My lovely bride is mitigating pain, learning what doesn’t hurt and not moving much this week. I’m doing the chores and waiting to see how long it takes to test her patience. I’m worrying over her a lot is what I’m saying.
So there’s not much else going on right now.
But the weather is lovely. Enjoy this photo of the maple in the back yard. We sat on the deck for a few minutes, just to give her a change of pace. Apparently the wicker furniture isn’t entirely uncomfortable.
I’ll try to put a little something here each day, but it’ll be a light week.
And don’t forget: Catober begins this weekend.
books / Monday / photo — Comments Off on Rocket ship emoji 19 Sep 22
The hill of truth. It isn’t much of a hill, and what little there is is basically behind the photographer at this point, but for some reason getting over and around that curve tell you a lot about a ride.
Of course it was two-thirds of the way through my Saturday morning ride. All of its truths had been laid bare already. It was a slow start, as rides often are, and the burst off the first little roller wasn’t as sharp or as long as it usually is. The sprint I’ve been tinkering with, one long straight road that takes you from one neighbor to another, I didn’t even try. And then she ran off and left me.
I only saw her again after one of the turnaround points. And that is what happens when you have no legs on a 30-mile ride. You get dropped.
I can enjoy it. This was the biggest mileage week for me in the last few months. Not a lot, but plenty for the moment.
Maybe I can find more miles this week, or the week after.
Let’s do the weekly check-in with the kitties. They’re both doing great, thanks for asking. Phoebe spent a bit of time last night hanging out in the entertainment center for some reason.
Poseidon was more than happy to take a nap in the fuzzy blanket. When they cover their eyes like this I assume they are embarrassed about something going on around them. The only question is, by whom?
Probably his sister.
Finished the Thomas Cahill book, this evening. The barbarians invaded Rome. It all slipped away, slowly, then suddenly. Eventually literacy gained a foothold in Ireland. And then came Patrick, Columcille, and Colombanus.
It’s a light popular reading. So there’s not a lot of depth, but if you were looking for an entry-point into an important period of Irish history, this is a reasonable start. The book ends with this downer.
There are almost 8 billion of us now, last time I counted, so that at least gives us plenty of permutations and possibilities. And, if that somehow doesn’t work, there are always emojis.
IU / Monday / photo — Comments Off on Would you rather think on time or dragonflies? 12 Sep 22
Back to work today after a needed break. Took the week off. Oh, time. The sort of thing that you take when you need, and look forward to until you can take again. That sounds like I already miss the pool — and I do! — but I also miss not hearing an alarm in the morning. It’s the simple things, really, that are the most demanding work. Like waking up on time.
I’m already trying to plan my next off days. And presently there’s nothing on my calendar until November. That seems like an oversight. Seems like a long time.
It’ll take a few days to catch up at work, or an hour or two. It is all in the timing. So I rode my bicycle to work, and I made a new friend by the back door. This is a green darner (Anax junius) which is the most common dragonfly in North America. And I can tell you this guy, it is a male based on the coloring, has a different way of thinking about time than we do.
Wikipedia says you can find this in Mexico, Panama, the Caribbean, Tahiti, Japan and mainland China. (Spare a moment to think of the entomologists who have to collect and process this sort of information. Someone, perhaps several someones, have made this little guy their last work.) Apparently they are sometimes found in other places, too. It is believed strong winds can send them off their natural migratory courses. (Every once in a while that entomologist breaks out, and updates, the dragonfly map. What a Wednesday that must be.)
It is also the official insect of the state of Washington.
And those eyes will follow you everywhere. (That is actually the forehead.)
The more I studied it, the more I marveled at the bioengineering at play. And then I googled the darner’s lifespan. Seems like a great waste. That’s an awful lot of work for a creature that typically lives four to seven weeks.
But aren’t we all?
Somehow, after a week away, I thought that I would miss something at the old Poplars Building. The destruction has been going on — or not, as is sometimes the case — since the beginning of August. But, from our vantage point, it looks like they haven’t done anything since the beginning of September.
Not all work is visible, though, and that’s OK, too.
The good news is we didn’t miss out on whatever is in that central bit. I’m hoping it is cream-filled, or an easily torn-down elevator shaft. Or, perhaps, filled with dragonflies.
We didn’t run the site’s most popular feature last week, so we’re sorely overdue. Without dragging this out any further, let’s check on the kitties.
This very morning, Phoebe was sitting all casual-like by the bannister.
I’m always more interested in why they sit in the random places they do, than the random hijinks they get into. What made that quiet, semi-shaded spot the place to be this morning. On the other hand, I know why Poseidon got in this bag. It is in his nature.
Hilariously flailing away at getting out of the bag is also in his nature.
And here’s the rare shot of the two of them sitting together. Sorta.
They almost looked in the same direction at the same time. Almost. That takes a lot of time, too.
We had a short bike ride on Saturday morning, dodging raindrops until I couldn’t. I wanted to get in a quick 20 miles to reach the next round number for the year. (All of the records are falling this year!) And in the early going we went by this familiar corn field, which almost made it to Labor Day before turning.
And then, up the street and up a few hills, The Yankee was creating some big distance. See the little red dot on the side? I had to cover all of this ground to get her wheel again.
Eventually I did, and then we rode together for a while. She turned for the house and I added on a few more miles to get to that goal, and then found myself in the rain. It was foreshadowing.
We got in the car, pointed south and drove through every storm cloud that a third of this great nation can provide. My car hasn’t been this clean, nor my shoulders this tense in the car, in some time. This is just the beginning.
You know how, sometimes, you people stop under an overpass? When my wipers were going full blast and I was slowing down to about 35 on the freeway to let them keep up, it seemed like a good idea.
