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memories

75 miles later

Happy Monday from the cats. Phoebe is enjoying the sun. We’ve had our share of clear skies the last few days and they’re both taking full advantage. A sun-warmed furry cat sits in her own realm of indulgence.

Poseidon also wishes you a Happy Monday. And he would like you to know that, for all of the times I tell him I outwit him because I am bigger and smarter, he is now taller than me. Way, way taller than me.

He’ll rub it in for days.

So the cats are doing great, thanks.

We went out for a bike ride this weekend. Twice, actually. Two of my three weekend rides, were outside.

These were rides two and three outdoors this year. Still low enough to count, and a late start owing to a combination of weather, my schedule(s) and my lovely bride working her way back into riding outside. These were her second and third rides on the road since her horrific crash last September.

So rare and novel, it still feels like going outside is getting away with something.

I remember, just after her surgery at the end of September, after a week of zero sleep for either of us, the surgeon came out to tell me she did well. He taught me a new word and said they’d send for me when I could go back to sit with her. While I waited, I called my mother-in-law, giving the good news, trying to reassure, being chipper. I called my mom, too. Both of them, being thoughtful moms, asked me how I was doing. I told her mom I was great: all systems go, taking care of your daughter, looking forward to seeing you soon. To my mother, I heard myself, a bit more candidly, say that, after a week of worry and sympathetic grimacing and no sleep and a fair amount of stress that “I could really use a bike ride.” Seemed selfish then, and in retrospect. My mom took the ‘You have to take care of yourself too,’ approach, which was welcome.

That was on September 29th of last year. I spent the next two weeks and change hovering over the convalescing patient. Three-and-a-half weeks after her crash I got on my bike again — riding part of the same route she’d been on — which wasn’t spooky at all. Between the rest of October and November, recovery, catching up on stuff and so on, I got in four more road rides before the weather turned. (I looked that up on the app and I am surprised the count was that high.)

Last month, on a picturesque weekend day, she wanted to ride outside. We pedaled around the neighborhood for a few minutes, going slowly, averaging just 10 miles per hour. A tentative toe in tepid water.

Saturday, after months of rehab — her ribs and shoulder blade are much better and her collarbone is finally starting to heal six months later — she decided to try riding on asphalt again. I can speak to this firsthand. As much as the physical, it’s a mental progression from riding on a trainer to dealing with wind and noise and cars and bumps. It takes a while to feel like yourself, and some more time after that to approach comfortable. She’s right on schedule, which is to say her schedule.

So Saturday, after I’d already spun out 33 miles on the trainer, we went out for a rambling 17-mile ride around the neighborhood. This is odd, because she always knows where she’s riding, but it was great, because there’s something magically freeing about riding aimlessly. No timers, no zones, no watts, just a bike ride.

Then, yesterday, another beautiful afternoon, we rode the winery route, doing four circuits of the 6.6 mile lap. It’s a quiet set of roads, loosely rectangular, with the interstate running alongside. It’s a good place to stretch out your legs. I asked her, after the first lap, how she was doing. She knew I was asking how it felt and how comfortable she was. She said she was doing OK. There weren’t a lot of cars around to bother us, just as we’d hoped, so she could concentrate on all of the rest of it. So she was concentrating on how her legs were feeling. She was frustrated, feeling sluggish, despite riding on her trainer all winter.

Reaching for an explanation, I said “You rode yesterday. And you know it’s always a little different, going from the trainer to the road. Plus this wind is everywhere.”

There’s a windmill at the top end of that route, and I watched it go around and around each time we went by. We were in a cross-head-cross-wind all the way around.

Then, for a few moments on the second lap, she found her legs. Her form straightened out, her legs took on the familiar form, the one that tells me I have to chase. And so I did, setting a two-lap PR for my efforts.

And now my legs are a bit tired.

I am now three CDs behind on the Re-Listening project. We’ve just worked our way through a stretch of really good jazz, and this next little bit is a comparative step down. An embarrassing step down, perhaps. Let’s just grin and get it over with it.

