo, I was stretching my phone’s digital zoom and shooting through a double-pane window. It was, however, a beautiful bird.
That’s looking to the east. I also stood and looked to the west, taking three photographs before the chill chased me back indoors. The windchill was three degrees. I walked out there in jeans and a long sleeve shirt and house shoes.
Pretty soon we get to the Stockholm Syndrome portion of the winter which, in this case, is when I look up the weather in Stockholm and see that it is essentially the same.
Sigh.
I had only one meeting today, which allowed me the time to catch up on the week’s reading, grading, and make sure my prep for next week is at least underway. (Sunday I’ll start next week’s reading, and Monday I’ll prepare a lecture. And this is the course of most weeks for a while. Unless I get a bolt of energy and get ahead of lecture prep. But that’s never happened, so I am not counting on it.) The meeting today was a virtual meeting.
Have you ever been in a presentation where the presenter reads from their slides? The only thing better than being in a presentation where the presenter is reading from their slides is being in a virtual presentation where the presenter is reading from their slides.
The slides, to be fair, were helpful. I downloaded them for later, and mostly kept making sure I was on mute so the giggles and chuckles didn’t break through the reading. Of the slides. Which were on the screen.
We went over the river tonight and made a little history. Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 women’s basketball league. There was a doubleheader, and also history. The crowd set a new record for attendance of a regular season women’s basketball game. There were 21,490 people announced. They watched the Breeze and the Phantom, both teams filled with stars the crowd knew.
The Phantom won, 71-68. I like the timing rules. They play on a slightly smaller court — which changes the style of play — and then play three 7-minute quarters. In the fourth quarter it’s a race, first to plus-11. At the end of the 3rd, the score was 53-60, so the first team to 71 would be the winner. That format takes out a lot of the timeout and fouling gamesmanship that characterizes the traditional version of the sport. And it adds tension, too. I assume that at that stage of the game the fatigue is setting in for one team and desperation for the other, because that race to the final score was frantic, and fun.
It’s also meant to speed up the game, which it seemed to do. But there’s a flaw in the doubleheader setup. The time between the two games was interminable, even with the assistance of the hype squad, the mic woman (who had to be paid in Red Bull, for she was, herself very hype), and also a local rapper who has a big viral hit. The second game was set to begin at 9:30, and it started at about 9:40. It was between the Rose and the Lunar Owls, which is a great team name, obviously.
Maybe there’s a media component to this, there can’t be any other reason to drag out a 9:30 start. You are certainly not waiting for anyone to get into the venue at that point. But you are getting in the way of my dinner.
The Lunar Owls won 75-85, on the strength of Marina Mabrey’s 47 points, including the game winner. She had 27 of those in the first quarter, which is a league record, and the hoop must have looked 12-feet wide for her. She’s played all over the world, but grew up about an hour away. Must have been a nice homecoming.
Anyway, back to my dinner. We ordered Chick-fil-A from a nearby store. Went through the drive-thru. They’ve updated their app and now there’s no upsell point. This is why that’s a problem. You plug in your order, put in your car, and now, instead of seeing a person, you scan a QR code when you get there. Used to be, that person would confirm the order. They’d ask “Would you like to add anything?” But now there’s not an option for that. What if you’d changed your mind? What if you needed to add something? We got our sandwiches and then went through again, just to prove the point, and also to get a milkshake.
The new app and mobile ordering process violates Smith’s First Rule of Economics (1997): Don’t make it hard for me to spend my money with you.
It’s an ironclad rule.
errands / Friday / Rowan — Comments Off on Winterpalooza is coming 23 Jan 26
With the beginning of a new semester — we wrapped the first week today — comes a whole slate of meetings. Friday is a big meeting day around here, and you can see them coming. Meetings, I mean. Sometimes, the Fridays are obscured. You can see the meetings coming. Mostly, because we have too many calendars.
So, today, I had meetings two and three of the semester. It was a faculty meeting Wednesday. Today I had a committee meeting I sit on a university-wide committee that aspires to work with students, helping them interact with other elements of the university. We meet every other week. We talk about helping students. And that is what we did today, most successfully. We also established the next two meetings, and some of the things we might work toward.
That was this morning. In the afternoon I had a sustainability meeting. It was a meeting about sustainability, but not, necessarily, a meeting about sustainable meetings. (Those usually come in the middle of the term, when we’re delirious, but not yet worn out.)
