memories

books / history / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off on The first last day of the summer
31
Aug 26

The first last day of the summer

It was a calm weekend around here. There were two big highlights. Someone ordered a pickup meal from Longhorn Steakhouse in Florida and used my email as the space filler in Darden Restaurants’ data mining operation. I made fun of their meal. Why do you order seafood, in Fort Lauderdale, from a steakhouse?

And why do you order it for curbside pickup? Do you like lukewarm fish? And chowder? In August? It was 80-something degrees in Fort Lauderdale this weekend. Did you need to warmup? With a shrimp lobster chowder?

How does strawberry lemonade even figure into this? I’m no purist about lemonade flavors, or so I thought, but the more I thought about all of the bad flavors in this styrofoam box and paper bowl … lemonade should be lemonade flavored. Otherwise you’re just telling me about a lifetime of taste bud punishment you’ve inflicted on yourself.

All of this, somehow, costs 41 bucks. But not me. It wasn’t my meal. I did get a survey, and don’t you know I filled that out. I made several pointed comments about Longhorn, and their curbs. But not their service. No need to cause problems for the people working there.

And don’t you know? It worked.

I got a coupon for a free appetizer. There isn’t a Longhorn within less than a half-hour from here, so who needs an appetizer?

The other thing that happened was that my lovely bride did her first time trial this weekend. Just you and your bike against the clock. At the end she found herself on the podium. Third place is great! And enough to send her back again for more.

Otherwise, this weekend was the deep breath in before the semester begins. Classes start on Tuesday. At some point on Sunday I stopped stressing about it. It’s weird. I do more work throughout the term, of course, but I’ve spent a lot of time working on stuff and trying to layout materials and anticipate problems — and then throwing some of that work away and starting over because of, sigh, reasons — throughout August. That whole time has been worry, one stress, one series of second guesses after another. I figured that would all go away after a class or two, or a a few weeks. It usually does. But, last evening, it just disappeared. The classes will be the classes and they’ll be useful and we’ll do fine.

It’s let me do other things. I cleaned one corner of my home office this weekend. And I did a lot in the on-campus office. The Yankee and I have been sharing an office for the last two years, but she’s being moved to a different building, and we moved her this weekend. I’m keeping the old office, so we packed her up Saturday. I brought in a big box of books of my own, which have been sitting in storage for the last three years. I rearranged the desk and generally lamented losing my roomie. What, we’re just supposed to see each other at home? That’s hardly enough.

We had a nice reading date this weekend, and so I point once again to Rick Atkinson’s Fate of the Day, the second installment in his Revolutionary War trilogy. I’m in that bittersweet part of any book you enjoy. You want to plow through it. You want it to last forever. This is an excellent read. Highly recommended.

But I have once again had it confirmed for me that I wouldn’t want to be an 18th century sailor. I’ve been sure of that for a long time, but that impression is confirmed.

There was a bit in here about some French sailors who had been kept on their vessels for more than a year, the details of which were inhumane. But that’s war, and that was navy life, and they didn’t have the comparative advantages of the USS Abraham Lincoln, the sailors of which, by all credible reports, have been on a nightmare service cruise.

If you have the opportunity to have three different people come out to do work on your home in one day, definitely don’t do that. We did that today. It took up the whole day, about six or seven hours, but it was productive. First, we had a guy come out to give us a quote on chimney repairs. There are a few light problems outside and, distressingly, we had some water get inside during last Thursday’s monsoon. That first guy glanced at the chimney from the ground, said we needed a new crown, that his shop would make a customized job. We talked about the stucco. He came inside to look inside the fireplace, and found some problems. He quoted us a price off the top of his head and asked for a 50 percent down payment. We asked him to put his quote on a piece of paper and sent him on his way.

We had an electrician come out, his second time here. Nice fellow. This is the end of a saga that has stretched from April to now, and involved four different companies. He stayed and worked for a long time, trying to figure out the intricacies of this, and the idiosyncratic wiring that had been done to that. Finally, finally the poor guy got things the way they should be. (One of those companies that had been … let’s say involved … won’t be getting a lot of calls from us in the future. They’ll get a letter. I’m pretty close to naming names.)

As he wrapped up his work a second chimney guy came. He deployed a drone so he could actually see what was going on up top.