These guys got discovered in Australia at 15. Their five studio albums have moved more than 10 million units over the years. Their second record got a lot of play on MTV and alt radio, and Neon Ballroom is their third release, at the ripe old age of … 19. It topped the chart in Australia, where it went platinum three times. It also went to number one on the UK rock and metal chart. It climbed all the way to the 50th slot on the Billboard Hot 200 here, and is certified gold. It is one of those efforts that defines a little slice of 1999.

Also, and again, they were 19.

The very pointy tip of the millennial angst spear, we just didn’t think about them in marketing terms at the time.

I’m not sure I ever listened to this much, for whatever reason. A lot of it still feels new, even if it is a little dated two decades later.

Those guys went through some stuff, sadly unsurprising, perhaps, considering the attention they earned so young. They released two more records in the next seven years. After some on-again, off-again the guys split up for good in 2011.

And then there’s Sugar Ray, which was a station giveaway. I never listened to this thing. It was … not for me when I got it, and I was glad it was a freebie. That the three singles got nearly maximum plays across 1999 didn’t help.

Though this track did feature KRS-One.

And they covered a Steve Miller classic.

I’d entirely forgotten that track was on here until I played this disc the other day. As I said, I never listened to this.

Up next in the Re-Listening project, something I actually purchased, and enjoyed!

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24
Mar 23

‘Here we go again now, here we go again now’

I’m beginning to feel more and more like myself. With every phlegmy cough it feels like the end is around the corner. Except for the coughs that feel like, somehow, the respiratory restrictions in my torso will force the collapse of all known gravity in the universe.

It’s all for show. I do feel a great deal better.

Here are a few more photographs from the Val d’Incles in Andorra. I think you’ll come to lichen them, as I do.

It seems that a good slate roof can last a century. I wonder what all of this weighs. Pity the person who had to lug all that up on top of the building as an apprentice.

Also in that valley, some green stuff growing on the stones that line the single-track road.

If I ever have a long driveway — ours is about 1.25 lengths of a car, which is ideal for snow purposes — I would do a lot of research on how to move in stones and promote moss and lichen growth.

It’d be nice to walk past that on the way to the mailbox, is all.

This, I think, would promote a slow, lingering walk, as opposed to the long, fast strides to and from the mailbox I take right now.

Speak of moving quickly, I am well behind on the Re-Listening project. This, you’ll recall, is the game where I am playing CDs in my car in the order in which I acquired them. These aren’t reviews, but a chance to enjoy some music, think fondly on memories and put some of that there.

Only I’m several CDs behind now, so we’ll be playing a bit of catch up over the next several days.

Today, it is the second and final record from The Refreshments. They were an Arizona bar band who signed a deal, got alt radio and MTV airplay and grew bigger, faster, than probably they wanted. Back in the studio, they found themselves butting heads with their label, and a bit with each other. Roger Clyne and the rest of the guys disliked all of this so much they disbanded after “The Bottle & Fresh Horses.” Shame, too, The Refreshments were great and this album is a lot of fun, even still, 26 years later. I got this as a hand-me-down from the campus radio station in the fall of 1997.

It’s funny, the instrumentation is clever and earnest and all of it was forgotten too fast. But we’re Re-Listening. I’m singing along.

In some ways, the whole thing feels like a continuation of Fizzy, Fuzzy. Even the characters narrative arcs were familiar.

And the jangly guitars got dustier and, more … southwestern … somehow.

This character actually is referencing the first record.

I think this is the song where the band decided they didn’t like the label meddling in their work. It just feels off, and the intensity is a little different. This song, or something else, that was an important catalyst in the band calling it quits.

This one is a referential sequel to something from the other album. This was, I think, the first time I’d ever had that happen from one record to the next. It was so novel — still is, I suppose — and gratifying and welcomed.