I wrote my online classes. They’ve heard from me three times this week. Usually it is twice a week. But, today, after sending normal class stuff Monday and Thursday, I sent out a campus resources email. I like this email. Shows you care. One of the great things about the university, the note starts, is all of the resources they devote to you. And then I just start listing them, with links, contact info, and details, until I’m worn out. Then, at the end, I remind them that this is not a complete list. There are always more services! I offer to help them find those things, because I care. I am also now in charge of our department’s running list of campus resources, because I volunteered, because I care.
It’s Friday, you can do a lot of caring on Friday. Monday night, Tuesday morning, all day Thursday, not quite as much.
We are bracing for weather. This is how I am bracing. I went into the laundry room and rearranged two cabinets. The idea was that the handwarmers can be right up front, right in the center of the room, and easily accessible in the dark.
I pulled the phone bank chargers from their storage space, because I had the bright idea sometime back that all of these should be in one place should we need them, or if we are packing for a trip. I got four of those. I need to grab the one out of my backpack to complete the set.
I dug out the battery-powered lantern that I bought from a closing K-Mart in 2016. I grabbed every AA battery we have to power that lantern. Next to it is a lithium-powered work light that was a Christmas gift a few years ago. I pulled out the running headlamps. I got my bike flashlight and two backup batteries for it. (Others are stored elsewhere, and I can get to them if it gets desperate.) I made a note of where a few other little emergency lights are hanging around, should we need them.
I started charging all of these, and made two neat piles on the bar. Charged, and waiting in line.
Two shovels and the snowblower are in the garage. There’s a new quart of oil waiting to be put to use. I’ll top off the gas tank in my car and the gas can for the blower tomorrow. The fridge is also getting stocked tomorrow, if there are any groceries left to be had. The university announced today — and this is no easy decision, multiple campuses in various places, a hospital, commuters, etc. — that most of its operations will be closed Sunday and Monday.
We have one thing to do tomorrow, but we’ll beat the weather back home. Winter rolls in tomorrow night. We will be getting somewhere between two and 84 inches, depending on which forecast you check, and when you look.
Here’s my prediction: this will be one of the first big clues that killing so many of our national weather resources last year was a fundamentally stupid idea.
If you’re getting bad weather this weekend, I hope you can stay indoors, safe and warm. See you Monday, when we will hopefully all begin digging out.
Got in some quality work today. I all but locked down two syllabi. I decided to give myself an extra day or two to meditate on whether I made any big errors there. Sunday. I have started the final polish on the first two days of lectures. Monday. I thought about laundry. Tomorrow. It was a great afternoon.
And sunny. Suuuuuuunny. Spring is on the way, sunny. We made it, sunny. The world is full of possibilities again, sunny. When I finally went outside it was 25 degrees.
There was some mild discussion about a jacket. As in, You need a jacket and, “Nah, it’ll be fine.” It was, you see, an evening with brief moments of outdoors.
It was not my birthday, but it was the day of my present. So we took a ride to the train station, and took a train to Penn Station, and took a subway up to 72nd. And this is where my jacket risk became a consideration. It was sunny and 25 when I climbed into the car. Now it is dark. And I have no idea how far we are walking from station to venue.
Fortunately, it was just two blocks. And there was a line. But it moved quickly enough that the cold didn’t set in.
And so we went inside the Beacon Theater, which will celebrate its centennial in a few years. The Beacon opened in 1929, it was to be part of a chain of elaborate movie theaters. But then, right after this incredible place opened The Great Depression sank in. This was one of the last things to go up in that older world. There was a hotel attached to the project, and an airway beacon placed on the roof of the hotel, hence the name.
It was a daily movie theater, which ran 12 hours a day. And then they added radio broadcasts. (Your live podcasts aren’t that novel.) They stumped for bonds during World War 2. In the 1960s, plays became a part of the rotation. In the 70s, it became a concert hall, and also got a renovation. It almost became a night club and disco in the 1980s. That plan got tied up in court and plans changed. It became an IMAX, then got renovated again in the ‘oughts.
Today, it’s a popular live event venue, having entertained Manhattan for almost 100 years now.
I said this in the venue. I know people in New York aren’t mean. People from elsewhere might think so, but that’s not the case. It has been argued to me that the people in New York just aren’t concerned about you. But under that, there’s a kindness there, as you will find in any decent person. A decent one, anyway. Sometimes you get the random person who will try to help if you look lost. You will also get the person who will walk by you or cut you off if you’re not moving. They’re just focused on what their focused on, and not you.