The previous guy just glanced up that way. We talked about the problems and the options. He had a sneaking suspicion that he could fix that leak straight away, so I trimmed the hydrangea for easier access while he sealed up the flashing. That paired nicely with the spot weeding I found myself doing while chatting with the electrician earlier in the day. Then he, the chimney guy, did some sealing of the places where the lower levels of the chimney touches the house.

He came in with photos, and showed us the before shot of a big hole in the stucco, and someone’s slapdash silicone solution. He said he figured it’d been there for about 10 years. As ever, we muttered the previous owners’ name.

So maybe the leak is fixed. As our guy said, we can’t interrogate the water. If it comes back inside in the next huge storm, though, I’m certainly going to try.

Anyway, that was the weekend and Monday. Somehow I got done, today, all of the things I needed to do — emailing this class and that class, changing some settings on Canvas, doing a little roster prep — but none of the other things I also wanted to do. And that’s OK. They’ll be there for another day. Just not tomorrow. Classes start tomorrow!

cycling / memories / photo / Rowan / Tuesday / woodworking, sorta — Comments Off on Back to it
25
Aug 26

Back to it

Today was a day of waking up at a reasonable time. I had forgotten there was a 7:30 a.m. I am not the morning person. I’m fine when I wake up, but just let me sleep in. It’s my natural condition. So imagine, if you will, the 10 or so years I did morning news. I had one job where I was in the studio at 4:30 a.m. That might the next job’s 6 a.m. arrival seem positively easy. The upside was that you had an afternoon to get errands done. The downside was you can’t, in your 20s, convince people you need to be in bed by 8 p.m.

Reader, I never was.

I was not last night, either. I only had to wake up at 7:30. This was rude enough.

Fortunately, my classes are all in the afternoon and evening.

Anyway, we had a meeting at 9:30 a.m., our first faculty meeting of the semester. This involved sitting in a classroom, reading an agenda, talking about the various items. Trying to stay on track and on schedule, and so on. (This group has a terrific sense of staying on time, and that’s a nice thing to be a part of.) It ran for six hours, this meeting. Six hours is not easing back into things. I suppose all of the work I’ve done these last four weeks have been the easing back into things. And, also, the sudden increase of email that has coincided with the work. Perhaps that has been the easing back in. (Just four more days of easing back in until the full stride begins. But I don’t want to wow you with all of that just now.)

The good news is that we’ll be on the clock for the work next week. Once we get started, then we can get started. The feeling before classes begin is an odd one. It is a stew of excitement and anxiety and you-still-have-time and you-have-no-time and there-are-days-to enjoy-yourself-so-relax and who-can-relax and, also, I-need-more-days-with-which-to-relax. This paragraph breaks no new ground — as opposed to every other ‘graph on this site. It has always felt like that. I suspect the days before a new semester begin feel like that for a lot of people. I imagine it always will, at least so long as we have semesters and people teaching in them.

And now, notes from real life.

We went out for a morning bike ride yesterday. A simple 20-miler, one of the traditional routes. I decided, wisely, that instead of trying to stay out front for as long as possible, I would ride sensible, hanging onto my lovely bride’s wheel, and then maybe I’ll still be there at the end. Going out front would have probably been a better option. She’s riding so well lately and I am not and that’s how you find yourself going 20-plus miles an hour and squinting into the distance, trying to determine if you can still see someone in the distance.

Nothing on that ride was terribly bad. She’s just super great at the moment.

Some farmers, in some places, talk about a second season. We have that here, and here’s evidence of that. I rode this same route a few weeks back and the corner was taller than me. Now, it is not.

This, if I remember my corn growing rates, is pushing the boundaries of the science, which is pretty cool. Double-cropping is a growing thing, and I need to read more about it. I can’t recall if it is efficient or inefficient. (Most likely that depends on the crop.)

For today’s bike ride I recreated a route I did three years ago, this week. It was a ride-every-road-within-shouting-distance-until-you-get-to-20-miles route. I did it at just below a tempo pace. I finished it two minutes and two seconds faster than I did in 2023. I wish it had been faster.

After my ride I finished this project. It’s the same picture I shared yesterday, because the face of it looks the same. This evening I had to attach the cleat to the back. From there, hang the cleat on the wall.