I remember reading some trade magazine, an article I will never ever find again in our digital age, about this song and how they overlapped. I was sitting in a burger joint, killing time between this and that, and found myself thinking that if I didn’t like them already, I would have had no choice but to appreciate The Refreshments after that.

No one thinks about things like this, but I wonder what would make up the best three-song series to close out a forgotten record. I’m putting these three tacks up for nomination.

They run the gamut in three songs. Just one of the reasons I was sad to hear of the band’s demise soon after. They went from a local opener in 1993 to a headliner in about a year. About a year later they were signed, but they were defunct by 1998. Clyne and Naffah have been playing in a full band as Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers since then, but I still think of The Refreshments first. They’re touring right now. They’re in the Midwest this spring, in fact, but still too far away.

Anyway, after this rush job on the Re-Listening project, I think I am five or six CDs behind. So guess what we’ll spend some time on next week!?

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21
Mar 23

Andorran snowmelt

Still sickly. Now measuring my movements by asking myself, Is it worth it?

This morning I literally thought to myself, Is it worth the energy required to roll my eyes in jest right here?

It was, or so I thought. But, really, I wish I’d saved the energy. Also, I am in day four of having the medicine mouth taste. Everything is shaped by the zinc stuff and the cough drops and the Nyquil and whatever else I’m trying. Food all tastes weird. Mostly like the zinc stuff and the cough drops and the Nyquil and whatever else I’ve been trying. Tomorrow will be better, or this is my new lot in life. One of the two.

Anyway, here’s some snowmelt, runoff we happened upon simply by accident last week in Andorra. Side of the road, into the woods behind a scenic overlook sort of thing. Oh, look, the Americans are in the ditch again, stuff.

Seeing it here, today, makes me realize something very important.

Just as soon as I feel better, I will be ready for my next vacation.

Just as soon as I stop coughing.

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28
Feb 23

‘Hey kind friend’

I’m in the middle of the three longest days of the week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Thursday and Friday will be postscript and epilogue. But yesterday was 10 hours, today was 10 hours and tomorrow is 12 hours. Tonight, tonight I had a bowl of soup for dinner at 9:30.

It isn’t the hardest work in the world, or overly demanding, but the hours do accumulate.

Also, despite my best efforts, no amazing anecdote emerged from the day. No outlandish story, discovery or incredible sequence of events fell into my lap. No astounding coincidence, tale with a surely fabricated punchline or other incredible thing happened. It was a Tuesday, he said, grateful that he did all of the ironing on Monday.

Some things from Mastodon, which is where all the cool kids are now that Twitter is sliding int its news inedible pot of broth.

Saw this on campus today and picked one up.

It’s a getting-on-our-feet first issue, 10 pages. Heavy on design, light on copy, but rich in information.

You wonder about the practical feasibility of research like this. It seems like we should have this and a few verifying elements of research and then, ya know, implement it.

But the corporate bosses don’t read studies like that, I’d bet.

Every time you turn around archeology is discovering a new not-so-small discovery that resets our understanding of what we understand. It says a lot about what we don’t yet understand, and all of the things there are to learn.

If you click through the link, and wait out the preroll ad, there’s a fantastic NPR package here.

I can’t go all the way to Charlottesville for a photo exhibit, but if I was at the University of Virginia, I would definitely spend some time with those displays.

It is once again time to clean up the browser a bit. These are some tabs I’ve been holding on to for … quite a while, as it turns out. Too good to close and never be found again — and bookmarks being a different, quixotic enterprise altogether, I guess — I’m collecting them here.

This one is dated 2021. Is it possible I’ve had it opened for that long?

A self-made millionaire and CEO shares 5 ‘quick tests’ he always uses during job interviews to decide whether to hire:

Having these quick tests in your back pocket helps you make smarter business decisions. Why? Because the more we think about something, the more our minds will try to play tricks on us. We second-guess, we let doubt and fear creep in, we hesitate, we overthink. The purpose of the five tests below is to get past all of that and get back to the truth that you’ve known deep down all along.

