Monday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Monday

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
1
Sep 25

Happy Labor Day

Welcome to September. And to fall. And the semester. Anything else? Everything else. And so long summer. Except for the second summer, which is here for a time. Second summer, a mild, brief, way to overwrite the memory of the heat wave and the sweats you didn’t ask for. Quite, slow and mild, give me three or five months of 70s and 80s and I’ll be ready for spring. In this way we can also overwrite the season that actually offends in favor of a sequence of days and weeks and months of weather just like this. Who needs a winter anyhow?

Sometimes it’s easy to miss a subtle joy of spring, overlook an earnest day of summer, or the calm and thoughtful afternoon of fall for dreading what comes next. It’s a shortcoming; being aware of it doesn’t solve the problem. I guess one day I should find ways to enjoy the winter.

Thinking of it somehow just highlights the problem.

I mean, here I am, going on and on about that on a perfect mid-year day, the beginning of a beautiful September, which was hearkened forth by the beautiful end of August. A day which, just a bit ago, I was outside watering plants, covering the grill, and counting my blessings: health, a peaceful day, a delicious dinner, and so on. Everyone should have those things.

This was the view from the backyard, while the grill was going.

And while we had perfectly made steaks, we also enjoyed our own fresh-grown okra. Took all season, and we got one large meal out of the yield. Worth it.

Today, being the first day of the month, means cleaning the computer, updating some files, building new subdirectories, and so on. One of those little tasks is tracking the site data. August, for some reason, had the most visits in the 21 years of the website. I don’t know why people keep coming back, but I’m glad they do.

And also the bots, I suppose, but I appreciate the people more. So thanks for being here.

We had a bike ride with Miles, the neighbor, on Saturday. They dropped me near the end, but I took this shot 30-some miles.

Ours was a morning ride, which is unusual. Especially after the fact. There was a full day still to go. There are so many things to discover about early mornings. Rediscover, actually. I did morning drive for about a decade and, years later, I am still revolting against the notion of early alarms.

I went for a solo ride this evening, a much more normal time for a bike ride, if you ask me. And no wonder, look at these views. This is some farm land not far from the house. I wonder if they put in any okra this year.

I missed the perfect shot here as I pedaled along, but there is also a little cut out in the treeline, and I knew it was coming. So I framed up the sun. Not a bad composition for off-the-hip soft pedaling. Just staying upright and getting close to the photo you want is sometimes a thing. Putting the sun between those trees in the foreground and the trees in the background, simultaneously? That’s real talent.

Along that same road, the tree, the moon, the chip and seal.

And just over that hill is a beautiful old swayback Appaloosa, enjoying dinner.

You wonder if horses ever look at sunsets. You wonder what they think about when they do.

Classes start tomorrow. Guess I better figure out what I’m going to talk about, huh?

Monday / photo — Comments Off
25
Aug 25

Relax, my back

I wrenched my back out of whack. Exercised it out of whack, to be more precise. Doing planks on Thursday night something didn’t feel perfect. And doing planks on Friday it got my attention. Well, this weekend my back decided it liked the attention and so now here I am.

It’s fine. I can move. I can carry things. I just can’t bend over and straighten up cleanly at the moment. But I am developing this technique where I move my hips forward and press up beneath them. That seems to work. Still, last night I said, Would you mind filling the cats’ water bowl? because, really, why get down there if you don’t have to.

Tonight I’ll try a bit of a painkiller and maybe I’ll sleep the whole thing away!

But, hey, I can sit comfortably in most any position, which is great, since I devoted just about the entire weekend, it seemed, to class prep.

I am working on my last class now, which is great since the semester begins in eight days. But now I have a secret weapon. This class is a class my lovely bride teaches, and she is, of course, coming through in a big way. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Anyway, I am working on populating the Canvas shell now. I understand the structure of the class. I know all but the most specialized of the material. I’ll gain proficiency in that in the days to come.

The other thing I did this weekend was hear from the cats. They wanted their regular Monday slot back, and who am I to argue the point, especially when I have no real reason to delay them. So we’ll move right into the site’s most popular feature, our weekly check in with the kitties.