This took four screws, but they had to be precise because the cleat isn’t quite large enough. The cleat isn’t quite large enough because it is a leftover cleat that I made last summer. I got a corner cabinet and mounted it in a dead space in the garage and there sit the bike shoes and the helmet. All of this was an effort to get the bike stuff all the tool stuff. Only, lately, the sunglasses and have migrated back to the tool stuff. So, I had some extra lumber and wanted to try my new brad nailer and everything worked out well. Until I had to get those screws in. There were about three millimeters for error because, again, I cut twice and measured once on this project. It is garage furniture.

And now it is sitting on a wall cleat and holding sunglasses and it doesn’t even wobble when the garage door goes up and down.

There are no cats in this tunnel. Phoebe ran into the room for attention and settled down in her favorite spot for speculative belly rubs. I gave her a nice pet and then shot this, just because I like the way the light was playing off the tunnel.

That’s a new tunnel that my mother sent the cats. We now have two tunnels, so our jealous sibling cats can get along with one another. I’d randomly move them around the house, but these little guys are such creatures of habit I’m not sure how they’d react to upsetting their routine with such an offensive gesture.

Outside, I looked up just in time. This plane is going to London. By the time you read this, of course, the people are already there. Probably over the jet lag. I wonder what they’re doing today.

Sometimes you should look up even when there’s no rumble or roar of an aircraft overhead. Sometimes you just get lucky. Just about every time, really, if you think about it.

Think about it.

cycling / memories / Monday / movies / photo — Comments Off on And so begins the last week of summer
24
Aug 26

And so begins the last week of summer

The penultimate weekend. There should be something grand here, but there’s not. At least the last weekend of summer has plans. I think I’d rather have the plans this weekend and nothing next weekend, but the people that schedule big citywide events don’t ask me these things.

It’s nice not being asked a lot of things. But if you never get asked things you can’t have input. It’s a tradeoff. And of all of the tradeoffs we make in life, many of them are worse than that. Still, if someone asked your thoughts, you might think your thoughts had value. You might think you could maybe contribute in some way. You might think it was appreciated, what you had to offer. Cities should ask your thoughts on when they schedule big events is all I’m saying. If I am, in fact, talking about cities.

And of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be? There’s a huge cycling event next weekend and we’ll be there to see it. Guess what photos I’ll be showing you this time next week.

Today, though, it’s just the usual from around here. For instance. Like many of you, I am a newly minted Internet Ancient Greek scholar. And, finally, we went to watch The Odyssey. Knowing I’d have some important thoughts in line with my public scholarship I dressed for the occasion.

These were my thoughts: the movie was very loud. I’d like to see it again, a version without the score. Also, it was a good movie. On the other hand, I’m not sure it met the hype. On the third hand, how you can you live up to an epic. On the fourth hand, it was still sweeping and grandiose. It was also a good set of cast members, but on the fifth hand — five hands, what am I, one of Zeus’ misbegotten offspring? — not everyone seemed well cast. On the sixth hand, I don’t think this movie will age much better than the Romans-with-English-accents era of 1950s and 1960s cinema.

Also, I really would have liked to have heard the siren’s song. You’re going to eventually tell me that the Trojan horse was some iconic visual element, you’re going to go long (and rightly so!) on the great pains to be authentic with clothing and brag about the visual effects, you could give me the siren’s song.

It’s been a long time since I read The Odyssey. I think we read portions of it in high school. In an undergrad literature class I read The Iliad and the Odyssey. I’m not sure — because time makes me forget things — if the professor was truly an expert in the Greek classics or she was just covering bases, but if I had that to do over again I’d insist. Epics of the western culture demand expertise, I’d say, so that I will be better prepared to comment on this after I see a movie in a few decades. But with that in mind, this. The movie changes Homer’s story. That’s fine. It’s art. And also it was an oral tradition. Things change. If you want Homer, read Homer. If you can’t read Greek, get in your time machine and … well, yeah, that’s still a problem. Fine, there are several dozen English versions in part or in toto. I think one was written by someone who doesn’t write English. E.V. Reiu’s translation in the 1940s was the first. Richard Lattimore’s translation is well regarded for accuracy. The relatively recent work of Emily Wilson’s is an excellent version for people new to Homer — she is also the one catching a lot of social media broadsides. Go figure. Anyway, the changes itself aren’t bad. People will quibble with how some of the changes come about. And as I am realistic about the Homeric question — probably there’s more than one author, certainly the story changes over time, also, and this is important … it’s fantasy I’m OK with the descent into madness version here. It has been a long while since our last film that was universally regarded as a descent into madness theme.

