memories

adventures / friends / memories / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on Travel day, friends day
2
Dec 21

Travel day, friends day

I’m going to warn you, there will probably be crying, The Yankee said to me at the airport.

We got up this morning, drove to Indianapolis, put the car at a park-and-fly facility and caught the shuttle to the airport. This was our view.

Checked a bag, breezed through security and boarded the plane. It quickly got above these oddly bright-and-dark clouds. The plane turned south. We were flying south.

When we arrived in Atlanta, The Yankee said that to me. Because after we’d disembarked from the plane and changed terminals we met up with some friends coming off a flight from Nashville. Maybe pushing people out of the way in the jetway was Sally Ann, who we’ve known for seven years. They’re besties and made a beeline to one another. A great many hugs were had and tears were shed. Someone standing off to the side watching this got a bit weepy as well. I gave the bro hug to her husband, who we have also known for several years, but this is the first time we saw them as husband and wife. They got married during the pandemic, but did it on their own, because of the pandemic.

We all got on a plane together, their seats serendipitously right behind ours, and headed further south, to Savannah.

We got off that plane, gathered our luggage and caught an Uber.

This is our town, as you know. The Yankee and I took our first trip here. We kept going back. We got engaged here. We got married here. And now we’re having friend reunions here.

Down in the heart of the historic district our Uber dropped us off at the house we’ve rented for the weekend. I climbed out of the car first. Emerging from the house was The Yankee’s other bestie, who practically floated into my arms. There were more tears. We’ve known Anne and her husband Bill, who flew down from Maryland, for five or six years, but we haven’t seen them since just before the pandemic began. Also inside the house was an old friend of mine, Andre, who drove over from Birmingham. We’ve known him for 15 years or so, but haven’t seen him in ages. During dinner, takeout, Stephen and Brooke stopped by. They’re spending the weekend in a nearby hotel. I went to college with the two of them, meaning I’ve known them for almost a quarter of a century. We haven’t seen each other in far too long.

All of these people have been a part of our weekly Covid video chats. I’m not even sure how they started, but they did begin very early in the pandemic. There were about 17 people, far too many to be heard and understood. It was the first loud thing we’d heard after two or three weeks of silence, and it was joyous just to see the chaos after days of stillness. Over time a side chat evolved, show notes, we called it. And as these things tend to happen, the group worked down to these people, who we are here with now, the usuals. We said, at the beginning of this year, that we should all get together when this was over. We set this weekend, around a 10K run and lots of pleasant, smart, thoughtful people. We were naive, of course, about the timing, but they’ve all been careful with their health, and those around them. They’ve all been vaccinated and received boosters and they’ve been cautious with their activities, just as we have.

It was a delight to sit around a large table and watch these seven other people. They are loud. They are funny. They are boisterous. They are incredibly smart and talented and successful people. They are all our friends.

It was a great coming together. A meeting. An introduction.

They’d never met, not in person, before tonight.

And now we’ll have a long weekend to enjoy, together.

adventures / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off on Catching up through the mirror
8
Nov 21

Catching up through the mirror

Back to that maple tree I found at the entrance to the neighborhood on Friday. It’s still lovely, for now.

I’m just a big fan of that little batch of red right in the middle of the tree. This guy has character, and I should pay more attention to it through all seasons.

Because I like the smudge of colors in blurry photographs, this is how I’ll wind up remembering the tree:

And because this is my site — my name’s right there on the top, and everything! — here are a few more pictures of that tree.

It has a lot of character.

How can you not love that punk rock red?

Back to my backyard. I’m thinking of making a custom jigsaw puzzle. Would anyone like a copy of this one?

All of those leaves fell out of this maple. Like it sneezed, or brushed some crumbs from its coat.

The evening light on an evening walk. The Yankee has started running in her post-surgical recovery. Next Tuesday is four weeks, and we did an easy mile on Sunday evening.

I spent the rest of the weekend on the sideview mirror right project.

You see, our garage is shrinking, and for the second time my lovely bride has clipped the side with her mirror. The first time, eight years ago this month in our old house, she just shattered the glass, which, it turns out, was easy enough to replace.

Recently, she tore up the plastic mirror assembly. It hasn’t sat correctly since and the power mirror function was ruined. To use the mirror you had to hunch down from your normal driving posture. I wanted to fix this, because I like vehicle safety.

Buying the mirror was the easy part. I found a perfectly matched after-market mirror assembly for $39. It was black. (Her car is not black.) She did not want to drive around with a mismatched mirror. And neither of us wanted to pay a body shop for even a small job.

So I … got to paint the mirror. It started as shiny black plastic. I had to hit two stores on Saturday to find the can eight-ounce can of the matching stuff. I sanded the plastic. I applied three coats of primer.