There is no cat in the world that relaxes harder than Phoebe, and you can’t convince me otherwise.

And when she’s not relaxing, or giving you the opportunity to pet her, or demanding that you pet her, she has a wonderfully playful streak. It doesn’t really come across here, but she’s studying and playing with the light beams and or the dust motes in the afternoon sun.

Poseidon, god of the TPS reports, has been dutifully checking in on my work progress. Things are moving along at their best possible speed, Poe.

I’m sure he’s done this before. And probably I’ve seen it and don’t recall, but the other night he slipped under the ottoman. And it wasn’t just that he got there, but how quickly and easily he got in there.

So that’s a new hiding place to look for him, I guess.

If he had opposable thumbs we’d really be in trouble.

OK, now to take a tip from Phoebe and go relax.

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11
Aug 25

21 years, 7 million … and counting

Last week marked the 21st birthday of the website. (And you didn’t get me anything!) I didn’t say anything because I knew, from my handy spreadsheets, that this week we’d break seven million visits to the site. These things should be acknowledged together, and just once.

So let me simply thank you. I appreciate your being here. I don’t know why you keep coming back, but I’m glad you do. Thanks for that, too.

adventures / Monday / music / photo / video — Comments Off
4
Aug 25

Just quickly

This was written earlier, and more hastily than normal, because we are headed out for an adventure tonight. I’m sure you’ll find out more about that in this space tomorrow.

At any rate, here’s one more clip from Saturday night’s show. Someone in the crowd yelled out for “Mona Lisa” and you got the rare moment of a band either taking a request, or one they were already prepared to do. So, to begin their encore, Guster played a song off their first record, which is now somehow 30 years old.

Entirely unrelated, my delicious Sunday sandwich.

Out back, the crapemyrtle is doing well. It’s offering one of the best views in the yard right now.

And, just behind it, we had to cut back the fig tree to make it a little less unruly. Now it is ruly.

Just kidding. It’s even more unmanageable than it was last fall. Maybe we’ll get some figs this year.

But that’ll be later, in the fall. For now, we must away.

cycling / Monday / music / photo / video — Comments Off
28
Jul 25

Tripping sillies

A quick shot from our Saturday afternoon bike ride. Not pictured is my lovely bride, who was way, way ahead of me by this point. It’s not a race, but it is a competition, you know? And, lately, I’ve been getting it handed to me.

Anyway, she’s up there somewhere. That was the first route we discovered when we moved here. It’s a solid 23 or 24 mile loop. And it’s been improved by a red light at a key intersection. This is also the route where the hub on my rear wheel shattered earlier this year. I looked down at the computer when I got to the spot. It was 10 miles into the ride. (I’m sure I knew that then, because I would have looked at the same computer, but who can remember these things in such granular detail?) That would have been a long way to walk home, but my lovely bride came back and picked me up. She was ahead of me that day, too, and don’t think I didn’t put all of that together in my head while I was struggling through a headwind.

There’s a place on that route where you’re going into a cross-headwind one direction, and you take two quick lefts, such that you are going 180 degrees the opposite of the direction from whence you just came. And when you do that, you just get a crosswind.

These breezes aren’t fair, is what I’m saying.

There was a concert, which I totally forgot about.

And a kids birthday party, which we totally forgot about. We put in a small appearance. They had a rope climbing course above us all. I did not get invited to take the climb, but someone did. Looked fun.

There was also a rail system in the ceiling which let you fly around in the air, a perpendicular superhero. Some people would stay up there all day. There were also wall climbing areas, and American Ninja Warrior-inspired leaping set ups. And, of course, video games. Upstairs was where the birthday party room was, and the kids that we went to see had a guy who was working on just his fourth party.

I asked him if he had any horror stories yet. He’s already seen some things.

The kids loved him, and that’s what counts. Except for the No Flipping rule on the trampolines, it seemed everyone had a good time.

Everything else is moving swiftly. I got a brief on a class I’m teaching in the fall. (Two more of those to go.) I have about six days of a second class to flesh out. Meetings start Wednesday. The stress and “Why aren’t syllabi things that magically appear in the middle of the night?” panic will begin soon after.