Or was that just the woofers in my theater?

I set out Sunday afternoon for a moderately different route. The river run is a simple out-and-back to the river and it gives you a steady 15 miles — yep, 15 miles, every time — and you’re back in the neighborhood in 45 or 50 minutes. But the weather was nice and I figured I’d try a different road. It starts like this. When you get to the river you can turn left or right. Usually, we turn left. But I’ve gone the other way a few times, just for variety. And when I go to the right I take the first right, effectively doubling back with two-plus extra miles for the effort.

But, I thought, what happens if I turn right … and don’t take that first right. So, yesterday I took the second right. I chose this one because I looked at it on a map beforehand and the street name has something to do with tall climbs. There are none of those around here. In fact, at one point on the river road you are three feet below sea level. Well, let’s see what’s on that road. It is the usual array of warehouses, which are the state flower. Also, these guys.

Hey, there’s the hill the road sign was talking about. Actually, it’s a five-mile road (and I was only punish passed twice) and there are four of these hills. You might call them rollers. By the end of the road which was so boastful of its hills I’d climbed about 120 feet.

I’m not judging. I’m merely pointing out that the terrain here is flat. I’m faster on flat roads than I used to be, but I probably couldn’t get over a proper climb without a tow rope anymore. (I did two big hills in Switzerland last summer, first climb in a few years, and it felt exactly as I remembered. My chain and derailleur fell apart before I could complete the whole hilly route, however.)

Anyway, back home, and I finished up the work on this rough little piece. I used my new brad nailer to mount these little bits as shelves. It’s garage furniture, I cut once and then measured twice, and this will get the job done.

I’ll make another version that’s smaller and neater, one day. I have already mapped out the plans in my mind. For now, I just have to attach the cleat to the back of this one and put it on the wall. But fun like that you have to spread out over several days. We’re not totally uninhibited.

Here’s the view, last night, as I took out the garbage. It’s about midnight.

Believe it or not, there are three planes in that shot. One of them flew directly overhead, and had no ADS-B transponder signal. It came from Washington D.C. Those tracker apps are such great fun, and the flights without all of the information might be the most fun of all. Sure, that one plane is going to Boston and the other to Florida, but the mystery of this plane, that’s loads of fun.

Speaking of fun, the first meeting of the semester is tomorrow. We’re easing into things with a six-hour effort.

memories / photo / Rowan / Thursday — Comments Off on I strained my toe trying to think of a headline
20
Aug 26

I strained my toe trying to think of a headline

I spent the day staring at my third class, a presentations class. It’s a great idea, this class. Students have to give presentations. It’s like public speaking, but all online, and you have to prepare and present accompanying slides. It’s not my class, in the sense that I didn’t build it. The person in charge of it is making great strides with dialing it in. I also didn’t have this class initially this term, but things change and merrily we will go through the semester, offering feedback and hoping it is helpful.

It’s useful for students who think they know everything there is to know about computers and using them in these most basic ways. (I should keep count of the technical problem complaints I receive. Some of them are hilarious.) Also, it is a terrifying class for people who have a fear of public speaking. This class substitutes for the public speaking course in everyone’s curriculum, which is nice. It is up to each person to make a choice of which they’d rather do.

I think the public speaking class would be easier for a couple of different reasons, but that’s just me.

When I took public speaking, we were pretty new into the idea that everyone should have the course. They were still explaining it thusly to students: The one thing all of the employers say when we survey them is that their new hires need to be better at giving presentations as in a work meeting or board room, and that’s why everyone must take this class. So, when I did it, we met a few times in this very large lecture hall and you spent most of the semester in a smaller room, a lab, with a grad student running the lab and 12 or 15 nervous people besides. There was, I remember, one guy that was unusual in our lab. He’d spent a career in the Army. He was a paratrooper. He’d just retired. His son was in school and he figured it’d be nice to go back to school with his kid, so here was this dad, this man who talked about how one time his chute failed and the only thing that saved his life was that, at the last second, he remembered his training. He talked about how his body was broken, and the depression he left in the earth when he hit the ground. I don’t recall how high up he said he was on this jump, but it sounded both plausible and unbelievable at the same time. But, you could take one look at that guy and know two things simultaneously: he’d been through some stuff, and he could beat you up if he needed to. Nice fella.

