Monday


27
Feb 23

I’m not even sore

Happy Monday. And to make your Monday just a bit more tolerable, we’ll begin with the site’s most popular weekly feature, the weekly check in with the kitties. This weekend they have been quite the cuddle cats. That could be because the heater was, for some reason, turned off on Friday and it was midday Saturday, when it never got warm inside, before I noticed.

They’re also loving and needy little things, that’s a part of it, too. Last night, I wasn’t sure if they would let me go to sleep, for all of their “Pet me. Pet me. PETME,” demands.

In our house, there is a mid-grade residential carpet pad. And on that carpet pad sits a nice, low shag carpet. And on that carpet there’s a throw pillow. And on that pillow there’s a folded pair of jeans.

And that’s where Phoebe is choosing to nap.

What I love about this picture is that it demonstrates Poseidon’s ability to anticipate, and his understanding of the sun’s direction of travel. He’s not half in the shade, he’s waiting for the sun to come around.

That’s a smart cat move.

This was the weekend of going uphill. That’s not a metaphor. I was actually going uphill. Virtually uphill, anyway. It’s a silly thing, but there was a series on Zwift this weekend, a three stage showdown of some of the more demanding climbing routes. And since I am trying to ride all of the routes anyway, I figured, why not?

Friday evening I rode the first of the three stages, climbing 2,500 feet. Knowing what was to come, I was determined to take it easy on Friday. And I was largely successful with that, but I felt too good late and so I pushed a bit on that last climb. I have no idea how to preserve my energy over time. Most people don’t, I think, so that’s OK. I set two Strava PRs on Friday, celebrated by putting on the compression boots and got ready for Saturday.

Saturday, there was the Alpe du Zwift, the game’s (apparently realistic) take on the legendary Alpe d’Huez. This stage was harder, and it has 3,900 feet of climbing. I decided I was going to pace myself up that beyond category climb because Sunday’s route was even more demanding. So on the alpe I set seven Strava PRs, including taking more than seven minutes off my best time up the climb.

I’m no climber. Really, I’m not, but the progress is progressive. But my avatar looks great descending!

At least the switchbacks on the alpe actually provide a little relief on the ascent. No such help on Sunday, on the hardest route of the weekend, punctuated by a slow climb up the vaunted Ventoux.

Ventoux or d’Huez, which is harder? They’re both a big challenge. Ventoux has a bit more of a gradient, and it’s almost continual. Eight percent is the norm, and there’s a lot of 11 and 12 percent, and there’s no accelerating up that. Plus, leg fatigue is, of course, cumulative. The only thing Ventoux has going for it on this particular route was that the finish line came about two miles before the summit. Even abbreviated, the route had 3,953 of ascent, and Strava considers it another beyond category climb. I was pleased with the earlier finish, though. Long before that, I was hoping to just finish well.

It started out great. If you look to the right of this graphic, you can see where I am in the field. For a brief, brilliant, shining moment, I was at the front of the field, pushing on at 30 miles per hour.

When the climbing started, I fell away pretty quickly. I am not a climber.

But I was happy to finish in the top 50.

I was happy to finish 50th.

I was happy to finish.

After finishing all three stages of Rapha Rising, I believe 249th overall, I had another 10,400 feet of elevation gain in my legs over the last three days. (That’s a lot for me!) I earned a day off. My Zwift avatar earned some Rapha kit. The only time I will ever afford Rapha is when it’s free.

The 2023 Zwift route tracker: 76 routes down, 48 to go.

This is where I stopped reading last night. Willie Morris has spent four pages talking about riding around Texas with W. Lee O’Daniel. He’d been the governor of Texas from 1939 to 1941, running and governing in the all-too-familiar populist demagog style. He went to the U.S. Senate, beating LBJ in a special election, for the rest of the 1940s. Then he returned to private life, running a ranch in Fort Worth, and making money in real estate and insurance in Dallas. In the second half of the 1950s, he ran for governor again.