The people outside the venue were all in the usual mode of evening happiness. They were going to see a show they’d been looking forward to. On a date. Out with friends. Faking a birthday. Whatever. And we got up to the woman who scanned tickets, who had a small talk conversation with you, which I don’t know that’s ever happened to me in the city. It stood out enough that I considered asking if she was originally from there, but if not, then I run the risk of insulting her. So I let it slide. The security people were security people. Inside, someone was handing long-stemmed roses to the ladies.
I went to the restroom. In the restroom there is a man who has the job of standing there and making sure everything is clean and orderly. I walked in and he welcomed me to the theater. This man is on bathroom duty. He’s drying countertops. “Welcome to the Beacon, sir.” After I washed my hands, shaking them brusquely in the sink so as not to mar his dry workspace, he handed me a custom, artisanally torn stretch of paper towel and said “Enjoy the show,” with a sort of sincerity that you don’t often occur in a men’s room, or in the liminal space between that room and the rest of your life.
And, you know what, I was going to enjoy that show. It was my part of my birthday present, after all.
Mandal was the opening act. Here’s a guy who is cleverly pretending to be foolish. Not that it is clever to do so, but that he is clever at it. Online, I found a set he did for a Netflix comedy fest eight months ago. Here’s his debut on The Tonight Show six months ago. And, so, between these two points and what we saw tonight, I’ve gotten a little sense of how his set was evolving, which is fun.
He did about 20 minutes, I guess, but I wish he had more. I was ready to settle in, in that way that you do when someone has brought a really funny person over to your party and you sit around the kitchen and listen to them go on and on until the evening ends.
But the evening wasn’t ending. Josh Johnson was the headliner. He’s one of the most prolific — and topical and timely — comedy writers of his generation. Just has to be. He’s produced almost five hours of material on YouTube just this month, plus his day job working (and now occasionally hosting) at The Daily Show. I wonder if this set will go online in the next few days. I’d watch it again.
When the show was over — and the bathroom gentleman was right, we did enjoy it very much — we went across the street for dinner. Because it is Manhattan we had a host of nearby things. Mediterranean, two cheesy American places, Italian, something else that didn’t really get a lot of consideration, and Thai. So we chose that, and it was right across the street.
The woman working up front at Sala Thai asked if we had reservations. We did not. She said it would be 15 minutes, and asked for a number to text us at. There was nowhere to stay inside, so we ducked back out to the street and I said, “Let’s walk the block. Keep us warm, see a bit more, and we’ll be close.”
We rounded the corner and got buzzed to come back inside. It is a tight, crowded, hopping little place. It reminded me of home.
I’m from Thailand.
No, there’s an incredible — incredible to me, anyway — Thai place in my hometown and I miss it a great deal. This place I was excited to try because they also offered a coconut soup, just as my favorite place does. And, being a cold night, it was perfect for coconut soup. (I’d eat coconut soup in the middle of summer, and have.)
Theirs was a bit sweeter, compared to what I recall, and had some odd little mushrooms, compared to what I prefer, but it was tasty. Also on the menu was this.
Kao Soy (a northern style curry noodle soup, the menu said) looked very similar to my beloved Chicken Noodle Bowl. And it was close.
This is egg noodles, onion, bean sprouts, pickled mustard greens in a red coconut broth. I immediately scooped the pickled mustard greens out of the way. I wish it had just a bit less of the broth, and had some plump long grain rice. Then it would be my beloved Chicken Noodle Bowl. Not quite the same, but very, flavorful and filling.
The tables in this place are so on top of us that, to my right, there was an acrylic divider between us and the next table. An older couple sat there. The table to my left was so close that we couldn’t leave without interrupting their meal. Two younger people sat there, still very much in an early phase of dating. She was still talking about her school work.
So my lovely bride and, being between them in the phases of relationships, alternated between sounding like an old couple and acting like two young people just finding one another.