I can’t remember anything about the grad student that ran the class, which is unfortunate. I do remember after the first time we met that person I went downstairs to a payphone and called home. I did not wait to get back to my place. I said: send me that file filing system of all of my speeches. I’m going to use them in this class. And I did.

I think I finished with something like a 114 in that class.

So I’m not usual in that sense. Just hammy enough, just desperate enough to be perceived as credible, and I stumnbled and walked and bumbled through four years of public speaking with Douglas Caddell. I hung out with some of the best young speech-makers in the state, dated a state champion, and competed in just about every contest I could get into.

Anyway, that unusual lane in high school left me well prepared for a basic public speaking class, and was probably helpful, eventually, in broadcasting career.

The best thing about public speaking back in the dark ages was that we didn’t have to make presentations. There was no PowerPoint back then. Some rooms didn’t have power. My slides today are nothing great. I built and use a university-branded template, and try not to put too many words on the slides. What you put on your slides isn’t where the game is won, but it can be where the game is lost.

I can’t give all of the good advice away for free here. If you want to know more, enroll in my class.

This is what should be on all of my slides, I’m told. The cats say if they have a weekly check-in here they should be in every slide deck I make, too. Phoebe would make great points about any topic from her hammock.

She lately went through a kitteh noir period.

You can almost hear her thinking in hard-boiled cat detective narration.

“You tell some tall tales, kid. But my tail is taller. A cat’s greatest weapon, though, is a keen eye, and her greatest ally is the dark. That’s how I came to find your man, lingering in the shadows. He’s been singing to me for weeks. If he was any more of a rat he’d sprout whiskers and a tail, but his info’s always good and it brought me here, to you. And I know you’ve been thinking that while the cat’s away, the mice will play, but the cat’s back. Playtime’s over. Hands up. I can say it with a smile, sure, the smile is free of charge. You need a smile in my line of work. The smile says ‘hello’ while your trigger finger waves goodbye … ”

Poseidon is more of a chaos comedy fan. He’s been working on his Will Ferrell impression.

“Hey mom! The meatloaf! We want it now. The meatloaf! Ma, the meatloaf!”

A few days ago he changed up our mid-day routine. I have a little bite to eat and he waits patiently. Then, I grab a protein bar and a glass and sit in a corner in the living room. He waits patiently for this. As soon as I sit down he’s in motion, and then on my lap, or curled up beside me, or climbing up my chest for a snooze. But on this particular afternoon, he insisted I would not spend those few minutes reading.

And so I did not.

Storms blew through this evening. The forecast was for rush hour. They arrived at about 7 p.m. Weather forecasting, it ain’t what it used to be. That was a choice. Apparently there was a tornado to our west and a waterspout or tornado to our southeast. Here, it just rained. We had some lightening, but the wind never really picked up. It was an oddly timed thing, as the clouds on the back end of the system lingered, the sun started it’s regular dive to the horizon. This is the view from my office just now, looking off to the north-northwest.

And now I’ll get back to work. Because there is always work.

memories / photo / Rowan / Tuesday — Comments Off on Ungrounded thoughts
18
Aug 26

Ungrounded thoughts

Much progress was made today on my Digital Media Processes class. This class is about the concepts and structures that drive our social media and their uses. I have taught this class seven times, but always online. This semester I was tasked with teaching it in person. Same material, different paces and styles and everything else. We wanted to put more of our online classes in the classroom, hence this transition, and the extra work on a class I know pretty well.

Today I counted the 28 pages of calendars and notes that comprise my preparation. This does not include actual class notes.

It is possible that I’m overthinking it.

(Next spring I am scheduled to teach it online again.)

Anyway, after a bunch of hours with it today, yesterday, and this weekend and however much else, I’m down to three things on my To Do list for that class. This is, without diving into the details when we’re already 150 words in, significant progress.