It’s a poignant, bittersweet thing, Morris’ detailing of three days canvassing Texas in an air conditioned Cadillac. O’Daniel was aging, and he knew it. Morris saw him as an old man “trying to retrieve the past.” His constituency was aging, and he knew that too. Or they were dying off, and he could see it, in the dusty, small towns he visited. Not that he was the same draw as he’d been as a famous radio host back in ’38, but also, the makeup of the state had changed underfoot. Not because of him or in spite of him, just around him, a colorful character with much of the color washed away by time.

I say this every time I return to his work, but I love the way Morris writes.


20
Feb 23

‘So we tripped upstairs’

We spent a pleasant Sunday afternoon on the deck. We built a fire. There are woods behind us, but we went out and purchased firewood. I have joked about buying a chainsaw, finding the owner of those woods and … well, maybe I should do that in the other other … meeting the owner of the woods and ask if they minded if I pulled the occasional felled tree out for the fire pit.

But I haven’t done that. The Yankee bought some wood, some really green stuff, and we struggled through that for a while. I used every trick before adding an accelerant to make that stuff to burn. But we needed more firewood and so, yesterday, we went to a proper lumber man. He has an honor system set up. Put your money in the box over here, draw your wood from that stack over there. It was perfect. When we put the flame to the wood it caught straight away.

It was the perfect temperature. You didn’t need to hug the fire to be warm. You didn’t get too hot if you leaned in too far. I wonder how long a trunk’s worth of wood will last.

Light weekend on the bike for whatever reason. I just go by feel, really. And after a few low key days I’m sure I’ll feel the need to put in more miles. But I have screen grabs, because I need content. Here’s a flat spot after a downhill from Saturday’s ride.

And then, for some reason, all of the HUD graphics disappeared. It was lovely. No times of other rides or maps, just a road. It was a bit like, well, riding a bike.

I’m not sure how I managed to do that to the Zwift interface, or what brought the graphics back. I’ve cropped them out here, because I like the side view as a change of pace, those flowers are nice and … what is going on with my avatar’s knee?

My knees sometime feel like that, too.

I also got in 26 miles this evening, and my knees feel great! (It was a generally flat course, just 1,000 feet, or so, of climbing.)

The 2023 Zwift route tracker: 71 routes down, 53 to go.

But enough about me on my site. Let’s get to what you’re really here for, the weekly check-in on the cats, who are both doing well, by the way.

Phoebe has absolutely developed a sun routine. At a certain point of the morning, on those days when we have sun, it can stream into the bedroom. We have some heavy duty curtains, so if her time of the morning has arrived, and we haven’t opened those curtains, she knows. She’s not a big complainer, mind you, but she will sit. She will sit, and she will wait. She will sit, and she will wait for the sun to be presented to her. She will sit. She will wait. She will judge.

She judges me a lot. Fortunately, she is fair, and forgiving.

Mostly because she likes to cuddle. Here’s the standard issue Sunday night cuddle.

Sometimes, you just have to sit on the steps and think on the deep, profound issues of life.

On this particular night, Poseidon was thinking about how he comes to find himself with a napkin over his head, holes cut out for his ears.

He’s thinking of a ghost costume for Halloween this year.

We play a game every Sunday morning. He rolls around on the oven cover, delighting in the heat that’s escaping after bacon and biscuits. After I do the breakfast dishes I rub his face down with a napkin. We pay special attention to his ears and his cheeks and his chin and he loves it. After a time, he feels his face is clean and at that point the napkin has somehow become offensive, and he starts biting it, and me. Yesterday that got a bit aggressive, and he tore a hole in the thin paper. Open it up, and the holes were the perfect size and spacing for his radar ears.

Back then, I just didn’t buy everything right away. Probably because I couldn’t afford it. Plus media consumption was a little bit different. It is also possible that some of these CDs got slipped into the CD books a little out of sequence. One of those, or some other banal explanation, applies here. Anyway, let’s call it the spring of 1996 and return to the Re-Listening project with a perfectly produced example of alt pop from Arizona.

“Congratulations I’m Sorry” came out in February of 1996. I probably bought this from one of the two independent music stores that were in town. (It wouldn’t be too many more years before that sentence was, itself, outdated.) I probably paid between $7 and $12 for it. Worth every penny. Panned by critics for a lack of innovation, it’s really a continuation of Gin Blossoms’ previous record, which we breezed through earlier this month.