Then I put on three coats of paint — lunar mist, is what the manufacturer calls it — and too much top coat.

Somehow, this is the first thing I’ve painted since childhood.

I found a seven-minute video on YouTube teaching me how to replace the driver’s side mirror. The length of the video encouraged me, because of course the actual process is much easier after the helpful mechanic over-explains it all. The process requires a flathead screwdriver, a socket wrench and three nuts and bolts.

Now it’s time for the two respective moments of truth. They came at me quick, almost too fast to process, let alone celebrate. First, I kept the glass clean from all of that paint. (I’d also only painted my thumb once, and made three small errors throughout the application process. We’re calling this a win.)

The next big victory was seeing the power mirror action working again. When she hit the garage it severed the cables inside the old assembly. The new assembly, of course, has its own wiring, which is in great shape. All I had to do was plug it into the car. And the mirror moves just as it should.

The paint job, for someone who never paints, isn’t bad. Maybe I’ll try to buff it down next weekend. Right now, it’s safe, and that’s what counts.

And that it matches.

I told The Yankee that I’m saving the old mirror for next time. But, hey, if you have to whack a mirror in this car, now I know how to do it. I built up a great deal of confidence in my ability to do the job.

Which makes me dangerous.

Like her backing up.

I also told her I’m cutting a notch out of the garage wall, like the old cartoons leaving a body silhouette when they went through a wall, so the mirror can pass right through.

errands / friends / IU / memories / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on A day that always seemed difficult, but was actually easy
26
Oct 21

A day that always seemed difficult, but was actually easy

I went to the recycling center to drop off some expired fluorescent bulbs. (Our closets have fluorescent bulbs. I have questions.) There are … one, two, three, four, five recycling centers in this county. Of those five, only one accepts this sort of light bulb. It is not our usual recycling center, which is to say, the closest one. It is three miles away from that one, an improbable nine-minute drive. So maybe it’s the next closest, but when I got down there today …

Always read the website yourself, that’s what I’ve learned. And if you ever meet anyone in charge of the solid waste management office, ask about these seemingly arbitrary Open/Closed days.

So I went to Lowes, for the second time in three days, because that’s the way it works. Lowe’s is 6.4 miles and 12 minutes from that recycling center. And today I needed to pick up a toilet seat. Because I broke the one I’d installed just two months ago.

Whoever heard of that?

I walked down the correct aisle, around a slow-moving couple who were deliberately deciding among off-white bathroom fixtures, and found all of the toilet seats were blocked by a scissor lift. Eventually a person wearing the “I work here” red vest and the “but please don’t ask me about it” expression walked by. I asked her if she could move the store equipment. We discussed the issue and she found that what I wanted was only partially blocked, so she didn’t have to find a person to move the lift. She squeezed in between that and the aisle and grabbed the thing. That was easy.

Paid, walked out, thought about it and grabbed those light bulbs. Turns out Lowe’s accepts those for recycling. That was easy, too. A theme emerges.

I had lunch with my friend, and a former student, Auston Matricardi. He watches things, talks to people, assembles sentences and applies punctuation for a living.

He’s a sports writer. A pretty great one, too.

And the building behind us there is where I work, and where we met. He was also a sports broadcaster. He’s one of those people that’s capable of doing whatever is before him.

The sort that makes the rest of us jealous.

Videos from the studio … here’s the morning show. They talked to a tarot card reader. And they got a lot of tarot cards read. Then they visited a haunted house, and that part is highly amusing.

It’s a fun show, all new people, the crew is largely new, and they are coming into their own nicely.

And this show is brand new, one of two the student television station has launched this semester, a fun look at students making films.

And today they shoot the news shows. One, which I’m teasing here, had a Halloween theme.

You’ll see that tomorrow.

This evening I got home and removed the new broken toilet seat and installed the new new one. So scarred am I from recent projects that I feared the worst, but it was simple: remove two plastic screws on the old one and line up the parts for the two plastic screws of the new one.

I wonder if I can get my money back on a busted seat which is still well within the store’s general policy time. We’ll find out Thursday! (Update: I did.)

But there will be much more here tomorrow. Who knows what theme it will hold. Don’t miss out!

Bloomington / IU / memories / photo / Tuesday / Twitter — Comments Off on A stationary front
5
Oct 21

A stationary front

The signs of summer are still with us. Saw this lovely little bit of shrubbery on a walk late last evening.

The signs of fall are coming slowly, and then suddenly. Same walk, just a little farther up on the same path.

So today my pocket square is autumnal.

Two years ago we observed Halloween and a snowfall. I’m going to try to not think about that every day between now and then. Each day in the next week or two when we have temperatures in the 70s and low 80s are a gift. A confusing gift.

But that weather out there? My friend Caroline Klare told me it would be like this.

