The weekend felt the appropriate length. It wasn’t too long, but it didn’t fly right by, you know? It was almost just right. Good porridge!
That’s not a saying, and you wonder why. It seems positively continental. ‘How was the train ride?’ Good porridge! ‘Did you see what the PM said?’ Good porridge!
Anyway, casual Friday evening. We had a spaghetti, with a tasteful, understated sauce. On Saturday we went for a bike ride. Warm sun! New roads! Positively misbehaving bike!
It just came back from the bike shop, where they put on a new chain and cables and a front derailleur. Mine was rusted solid and wouldn’t go from the big ring to the little ring. Only a problem on the big hills. And, after nine days in the shop, the bike was ready to ride, even if my legs weren’t. And I could swap from the big ring to the little ring with the satisfying KERRRRRRCHUNK that really signals “the bike shop put the good components on here.” (They did not.) But now I couldn’t swap from the little ring to the big ring. That’s only a problem after the big hills, which is why I was behind my lovely bride all day.
It was a nice few hours on the bike.
KERRRRRRCHUNK.
And so it was that we found ourselves on a new road and a detour sign. I rode up ahead to see if it was passable by bike. I saw a nice lady standing out there doing traffic stuff. Talk about a lonely job. This road was well out in the countryside and she was a quarter mile or so behind this sign.
And the construction was well down the road and out of site from where she was stationed. But she was hoping to go home soon. It was about that time in the afternoon and we had 21 miles yet to go …
It was slow, so of course I want to go back again and see if I can do it faster. But first I have to take my bicycle back to the bike shop.
Yesterday we watched a virtual bike race and then sat out under the shade of a giant umbrella and enjoyed a warm early-summer day and took a pleasant walk and turned a nice day into a relaxing evening. Good porridge!
And so we wrap up our start of the week by the routine check-in with the kitties. Poseidon enjoyed a long nap in this box on the cat tree yesterday:
And we see Phoebe here lounging on a buffet table:
Cat rules, so often- and so well-obeyed, must be a complete and total mystery to a cat. You can’t be on those elevated surfaces over there, because the big hairless cats get the bottle with the water, but these other surfaces, sure why not?
So rational are we, what must they think of us?
I’ll ask them. Maybe they’ll me this week. Maybe they’ve been trying to tell us for ages. They surely do chatter away a lot.
And so, it seems, have I. More tomorrow. I’ve got it all planned out and everything!
First you check me out on Twitter and then surf over Instagram. And did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? Phoebe and Poe have an Instagram account. See them, and then come back here tomorrow!
Last week we were on the road. It was my first long trip in the car since the lockdown. I don’t think I’ve driven out of the county since then, but we left the state last week. A few weeks ago my happily vaccinated in-laws came to visit, and last week it was time to see my family — the vaccinated ones, anyway — so we drove down to Alabama.
We had some rained a few times on the drive, but mostly we saw dramatic clouds.
They add to the scenery in places where there isn’t much else to look at.
My mother gave me the biggest hug and said I owed her 17 days worth of hugs. I’m not sure how she arrived at that number, but I didn’t question the formula. I expected she would come up with a much higher number. Oddly, the number of days didn’t decrease over the duration of our visit. Canny as ever, my mother.
It was nice to see her, of course, and my grandfather. Both have gotten The Shot. They found a drive-up deal and are proud they didn’t even have to get out of their cars to get dosed. They’ve been quite careful and safe and kept themselves isolated. We’re the most people they’ve each seen outside of a few doctor visits.
So my grandfather came over and I got to give him a hug. What a lovely feeling. We also had hamburgers.
He brought his dominoes and proved how bad we are at math. We are bad at math. Of course he plays all the time — that’s their Sunday thing, they have church via Facebook or television and then he breaks out the bones. Of course he’s played his whole life. The stories he could tell you about his parents counting the domino dots … while I’m over here pointing and mumbling to myself.
They really wore us down in the third round.
When we weren’t losing at dominoes The Yankee got in a few swims. She had a race coming up and has been in the water only once since the weather turned last fall. So we went Rocky IV last week. She donned her wetsuit, tied a rope around her waist and swam while I held her in place.
She had a great race Saturday, finishing just off the podium.
We also made sure to get a few Publix subs during our visit. Around here you have to drive several hundred miles to get a good sandwich.
And then we returned on Thursday evening, with much better weather around us.
That’s such a long drive. But it was a lovely and long overdue visit.
Everyone is doing pretty well, considering. It’s a “not ideal, but we’re still fortunate in a great many ways” sort of circumstance. Normal enough, I guess, or maybe that’s the catching up. It was nice to stare at other walls, to sit at the pool and see and be seen. Fortunate in a great many ways, indeed.
It is finals week. I have no finals. Not taking any. Not delivering any. Only one major studio production this week, and one minor one.
It is the interregnum! The inbox will be cleansed! The office will be returned to its minimalist purpose! Other content will be scheduled, arranged, prepared and produced! Much will get done!
In a week or two it will all start again.
I spent two hours today dealing with an audio production I am working on.
See, it all began when I received an email in February with an intriguing subject line. Someone wants to produce a program, and can we help produce it. Well, I have studios and students. And so we began the process. And now they are to the point where they are almost ready to publish their first episode. (Hence the minor studio production later this week. We have to get their credits put in the can.) The host has been interviewing his guests most enthusiastically. The producer is closing in on a nice mental image for how the show will work. I have a bright young student who is working on editing the shows.