This one went platinum, but underperformed their second record. It made it into the top 10 on the US Billboard 200 weekly chart, and settled at 138 on the year-ender. They are, of course, still playing the hits from both today. (We saw them twice last year.)

So here are some more prime alternative pop deep cuts coming your way.

Somewhere between the flannel and finding jobs, these songs were part of the soundtrack of a century slowing wrapping itself up. That’s as profound as I can get.

This one got nominated for a Grammy, and was probably a profound breakup song for someone trying to wrap up a century. Not for me, but for someone.

They were really after something with that video, no?

No video here, but a nice live audio recording which does a nice enough job pointing out that Jesse Valenzuela makes the whole band work.

The Wikipedia entry has a “People” review I can’t find quickly online, but runs the quote “a quick fix for any dark mood … the songs are so upbeat they almost conjure sunny summer afternoons.” And that seems fair.

Also, I think this is one of the better songs of its genre and time.

A lot of people posting and uploading to YouTube seem to agree. There are a lot of shaky phone shots of live shows, and more than a few personal covers of “Competition Smile.”

I saw them on campus on this tour, and not too long after that they went on hiatus for a few years. They’d been through a lot. The title of this record, after all, stems from people acknowledging their last record’s success, and sharing in their grief of the 1993 suicide of former lead singer, Doug Hopkins. “Congratulations I’m Sorry.”

He’s not on this record, but they’ll be playing his songs this weekend in New York and Pennsylvania.

The band in our next installment of the Re-Listening project is also on tour this spring. If you’re in Florida next month, maybe you can still get a ticket. But more from them tomorrow.


13
Feb 23

I want a Montezuma University Medical College t-shirt

Sorry for the abrupt Friday post. I was apparently tired. That night I went to bed early, feel asleep reading and slept the whole night through. I woke at an, well a normal time for a Saturday morning, I guess. But that meant 12 full hours of sleep. Felt great on Saturday! So good that I was still awake at 4 a.m.

Ahh, the biorhythms.

Bookies are now taking action on when I’ll wear down this week.

Let’s start off with the reason why you showed up on Monday, the site’s most popular weekly feature, the check in on the kitties.

We’ve had some periodic morning sun, lately. And whatever the number of times is required to make something a habit for a cat has been met.

Now, they are waiting, each day, in this spot. The sun isn’t always poking through the clouds, but they’re here on this carpet, on spec. Roll back the curtains, people, there might be some sunlight.

Being cats, Phoebe and Poseidon will lounge in it indulgently as long as they can.

So the cats are doing well. Their biggest news is that Poe got in a scuffle with his sister and she marked his nose pretty good. It’s healing well, which is good. His pink nose is a big part of his charm.

Though I did not ride on Friday because, ya know, sleep, I’d like to think I made up for it a bit.
I got in 40 miles on Saturday. I had six Strava PRs, including two climbing segments which I will never be able to equal. Mostly because I was chasing my lovely bride.

We took another ride on Sunday, and I ticked 33 more miles into my legs. It was slower, but steady, I guess. Never felt like I could accelerate. Couldn’t drop The Yankee, but I surely did try. Somehow I took 6:09 off my best time up a cat 2 climb. I am not a climber. Even though Zwift gave me the polka dot jersey on Saturday.

And then, the weirdest thing happened this evening. I decided to spin out an easy recovery ride. Then I forgot about the recovery part, I guess. I set three more Strava PRs, and took 1:26 off another climb.

So it is shaping up to be an interesting year on the bike, I suppose. Or a perfectly average year, who even knows.

The 2023 Zwift route tracker: 66 routes down, 58 to go.

(If you’re following that little tidbit, you might have noticed that the math has changed here. Turns out I was using a slightly outdated route list. Four new routes were added since last November, so there’s your mathematical inconsistency. This list is accurate, until Zwift adds the Scotland routes in March. Basically, there’s plenty still to do, hopefully most of it before I take the bike off the trainer and start riding exclusively outside again.)

The hardest part of having a couple hundred books waiting to be read is trying to decide which interesting thing to choose next. I solved that problem yesterday. Instead of grabbing one book, I selected the next three. And I’m starting with the great Willie Morris and his memoir, North Toward Home.