This is especially true regarding two of the most important decisions that managers at my company, Compass, make: When to hire someone, and when to pass on them.

All of those will strike you as general, but not incorrect.

I stumbled upon this sometime early last year and thought, “Clearly anyone can do this.”

I just need some canvas. (And paint. And artistic talent.)

This was a much more recent, perhaps realistic, find. Buckwheat chocolate chunk cookies:

I am a chocolate chunk girl all the way because they melt into the cookie so much better. In contrast, chocolate chips hold their chip shape even after they are baked due to their waxy coating. I also love the size variation that the chunks give. This recipe also doesn’t make you choose between milk chocolate or dark chocolate because it has both! The inner kid in me loves milk chocolate way too much to leave it out, and I think the sweetness balances out the bitterness from the dark chocolate perfectly. Always use good-quality chocolate — especially when it is the star ingredient.

This recipe yields a slightly thin cookie with the crispiest golden edges and a gooey center — just how a chocolate chip cookie should be! It calls for mostly all-purpose flour, with a touch of buckwheat flour. This addition adds a delicate texture and a hint of nuttiness. Lastly, a finish of flaky salt on top adds the perfect amount of crunch. Flaked salt just makes everything better — what can I say?

Say “Pass the cookies, please!”

Because of an impulsive decision to close some shopping sites, a decision no doubt brought on by a distinct lack of cookies available as of this writing, I am now down to just 30 tabs on my phone’s browser.

Today we also return to the Re-Listening project, which is where I’m working my way through all of my CDs, in order of acquisition. Not reviews, but sometimes memories, and most often an excuse to revisit music — most of it great!

This installment brings us to the late spring or early summer of 1997. I bought my second Indigo Girls CD. The first was the double-live “1200 Curfews,” this was a studio record, and “Shaming of the Sun” solidified my love for the band. I saw them that May and, thanks to the web, I can see the setlist.

Thin Line
Power of Two
Don’t Give That Girl a Gun
It’s Alright
Shed Your Skin
Get Out the Map
Reunion
Mystery
Scooter Boys
Everything in Its Own Time
Shame on You
Caramia
Chickenman
Southland in the Springtime
Cut It Out
Galileo
Chiapas Bound
Here I Am
Closer to Fine

Nine of those songs are on this record. I wish I could remember if I’d already bought it by then. Probably so. (I also saw them the next year, in Atlanta. I’ve seen the Indigo Girls more than anyone else, I imagine, and almost always as a two-piece.) It became their highest-charting album, at least in the United States. It hit number 7 on the Billboard 200.

The most important memories from this record would come still a decade later. The first two tracks are songs The Yankee and I sang together on a long car ride.

This is important because I don’t really sing in front of people, or sing with people outside of church. But it had been a good week and the sun was bright and the road was long and we were actually using an actual map.

Sometime later she made me a mix CD and that song is on there, too. We’ve also seen the Indigo Girls together twice, in Atlanta and Indianapolis. But for Covid, we would have seen them in Nashville too, just to round out the map a bit more.

The still-intriguing thing about this record is that it still fits at any time. Also, there’s a lot of message music on here. Protests and the like have never especially appealed to me, or sent me away, but the messaging is obvious, even to me. When I first got this I was still mostly taken by Emily Saliers’ incredible writing, even as I was starting to pay more attention to Amy Ray’s background vocals.

It was the next record when I would really learn to dive into everything Ray did. They compliment one another so well, of course. At the time, what Saliers wrote, the way she played, it all felt so true and intently earnest. And sometimes brooding and mysterious.

I just wasn’t hearing Ray yet, which seems hilarious in retrospect. (I have her entire catalog now, and I’ll ramble on and on about it in future installments, I’m sure of it.)

Those harmonies!

That’s why you sing along with a pretty girl, even if you’re not in the habit of making such a small thing about yourself available.