Here’s my daily lunch koan. I have a Trader Joe’s burrito for lunch each day. They come in packages of two, but I separate them for rationing purposes. And if you’ll note this rather large part of the dietary label on the packaging …

Did I eat the 490 calorie burrito today? Or did I eat the 500 calorie burrito today?

To be sure, they are different. They’re no doubt hand made because each one offers the possibility of a different flavor profile. There are three variables, really. It could be spicy, or not. It could be soft, as you would expect a burrito to be, or the tortilla could be, or the shell can sometimes be a bit tougher or even crunchy. This even though I heat it the same each time: slightly damp napkin, 1:45 on this side, and 1:45 on that side. Finally, when you open the package, if you look at both, it seems obvious that one is just a tiny bit larger than the other. I don’t know what 10 calories look like, of course, but I’m forced to make conclusions here.

If that conclusion is correct, I’ll be eating the 500 calorie burrito tomorrow.

I went outside in the evening, because I had to get away from work. I had to get away from work because I found myself thinking a few paragraphs on burrito differentiation would be an interesting read.

I’ve been thinking about what it is that we value in our day-to-day lives. I’ve really been thinking about how to add valuable things, or value. OK, I’ve actually been thinking about how to separate the required from the desired. I have been thinking about this for 20-something years with no great results, but I have optimism that a great realizations will come my way, somehow, in the first few days of this week.

I sat outside and made myself a weekly schedule for the semester. I’m trying to lock off time for work and time for not doing work. That’s reasonable. Achievable. I don’t work 24/7, obviously. I’m not pulling 80 hour weeks here, like I did two jobs ago. Nor am I doing two people’s jobs as a way to help out with no added personal benefit (but in fact criticism) as has also been the case in other places and times. There’s a big push with my employer to have some work-life balance, even though we should dissolve that terrible phrase in a vat of acid. I do my work and sometimes it feels like my share and sometimes it feels like a little less and sometimes it is perhaps a little more. It all works out in the end, I have no problem with the ebbs and flows of things, natural rhythms are both inescapable and a feature of the work. I can also be happy in doing good work, because I can see the value in it. I’m pleased with all of that. It’s nice if others see value in it, too.

What I’d like to do is turn it off when the circumstances allow for it. This I have never figured out how to do. I’d like to not spend all of my time thinking about the particulars, or the next thing that needs to be done, or this theory or that technique or this pedagogy or that paper. (Or, previously, the next production, or the next meeting, or the next call sheet or the last newscast, the good lead, the bad interview from last Tuesday, and so on.) I can do pretty good work at work. I’d like to be personally better at drawing lines between that and everything else.

I teach about identity a lot. (Here I go again, even now.) And this, I think, figures into it. But that’s not all of it. And, anyway, I need to go do more things like stare at the sky or the rock wall or listen to nothing or pursue any of the other things that I find interesting. I feel compelled to try to set aside times to do the things I want. Have we all become appointment hobbyists? Are we otherwise to be overbooked by the upcoming and ennui? And if I set aside an hour a day to read, and two hours a week to do this other, and sprinkle in some smaller things here and there, can I mentally remove myself from work for some of that time? That’s what I’ve been thinking about. This is not a mid-life crisis — because, again, my whole professional life I’ve had this little challenge. That’s what it is, a little personal challenge. Certainly it is not a crisis. It is pattern recognition, and a realization that sometimes patterns can be confounded. If you —

Oh look at this!

That plane is going to London. I sat next to the shrubs and the long bladed grass things and watched three planes go by, hoping to see just one more plane reflect the sunset off its fuselage. Sun: nature’s livery. I saw one. Missed a photograph of it. And, anyway, that’s just off my phone and this particular flight path has them circling over us, from about two miles away, and climbing through several thousand feet. My phone’s camera is no match for that. But, then again, my DSLR can’t tell me that plane is going to London, that the previous one was headed to Portland, Maine, or that the one before that was bound for Edinburgh.

I was thinking about all of this while watching those planes fly threw and some left-sided corner of my brain said to the rest of me, “I should sit under those bushes and watch more planes fly by.” The rest of my brain laughed at the idea.

Tomorrow I’m going to wrap up the DMP class. (Probably.) I need to double-check my recent work on the org comm class to reassure myself it is in good shape. And then start in on these other courses. And, also, the above. Maybe tomorrow i’ll figure it out.

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