There aren’t many memoirs that appeal to me for a variety of reasons. But Willie Morris, above talking about one of his ancestors, is in a different category. If I could write like anyone the boy from Yazoo City, Mississippi would be on the very short list.

This is a third edition of his memoir, the first run was in 1967. The language can be problematic, particularly in these early stages of the book. The kid that would become a not-quite-singular progressive voice from the South grew up in those small towns and visit those hollers and delta swamp lands and live it before he could wrestle with desegregation and coming of age in a time of deep and lasting change. We’ll get to that later in the book, I’m sure. First, there are rich memoir moments, like the nearly universal nature of the southern church experience. There was much nodding along. Two generations later, and a state to the east, there are many similarities.

And, here, his first time in a Catholic church.

I recall my first visit to a Catholic church, but not as clearly as all of that. The story goes like this.

The town was founded by a coal man, a Methodist and a Democrat, in 1886. Henry DeBardeleben was the ward of one of the state’s first industrialists, and inherited, or otherwise acquired, much of his assets. The quintessential New South industrialist, DeBardeleben decided to create a town near the booming Birmingham to exploit the local iron and steel resources and their dirty, important, industries. One of his sons continued the family trade, becoming a coal magnate in the first half of the 20th century, but he was an Episcopalian and a Republican. So the DeBardeleben name is important in that region, but the second generation German immigrant’s neighbors, the Italian and Irish immigrants, were the ones that built the first local Catholic church.

There was a 50-room hotel, which first appeared at the New Orleans World’s Fair in 1884. For 10 years after DeBardeleben bought it and had it moved to his new city. He lived there for a time, in the hotel, the former headquarters of Mexico’s delegation to the World’s Fair, on the 10 acre lot. The railroad marked one border, a local creek tributary, today little more than an oversized and running drainage ditch, marked another. For 10 years the Montezuma was a hotel, for three more it was Montezuma University Medical College, then it burned, in 1899. That’s where the first Catholic church in the area held their services. Today there’s a pharmacy, a closed foundry and low income housing in the hotel’s footprint.

Just before the fire, the church got their own land from the city, a choice spot, just in the direction the city would grow and thrive for the next few generations. They built a frame school building, then replaced it in 1912 with a modern brick building, the first of its kind around, and there they thrived for decades.

I went to mass there once with an elementary school friend and his family. My friend was the oldest kid. He had a brother and a sister. Both of his parents were educators. They had the first remote control I ever saw. We were friends until I changed schools in the 5th grade, and eventually grew apart. But he’s still there, working in medicine or some such. I wonder if he still goes to mass. The parish he grew up in was a full, ornate building. I remember the colors being rich and dark low, and growing lighter as you looked toward the ceiling. I am sure the room was smaller than my memory. There were the solemn processions, the costumed finery, the purification and sanctification of the incense, the call and answer, both joyous and monotone. All of it different. All of it interesting. None of it mine.

The church stayed in that spot until it burned in 1989. A century between fires. They still have a convent on that block. There’s a halfway house and a law firm there, too. The local board of education is across the side street. Across the way today there’s the “Opportunity Center,” and the Homeless Education Program.

The church built their new parish four miles away, again, in the direction where the city was still (somewhat, somehow) growing. Last Christmas they celebrated 30 years there. I bet I’m the only person who has found a vague, passing, unintentional, similarity between the Montezuma and their current building.

I’ve been to one or two other Catholic services elsewhere. I saw Catholics before a mass praying for Pope John Paul as he lay dying. I even watched mass at Saint Peter’s Basilica. Those last two I can remember clearly, but I was an adult by then.

I think that’s the problem I’d have writing a memoir, and the pure genius of Willie Morris. Look at all he gives us in a half of a paragraph. Look at the space I filled up in 600 or so words.

Also, there’s the issue of memory.


6
Feb 23

Is that a uranium isotope in your pocket?

I cleaned out the garage Friday morning. But let me back up to September.

In September, the gas guy visited the house. He was there to replace the meter. Only there were flowers in the way, so he left us a nice note, asking us to remove the flowers, so they don’t get damaged in his work. This was about 45 minutes before The Yankee’s crash, so I got around to doing the flower removal — they were all weeds, anyway — in November. But I’d misplaced the note with the phone number in the interim.

