Monday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Monday

adventures / Caribbean / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off
6
Jan 25

Snow day

It snowed, as forecast.

Not that you’d doubt it, because you’re trusting souls. And I, being forthright with the readers here, have given no reason for you to not believe me. But maybe you haven’t seen snow in a while. Here is a bit of hastily gather evidence from this morning.

We enjoyed chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, as is the snowy tradition.

By last night, we were hoping for snow just to have the pancakes.

It was a pleasant sight, and not nearly as bad as anticipated. The birds are out eating seeds. The roads are more quiet. Much of everything is closed for the day. The power never blinked. My kind of terror dome.

This afternoon, when the snow had finally exhausted itself, we went out to shovel the driveway.

Oh, I prepared the snow blower, but we only had three, maybe four inches of snow. That didn’t seem worth putting oil and gas in the blower, honestly. So I shoveled the sidewalk before my lovely bride realized it, and had gotten started on the driveway when she came outside. So we did that.

Then I looked over at our elderly neighbor’s driveway. It was cleaned. And then I thought, you know, another of our neighbors is out of town right now. Won’t be back until tomorrow, and has two or three new joints. Maybe that person shouldn’t be out there shoveling day old snow after a week of transnational travel. So we shoveled that driveway, too.

I thought it’d be a nice surprise. A nice mystery. But I looked up, and they have a camera covering the driveway, of course. Technology.

Once again in our yard, I did a quick inspection for snow related issues and noted the patio table, with some delight.

For some reason I want waffle fries now, though.

And that’s been today. Tomorrow will be different.

Ten years ago today, we were doing this …

Reading as we lazily sailed to the south Caribbean.

We might have been smarter in 2015 than we are today.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
30
Dec 24

Libraries and books and classes and things

So let us reset the scene. We have moved through Christmas. Everyone has returned home. No one knows what day it is. My grading is done. Final grades have been submitted. I have turned my mind fully to spring classes.

Fully is probably overstating it. But I’m working on stuff. One class is all but done. Twenty percent of the new class is done. Soon enough that one will become a sole focus.

Also, I want to go to the local small town library. I’d like to explain the library situation to you. We live in an unincorporated community. The small town next to us has a library that you might categorize as, “cute.” It’s staffed entirely by volunteers. It is open 26 hours a week — 20 in the summer.

In the county seat, over in the other direction, there’s a “Free Library.” That’s in the name. And it’s free if you live in the city. If you live in the county, as I do, that costs $15 a year. The free library is slightly better appointed than the cute library.

In the next county, where campus is, there is of course the campus library — currently under renovation. And there’s a library system, six branches of varying size, I’m sure. If I want to join that library, because I don’t live in the county, I could pay $100 a year for a membership.

But!

That larger library system is a member of consortium of 22 libraries and systems. If you’re a member of one of those, you have privileges at the larger system.

My cute library is not a part of that consortium.

You know, being out in the country has it’s benefits and its drawbacks. As I have documented, for the first year we were here we didn’t have garbage pickup. We don’t have road clearing. Somehow, the library thing is the one that annoys me.

None of this makes any sense, none of it matters, because there’s always the ILL, the Interlibrary Loan system.

Interlibrary Loan is a miraculous system. You simply find a title somewhere that you want, that’s not in your home library. You tell your library. They fetch the book for you, and then you get what you requested. The only thing is that ILL operates a little differently everywhere you are. Local rules and resources and all of that. My last campus library, for example, you had to go over to the library to pick it up. The place before that, they brought it to you. It was awesome.

Whatever it is, I have this feeling that the process here will be the weirdest one yet. I’ll find out in the next few days, maybe next week.

The bike riding continues. Last week I wrote of the speculation of trying to hit randomly collected goals that were just a little out of the realm of comfortable possibility, but definitely possible because I could see it, right there, on a spreadsheet. A document that serves only to taunt me.

Well, I decided to reach for all of those goals, most miles in a December, a round number, the circumference of the the planet (at this latitude). They were close to one another, but far away from me. And so I set out for it. After 40 miles on Christmas night, a bit more after that, 110-ish miles this weekend, there was a bad ride this afternoon, and then another one tonight.

The problem is that the ride earlier today was bad because I’m tired. Legs are almost dead. I am probably under-fueled. And the basement is a bit demoralizing at the moment.

Also, I have another long ride tomorrow.

Those big goals might have been a little ambitious. But you can’t get close and just stop, even on your arbitrary goals that mean, in the end, nothing at all. That’d just be rude.

And a bad way to end a year.