In 2017 IUSTV decided to incorporate some weather into their newscasts. Someone knew someone studying atmospheric sciences. The first student-meteorologist was great, figured the TV thing out very quickly and did a fantastic job right up to graduation and went out into the world and got a job at BAMWX, a weather tech company. Two more students came through, one went to graduate school out west. One landed a great TV job in North Carolina, and Caroline is the last of that original cohort. Incredibly smart woman, wise beyond her years. She’s had a meteorology job waiting for her since her junior year.

Often as not, she orders me up some lovely weather, too.

I’m thinking about going to study atmosphere sciences.

IU / memories / site / television / Thursday / video — Comments Off on Let us talk about sports shows
30
Sep 21

Let us talk about sports shows

Let us talk about sports shows. Here are two of them. First, this is your standard issue updates-from-the-desk, reports-from-the-field highlight show, Hoosier Sports Nite.

And this is The Toss Up, your standard issue sports talk show. Four people sitting and talking at great depth, and with some degree of fandom, about the upcoming Major League Baseball playoffs.

Now, The Toss Up dates to 2016, when I got here. It has, more or less, always been shot as a show in-sequence. They do little pitches to another person for a sidebar, or a package, and they will sometimes shoot those out of order, but, generally it just makes sense to shoot it in that straightforward way. It has always felt natural and done in realtime, over the course of the four regular hosts it has had in those six years.

The first show above, Hoosier Sports Nite, is 11 years (or so) old. It has always, at least in my experience, had elements produced out of sequence. This means that if the anchor “pitches” to a reporter in another part of the studio, it’s an editing trick. The reporter part was done earlier, or later, and they just put it together in post-production. There’s nothing wrong with this. It happens in the industry all the time on programs that aren’t live. (Sometimes, for example, the person doing the pitching is live and the person catching the pitch is on tape.) There are different ways and reasons for doing that. They’re all legitimate. From our perspective, it usually has a lot to do with practical reasons like time, or our experience and so on. (We’re all still learning in this shop, of course.)

So imagine my pride when, last night, they produced Toss Up as they normally do — timing segments and getting in and out in a logical way and leaving me only two or three constructive criticism points to make — and then they did Hoosier Sports Nite straight through, a show produced truly live-to-tape. They did two bits over to correct small errors, also not unusual, but it’s all there as one live show.

I stopped by their post-production meeting to tell them so. To thank them and congratulate them for their work. It’s no small thing, doing a live show, and they’ve been building to this for a while.

When they rolled out the first episode of The Toss Up, the talk show, this semester, I noticed they’d changed the last of the original bits of the show. I remember all the components well, as it was the first show* I helped IUSTV bring to life. Every year something would change on this particular show. The logo improved. They added lower thirds or sharper segments. The last thing to go was the music. And that got updated this year. The guy that really brought this show to life, Jacques, he’d be pleased with the program today. He specifically wanted to start this show and give it to the people that came after him and let them run with it. And they have! The music was really his thing. He’d probably like that his music stuck around the longest from the original show. But now, aside from the name of the show and one line at the very end, they’ve organically grown the premise of his project, just as he’d hoped.

When I was watching them shoot Sports Nite last night, and talking about it and congratulating them after that, I was thinking of the through line of that show. Jacques was the first sports director I knew here. He graduated and then came Ben. Ben produced and improved those shows, graduated, and is now a producer at ESPN. When he moved to Bristol there came Auston. He produced and improved those shows, graduated, and went into the local sports writing business. The next year Michael was the sports director. He ran the shows, had his senior year in the studio cut short by Covid closing campus, but they grew a ton nevertheless, and he’s now doing sports at his hometown TV station in Iowa. So Drew and Jackson moved into the sports director roles after Michael. Drew graduated and is doing news in Fort Wayne now. Another Michael came along to help Jackson out and he just graduated and is on the market. Jackson will soon be graduating. Each of those guys have always told me what they liked about what the previous sports director did, and what they wanted to do differently. And as I stood there, beaming with a little pride, I could see all of that distinctly running through the night’s work. Those sports directors, and all the women and men working on those shows, were a part of making that particular episode a special little effort.

The thing is, all of this hard work is foundational. And, sometimes, you necessarily have to wait to see the development. It just keep building, though. From here it’ll grow through a room full of talented young folks learning from today’s upperclassmen, because those sports directors I mentioned have always aspired to raise the bar. It’s all cumulative. If all those now-graduated people had a mysterious little chill, or felt the hairs stand up on the necks, last night, I suspect they’ll get a more profound sensation when we have our next big moment. The thing is, it won’t be long now.

*Since I’ve been their adviser — and helper and cheerleader and all the other things — we have created seven new shows from the very air. Five of them are still running.

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