Last week that door hanger floated to the top of a pile of papers, so I made the call, and we scheduled the guy to come back out. They were perfectly pleasant. No beef was offered for the delay. And the guy would be out Friday.

Are there pets? Is anyone sick? Will someone be home to provide the technician access to kill, and later, restart the pilot light?

So he was scheduled to come Friday. He needed access to the pilot light. All of that stuff sits in a custom corner of the garage. The only problem is that the space around it is perfectly suited to be a place to store extra things. So Friday morning I moved out the cars and slide a cabinet, a shelf and various other small things out of the way.

Friday evening, since I had all of that stuff out of the way, I did the annual air filter replacement, a procedure that is some months overdue.

There are 21 steps to removing the old air filter and putting in a new one. I know this because that is the number of instructions there are on the air filter box.

I felt a bit like these guys.

With that job done — there’s a light with a pleasing blue glow on the front of the air filter system that tells me I’ve been successful — I could put all of the things back into their proper place in the garage. In doing so, we decided five old paint cans could be recycled.

So on Saturday I took them to the waste disposal facility, where I met a man most pleased to do his job, as bubbly as a government employee working on a Saturday shift could be. He happily accepted two of my paint cans, chummily explaining that they had an ingredient deemed hazardous. He could not take the now ancient house paint. Not hazardous, he said. Well, he could take them, but he’d have to charge me $5 a can. Now if I’d brought any of my leftover uranium, he said, he could take that straightaway.

Wouldn’t you know, I left that in the backyard.

But the garage is now cleaner, five paint cans and a handful of junk cleaner, anyway. That’s good progress.

But enough about my Herculean attempts at decluttering. Let’s get right into the most popular weekly feature on the site, the check-in with the kitties. They’re doing great!

Phoebe has developed a real affinity for this blanket, and only this blanket. If someone is using this blanket and she is offered another blanket, she will not be pleased. Phoebe is a blanket snob.

The cat tunnel is usually more of her brother’s territory, but this weekend Phoebe got interested in it. And then she realized her blanket was up on the sofa.

Recently, we told Poseidon a good joke. How many cats does it take to change a light bulb?

He took it literally.

And if he had thumbs, the answer would be one. He’s very observant. He watches enough to understand that door knobs are important, but can’t figure out how to manipulate them. So, I figure, he can’t be too far off on the concept of light bulbs, either.

Electricity is beyond him, you might think, but he’s helped with plenty of plumbing fixture projects. The other stuff that magically comes out of the wall can’t be too much harder for a smart cat.

I think I’ve only had one wiring project with him in the house. He slept through that, so he’s not yet an apprentice in the electrical arts.

Between Saturday, Sunday and today I got in five Zwift rides. I managed to record five Strava PRs on four of those rides. Three of them were on climbs. Two of those were the same climb. I am not a climber. The other two were on sprints. I am also not a sprinter.

Here’s a bit of video from one of the weekend’s rides. Please note how my Zwift avatar always remembers to hydrate.

Apparently this is the island where aliens first visited. You eventually ride through the front wheel of the lead alien bicycle rider.

I thought, Wouldn’t it be great if the road bent back around and you rode through the back wheel of the second alien bicycle rider? And just a moment later, the road bent that way.

After close encounters like that, you sneak away as fast as you can.

So after tonight’s ride, a few days off, because of work schedules and such. But!

The 2023 Zwift route tracker: 60 routes down, 60 to go.


30
Jan 23

Me three

It is a lovely shade of gray. There, I’ve said it. One might think that Stockholm syndrome has kicked in once again. Last year it was Feb. 7th when I mentioned that condition. The year before that, it was Feb. 19th. This is a disturbing trend. There was a bit of direct sunlight Saturday. We might have some tomorrow, or possibly on Friday. This photo was from my trip to campus yesterday. It was 2:30 p.m.

There are 80 days until spring arrives.