Stupid spreadsheet.

cycling / family / Monday / photo — Comments Off
23
Dec 24

The assemblage of the 23rd

The in-laws are here for the holidays. My mother spent Thanksgiving here, and they are here for Christmas. It still feels strange to not travel everywhere for the holidays, but it is also nice to make some of these moments in our home.

And don’t underestimate the practical value of not being constantly on the move. That’s not what it is about, but sometimes that’s what it becomes, which is not what it is about.

If that makes sense.

Anyway, they arrived safely, brought some cold down with them, and we will have a fine old time this week.

I walked by the Dickensian village at just the right time today. I enjoy the village. I’d vote to keep them out for longer, just for the classic scenes and all of the little activities and details you can find. The designs are charming, the lights in them, in the evening, are a delight.

And, today, the sun streaming in was creating these lovely little shadows.

I wish we had the space to display them all. (We have a lot.) Alas, we have a Catzilla.

When I hauled the garbage can to the end of the drive last night, I looked up to see …

… not drones. (That’s Orion. And if this confuses you, get an app, or crack a book.)

Let’s talk about the bike. I did nothing for the first two weeks of December. It was, I thought, an uncharacteristically long lull, and it felt like it. I rode 21 whole miles the weekend before this, just to see if my legs and feet could remember how to make tiny circles. I got in 70 miles on two days last week, just to see if I still could. This weekend I pedaled my way through 72 more miles.

Now we get to the problem of the spreadsheet. Since I log all of these things — in about three different ways — I know precisely where I am. I know what the trend lines look like, what’s possible, what is beyond reach and, dangerously, what might be feasible, if I stretch.

And that’s always the dilemma. Is it authentic if I see those benchmarks coming and push just a little more to get there. Even if only barely?

This is what I can get to, if I ride a lot in this last week: a new-to-me round number. It’s a small amount, so I don’t even want to say it aloud. I could finish the year with the number of miles equaling the circumference of the earth, at this latitude, anyway. (Next year I’ll finish my first equatorial circle of the earth.) Doing all of that also means I could also set a new record for the month of December.

In all, it seems unlikely. I had that lull to start the month, and time is short.

But if I push, I thought as I pedaled through 30 more miles today, if I could somehow get 300 more miles this week …

That’s not a lot. Except, to me, it most definitely is.

That spreadsheet just sits here, taunting me.

Monday / video — Comments Off
16
Dec 24

Noisy videos

We aren’t getting drones. We are seeing flyovers from the Royal Canadian Air Force and advance elements of the 38th wing of Canada geese. They make a delightful racket.

(Delightful because they just fly right by. Keep it moving, geese.)

That was Saturday. Saturday night, if you’ll excuse the quality of the shot, Santa came through the neighborhood.

They do that every year. Isn’t that charming?

adventures / friends / Monday / photo / running — Comments Off
9
Dec 24

Weekend shots

The problem with photography is that some of the best images come in the early morning, when the sun is low in the sky. And that, frankly, does not coincide with my lifestyle choices.

But on days when I am up, and I’m outside, the world looks lovely again, especially when it’s frost-covered anew.

This was waiting for a run to start, which is why I was up and outside early. They began about 20 minutes late for reasons that were not explained, but let us assume it was for our safety on the roads, and not because of general disorder. So I had time to take some extra photos, before shuffling through an easy 5K.

One stretch I was doing a 5:30 pace, but then I remembered this was maybe my fourth or fifth run of the fall, so I did the rest of it slowly and sensibly. Never you mind my time, which was somewhere between Olympian and walking.

My lovely bride did a 10K Saturday morning, which is why I was there at the finish line to take this poorly composed shot.

They didn’t really have a setup that was conducive to quality finish line photos, which more people should consider when laying these courses out. Begin with the family photos in mind, I always say, ever since I started saying it, which was just a few seconds ago.

Maybe that was the reason for the delay.

At any rate we got to hang out with our friends’ son, Sammy. He did not run, though I tried for months to get his dad to convert the stroller to an e-scooter, and bolt on some foot pedals so he could just ride on. Sammy decided to stay cozy and warm, because he’s smarter than those other kids who were out doing their stroller 5 and 10Ks this weekend.

Also, this guy is The Mayor, and he knows it.

But he’s the cool guy mayor, you know? He doesn’t flaunt it, doesn’t need to hold it over people’s head, he’s not bored of it or use it to his advantage. He just lets you be charmed by his natural charisma. How could he not be?

We had Cuban food for dinner Saturday night. I just wanted to memorialize this, for the next occasion I get Cuban food.

Roasted chicken, lechón asado, ropa vieja and the only problem was that they didn’t offer me seconds. (That ropa vieja was so good, they could have offered me thirds!)