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22
Feb 23

The Girl Scout cookie story

It has been four days and I’m doing fine — well, my hair has been unruly and the days since have seemed longer, though no more productive, but I’m fine — so I may as well tell this story. The timing of this telling was inspired by a longtime friend. The story involves an old friend, and it goes like this.

I had some Girl Scout cookies on Saturday. I bought them from a friend’s daughter.

My friend Jeremy called and asked if he could bring his daughter to sell some cookies. We lived between Jeremy’s house and the grandparents and so it turns out that we offered her first real cookie selling experience. It was bitterly cold the day Sadie rang the doorbell. I invited her inside.

Remembering this was her first sell, I made a big point out of this. Sadie, you’ve been to our house before, and I’ve been to yours. Your mom and dad know us and we see each other a lot, and that’s why I’ve invited you in out of the cold. People you don’t know shouldn’t invite you in, and you shouldn’t go into their houses when selling Girl Scout cookies.

It seemed an important teaching opportunity.

The thing to know is that Jeremy has a dizzying, dry wit. Truly, you can catch him in the right moment and see his whole head and upper body making tiny circles while his mind simultaneously and instantly goes through a dozen textured, punned, historical, hipster jokes for any given moment, discarding the 11 inferior ones and offering the two best, one each pared for red meat or white. The man has a talent. And he can’t hold a candle to his wife. So their oldest kid, you see, has no choice but to be funny.

“Let me go ask my dad. For ‘safety.'”

She even threw in the air quotes, which, though she did not realize it, earned her a few extra boxes sold.

So she came in and we made our selections and the transaction was completed.

And the year, was 2014.

I had some of those cookies Saturday. They were the last from that order. (It seems important to always have some Thin Mints on hand, just in case.) This came up Saturday when I got some grief about not eating any of the cookies I ordered last year from my god-niece-in-law (just go with it). The Yankee said she wasn’t ordering me any extras because I hadn’t eaten any of last year’s (#StockpileMentality), to say nooooothing of that final 2014 box.

And you’re wondering what they were like, the 2014 cookies. The plastic sleeve was opened. No memory of that. But they’ve at least been in the freezer throughout, at least — though we did move once in the interim. They smelled of a bit of freezer burn. You could see a bit of freezer burn on them. They tasted exactly as Thin Mints should.

Maybe I’ll get around to eating the second 2014 sleeve in 2024.

Back to Willie Morris who, at this point in his memoir, has moved on from his small town on the Mississippi Delta to the University of Texas, where he would eventually become editor of the campus paper, and launch his incredible career.

This says a lot. And says, perhaps, even more, that we’re in much the samea place.

There’s another paragraph, nearby, where he talks about being invited, as a young college student, to join some grad students for dinner. In the interest of not putting the whole book here, I’ll summarize. He was overwhelmed by all of the books they owned, more than he’d ever seen in anyone’s home. Sure, he was the valedictorian, but small town Mississippi and all. He tells us it made him shy. He couldn’t talk, he was just staring at those books, wondering if they were for sale, or an exhibit.

It is a rare experience for certain young people to see great quantities of books in a private habitat for the first time, and to hear ideas talked about seriously in the off hours. Good God, they were doing it for pleasure, or so it seemed. The wife asked me what I wanted to do with myself when I graduated from college. “I want to be a writer,” I said, but not even thinking about it until the words were out; my reply surprised me most of all, but it was much more appropriate in those surroundings to have said that instead of “sports announcer,” which probably constituted my first choice. “What do you want to write about?” she persisted. “Just … things,” I said, turning red.

He then goes on to talk about going to the library later that night, promising himself to read every important book that had ever been written, but not even knowing where to begin.

I know the feeling, Willie, I know the feeling.

Later, after studying at Oxford, and then coming back to take over as the editor of The Texas Observer:

Some things will be good for a long, long time. Like how you deal with hacks and, also, my appreciation for Willie Morris’ writing. And Girl Scout cookies.