I was on campus yesterday testing, in my role as the manager of a television, some DVDs and streaming projects that we’ll be screening next month. Documentaries and art aplenty! Some of them look very good. Others, I am sure, will appeal to more discerning viewers. It is a nice collection of titles, to be sure, and now I know they will all play on command. Hopefully they’ll also play on schedule.

But enough about the hour I spent at work on the weekend, and get to the site’s most popular weekly feature. It is time to check in with the kitties. They are doing well.

Here’s Phoebe in that Saturday morning sunlight. The curtains flew open, as they do in the morning, and there was this warm, yellow light rushing in. She might have been as stunned as I was about it.

Poseidon … he’s hanging out in the sink again.

Don’t let the charming face fool you. That cat is a piece of work.

Got in a nice Zwift bike ride on Saturday. I wimped out on yesterday, though. There just didn’t seem to be a good time for it, I told myself. Wimped out entirely. But, on Saturday, I rode through a volcano.

I wonder what the sulfur would do to your breathing if you could put a road through the inside of a volcano. Also, I wonder if you could put a road inside a volcano. It seems to be a stretch.

Anyway, aside from taking Sunday off, I’m still well ahead of projections for the month. Plus I have tonight’s brief ride, and perhaps one tomorrow morning, to add to the tally. This evening I rode the 2018 UCI Worlds short course. Two climbs, and I set Strava PRs on each of them. And then I bested my time on the sprint segment, and thought I would collapse in my run up to the finish line.

Zwift says I finished the course in second place. I assume that means today. I assume only two people have ridden that course today. Anyway, my avatar was having a fine time on this descent. He, who doesn’t always abide by the strictest rules of physics, hit 57.6 miles per hour on this descent.

That’s a bit faster than I’ve ever gone on a real road.

The 2023 Zwift route tracker: 51 down, 69 to go.

According to the new rules I just made up for the Re-Listening project, we’re going to gloss over the discs that are cassette tape replacements. This was a good decision which, of course, takes place near the possible end of cassette-to-disc upgrade period. (Hey, it was the nineties.) I’m listening to them, you can be sure. And the five-and-a-half minutes I spent at one red light yesterday (thanks city planners!) helped make sure I got through this next disc, which was U2’s “Achtung Baby.” Released in late 1991, it would sell 18 million copies worldwide (and I have two fo them, I guess …) and it won a Grammy for best rock performance. Making the record, their search for evolving their sound, almost broke the band.

Of course, a few weeks ago Bono said they were always almost breaking up. They were also recently hoisted for all to see at the Kennedy Center Honors and, now, here they are, getting glanced at in the Re-Listening project.

Turns out they re-released this thing on the 20th anniversary, and again on the 30th anniversary. There was also a video release, the worldwide tour, five singles, a documentary, a concert film, and who knows what else. It’s amazing we aren’t sick of this but, Achtung Baby, it’s still a great record.

Of those five singles, three hit the top of the American charts. The other two landed in the top five. They could do no wrong for a while there. And these days they get roasted by Borat.

So … among the deep cuts … Normally, as I get into the music, I try to conjure up an anecdote or a memory that I’ve associated with the work. That, and being a space filler, is the point here. But this is record is going on 32 years old now, and my memories aren’t all that great. But you know this got dropped into my knockoff Walkman a lot.

Bono is, I think, one of those people who made it OK to think of being a tenor. And now he’s adding some depth and texture to his voice on this record. Who knows where sounds come from, really, but I bet some of the croaky things he does all over this thing are why I do them when I sing along to stuff in the car now.

Amazing rhythm section alert.

And the last track on the album, though this album never really ends for all of the work others have done covering it. (Aside: Look up “One” covers sometime. It’s impressive how many people tie that into their own work.)

After this tour they’ve apparently only played it live twice.

Know what U2 are doing again? All of the classics! They’ll soon release “Songs of Surrender,” a reimagining of their old works. Nostalgia sells, and it moves a lot of units. Let’s listen to the first track, a version of “With or Without You” you’ve waited on for 36 years.

It’s interesting, and risky. Here you have one of the most iconic songs — a band-defining guitar riff, a picture perfect bass line and that big cathartic wail — and invert the entire thing. Starting there is definitely a statement. We’ll all have to give it a listen to find out what’s what. It is due out in March.