I always liked overpasses in the rain. That constant rattle on the roof interrupted, however briefly, by a bit of human engineering. It can be a sudden and stunning change, and then just as quickly, the rain returns, because the overpasses are only a few lanes wide. Sometimes you want more overpasses, I guess, if only to park under them.
We did not wait out the weather, but pushed on carefully through. And one of our rewards was this site.
You can almost see it there, but in the heartbeat before I took this photo, and those trees in the foreground crept in the way, you could actually see the place where the rainbow was hitting the ground. It wasn’t off in the distance, or beyond a hill. It was right there. I did not see the pots of gold, however. It is a busy interstate, maybe someone beat me to it.
We made it to my mom’s for a nice little vacation. We had dinner there Saturday night, and a quiet Sunday. Today my grandfather and a great-aunt and great-uncle came over for dinner. This was the first time I’ve seen my aunt and uncle since before the pandemic began. They were, and are, a hoot.
I could tell you stories, but it is a light week here, and you’d need to know them and hear them, anyway. But I will jot this down, just so I can remember it. Someone was telling a bit of a family story and my great-uncle didn’t hear who was the subject of the story. He said, “Who?” He heard the name. There’s a half beat where the name sinks in and you can see the gears readjusting to the new information. And then the man, who is in his 80s, giggled. It was him and them and perfect.
adventures / IU / Monday / music / photo / video — Comments Off on ‘To give a little something even though he gets behind’ 29 Aug 22
They are making progress. Progress is being made, of the destructive sort. Just across the way is the building where Elvis slept. And, before that, a bunch of college students, and then some guests to the city, and then people worked in there. Now the building, long in the tooth in it’s seventh decade, as being pulled apart. A green space will be where the Poplars Building is. This only means that no one has decided on a better use for it yet.
I wonder if the person who had the room-converted-to-an-office knew they had Elvis’ room. Seems like you’d spend a little time trying to figure that out, no?
Anyway, we’re several weeks into this now, and they were scraping away ferociously on the east end of things today. No ETA on when the job will be completed, or when the adjacent parking deck will reopen, but I shall try to keep you up-to-date on this, the least useful, interesting or successful feature on the site.
Let’s balance that out with the most successful feature on the site, the weekly check on the kitties. They’re doing just great. Having a ball. Despite my playing zone defense these last two weeks, don’t let them fool you. They will try. But I have documentary evidence. Here’s a blissed out Phoebe enjoying an evening cuddle.
And here, Phoebe is surveying her queendom in a most grand style.
Poseidon, meanwhile, is playing the role of the jester of the royal territory. He often does.
And, last night, he got in a bit of reading with me. It was, again, a nice cuddle. Don’t let him tell tall tales. He will tell tale tells, fib, fabricate, dissemble and lie.
We went to a rock ‘n’ roll show tonight, making for a long but fine day. Earlier this summer we finally saw a 2020 concert in Indianapolis. It was postponed, twice, because of Covid, but when we finally got to see the show, it was great. Concert tickets purchased in 2019 age well, turns out. That adventure was a wonderful little return to normal — whatever that is these days.
The same bands were going to be playing Cincinnati last month, and The Yankee found a good deal on resell tickets and made a good impulse buy. But someone in the tour got Covid, so they had to postpone that show. We found out at the parking both of the concert. It’s a quick two hour drive, and the weather was nice that evening, so we walked around a bit of Cincinnati and made silly videos that never got used anywhere, I’m sure, and had some acceptable-north-of-the-Ohio-River pork barbecue.
Tonight was the rescheduled show. Or, to be more precise, tonight was the re-re-re-rescheduled show. The original was in 2020, and then they tried to run it in 2021. And then again, and now, finally … oh, and a thunderstorm was moving through lower Ohio.
But the lightning stayed away, and the 90s and turn-of-the-century pop music blared forth. Another great show, even if we knew the setlist.
As an added bonus, I can spread out music on the site for the next three days. So here’s Toad the Wet Sprocket, playing all the alt radio mainstays of the 1990s.
I don’t know if Crazy Life was my first protest song or the first for my slice of my generation, but I’m pretty sure it was the first one I really noticed. The first one I read about. And I read a lot about Peltier. I’ve never really settled on how I felt about it, not really, but this is Wounded Knee.
The Eighth Circuit thought a jury would have acquitted him had information improperly withheld from the defense been available, yet the court denied a new trial. And if you really dive into the story it’s easy to question how the system was used. But I don’t know, not really. None less than Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and the Dalai Lama have campaigned for him, though, and that means something.
The point is, this song made me look it up, and think, and ask questions of things in general and specifically. And I probably shouldn’t like a pop song this much, but anything that scrapes your brain for a quarter of a century is worth noting.
They did a Best Of album in 2011 — and it’ll come up much later in our regular music feature — in part to regain control of their masters. They reworked a few small things in some of their songs, including the ending of this one. This is still good, but I much prefer the original.
Toad opened the show, playing a short set, but most of their hits. In fact they removed two songs from the previous show in Indy, for whatever reason.
It must be weird to be a still-working band, on what is the growing and, hopefully, lucrative nostalgia tour circuit, knowing you can only get in so many of your songs. Of their eight songs tonight, seven singles, six of which charted, were released to great success in the early or mid-90s. The newest song they played was a ditty from 2013. I’d guess most of the audience wasn’t familiar with it. They released a new album last year, all new material, but not the first selection made the set list.
If you can play a half dozen top 10s decades hence, and people still pay to see you do it, you play the hits.
Speaking of which, more of that tomorrow in this same space.