We left, walked the two blocks to the subway, and talked about the merits and challenges of living in a big city. She, who grew up in a suitcase town and lived a few times in Atlanta, regrets never having done it. Me, having lived in suburbs and exurbs most of my life, am set in my ways and glad I don’t live in a big city. But I do appreciate being so close to world class cities. It was something I reflect on the reverse trip. Five quick subway stops. A late train out of town, and then a quick ride on an empty late night freeway. A couple of easy moves and I can be up there for the 100th anniversary of the Beacon, or celebrating other events, or enjoying some of the other fabulous looking things on that Thai menu. And, most importantly, it is even easier to get back out again.
I’ll be back for more of that menu.
And the Chicken Noodle Bowl? I’m going to have that again, this spring. That will also not be my birthday, but I might celebrate it just the same.
This is the third time I’ve tried to write this. It goes like this. I’m trying a new pattern, where I catch up on some reading of a particular author I like, and think of that as a primer for what to put here, and what not to put here. I am well behind. Months behind. I am reading July of 2025. It is a five-day-a-week proposition over there, so you can see I’m well behind. The guy has just retired and we’re all wondering what comes next. Well, people that are behind are wondering. Many people know, because they aren’t behind. I am behind.
Anyway, read a week, and peck away. Only, as I read, one cat climbed up into my arms. Very well. I can enjoy a purr-filled cuddle and scroll to my heart’s content. That cat got down. But I was on, like, a Wednesday or something. So I must finish the week. This is when what we call call the shift change took place. Out of my office went one cat, and in came the second. This time it was a sit on the desktop and rest the head and neck across the forearm move. Well, let me just tell you, any domestic animal that uses me as a pillow has the right of way in every arrangement. As happens with cats, though, there was a sudden recollection of a meeting that must be attended to in another room, and down and off we go. Only I’m reading a Tuesday or what not. And wouldn’t you know it, before that week’s worth of catch up reading was done, the cat was back. When he finally got down, I was reading in August. Mid-August. The author has been retired for a month and is making lists to give structure to his day.
I am, sadly, a long way from retirement, but I find this interesting. Do I need structure in the event of my eventual retirement? Would that just be productivity for the sake of productivity? Will I read less? Putter about the house 15 percent less? I should go out more. I should go out more now. Maybe I’ll get to that this spring. Definitely by next fall. Who needs a productivity list when you’re already trying to envision the events of next fall in January?
I have completed the outline structure of my new class, Rituals and Traditions, or Rits and Trads as we’re calling it, to save 11 letters and to sound hip. Several of my friends are kind enough to think it sounds interesting. I have, this week, consulted with a few of them to see what I might be overlooking. I have talked with an architect professor friend to see what from his world would apply here. He sent along a reading. And I have consulted with my in-house colleague and on-campus office mate, who is really quite good at this professoring thing. She has helped me cinch up the last two or three days of ideas. So, if the syllabus is the brain, and the outline is the skeleton, we now have the outline and the skeleton in place. I’m guessing the classes and lectures are the hearts and blood and muscle in this metaphor some sort of way. The first, call it 10 classes are all in my head or notes, and ready to be put in slides. That gets us through the third week of February. I’d like to come up with one more working component for the students to do. And maybe that’ll come to mind soon. I’m sure they won’t mind if it doesn’t.
Today is the 15th anniversary of the day Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot, in Arizona. It seemed a good day to watch this again, a sequence which, for my money, is just about the best seven minutes of television ever produced about television. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this now, if I say half-a-dozen I’m low. I’m still finding little layers, both within this series of events, but also how it contributes to the show. This is four episodes in, and written with the privilege of hindsight, but still.
No matter how many times I’ve seen it, it still pulls at the emotions, every time. And this was no different.
So I had a little sob today. This, Minnesota, just a general lousy few days of other stuff besides.
For the best part of three seasons — I didn’t care for the way The Newsroom ended — they really brought something, but none of it, the fictional stuff, or the almost-this-reality stuff that Aaron Sorkin pulled from would bring it all together quite like that. And if I don’t watch it with the timer on the screen I — a person who, in his first career, made his living by the dispassionately cruel, unrelenting tick of a broadcast clock — am absolutely boggled that that is seven minutes.
Here was the former congresswoman today, talking of those she was with on that horrible day in the desert.
Today marks 15 years since a gunman tried to assassinate me. He shot 19 people and killed six.
I almost died, and think of those who did every day.
Well, the cat has come back in. He’s looking for a little ziploc bag that he was chewing on. Inside of it was a small bottle of hand sanitizer. Both had been in my backpack. Since he is not allowed plastic, I hid the bag. He is looking for it. He’s getting quite close.