We’ve had technical difficulties. We’ve had laughs. I’ve tried my best to come off looking like a wizard. They are very pleased with my wizard-like skills. And, now, we are almost ready to let this thing run under its own power.
But two hours, right in the middle of your Monday, that really fills up the day, somehow.
Also today, I was able to say goodbye-for-now and congratulations to some of our graduating seniors. As is my tradition I wished them the best, gave them the parting advice they needed and reminded them I might one day be hitching a wagon to their star.
I don’t do that, but it could be. It’s a small industry. You wind up working with everyone some day.
Here are the last two shows of the semester. This is the late night show, which has been a lot of fun to watch come to life this year. The studio where they produce this is a giant soundstage, but they’ve built sets on it this year for some of the cinema classes, which crimped the previous style of this show. No matter, the creative-types said, we can work with that. I made them jump through a lot of hoops because of various studio rules and Covid-19 rules and they did it all with good cheer and determination and this show has been evolving all year long. It’s been neat to see.
They shot that last Thursday night in Studio 5. And on Friday morning another group — though there is some crossover in the crew — produced this in Studio 7. The shows where they talk about themselves always run the longest. Weird.
That episode also had a surprise-on-video appearance by Gabrielle, one of the people that started the show, and Patrick, who was a producer that really helped round it into something nice. Award winning, even.
He’s an award-winning producer, then. Met his wife doing these shows. (Or in a class. Or just on campus. Or maybe they grew up next-door to one another. I’m not really sure, but my version sounds better. They met on one of our shows.) He works in finance and does freelance production today. Just a super, super nice guy. I think he was the first person I had a conversation with in masks last spring. He had to return a key to me. I watched him hold it up and drench the thing in sanitizer and then hand it to me, and we stayed well apart in a parking lot because everyone was afraid of everything. I told him one thing I wasn’t afraid of was what he’d do next because, to know him is to know one of those people who you just know is going to work hard and do right and things in the world around him would line up.
How was that only a year ago?
It was probably more like 13 months. And change.
Oh, well, yeah, sure. That’s right. That makes a lot more sense, then.
At some point this month I’ll consider doing some back-to-normalish things. Just visit a store for the heck of it, sort of things. We’re vaccinated. Our families have all gotten the shots. The local population will be reduced a bit when the students return home. Hopefully community vaccination will get a nice surge. (It’s slowing here, same as everywhere, unfortunately, but I’m hoping for renewed interest.) So all of those things together might make the time right. Plus it will a nice bit of punctuation between that time last year and this time this year, a good reminder of the time spent laying low, rather than creating a misperception of a foggy dream.
Maybe this sort of timing is important in ways we haven’t yet really wrapped our arms around. Everyone is eager and in a rush to put this behind them, and I understand that. Maybe that it hasn’t been one symmetrical year is a good thing. There’s a lot, still, to understand about what’s just passed us, too.
Went for a bike ride this evening. There’s this one road on one of our usual routes that has three little rolling hills and, for some reason, that third hill always hurts. So my tactic this time was to ride the first two casually, spinning out the easiest gear I could. (My rear derailleur needs adjusting and I can’t shift from the big to the little right now, too, so that’s a thing.) And then, on the third hill, I hoped, I would still have some feeling left and be able to get over the thing.
So that’s when I jumped ahead of my lovely bride.
The next five miles offer a handful of turns and curves and sticky little rollers before the turnaround spot. And right after that is when I passed her going the other way.
She was far too close, which meant she was far too close. Which meant I hadn’t created the separation I’d hoped for. Which meant she was going to chase me down. Which meant I had to ride harder to keep in front.
It’s more difficult to get ahead to give her something to chase than to catch up to her when you’re behind.
It is six-and-a-half miles from where that photo is taken to the house. And all of that was in my head the whole way. There are a few places on that part of the route where the terrain and the road and, on days like today, a lack of traffic can give you a good long view behind you. I never did see her. But once, on the last little leg of this course, she was nowhere to be seen and I sat up to catch my breath and soft-pedaled for 17 seconds. I did it for only 17 seconds because in the 17th she whooooosed right by me.
So there was going to be none of that this evening. I had two one-mile splits that were on the low end of fast. And she never caught me.
She was about 15 seconds behind at the end, though.
On Saturday we rode indoors, because it was cold and rainy and just your average, underwhelming, gross Indiana April day. So we did about 26 miles in virtual northern France, instead where, according to Zwift, it is always sunny.
Yesterday we had a perfectly lovely day. So we rode outdoors for a few hours. Just after the big climb — which I’d dreaded the entire ride and before, finally, actually on the thing and tired of it, I rode a bit harder had my second best time ever on the thing — I took this photograph.
It should be noted that the climb isn’t long or especially hard. It’s the easiest real climb around here. But that doesn’t make it easy!
Somewhere after that I happened upon an opportunity to add to the Barns by Bike collection:
I don’t know why I do that, other than that barns are the right size and usually in the right kind of locale, and I move at just precisely the right speed to be able to retrieve my phone, get to the camera app and take a photo before I get by it.
Anyway, as I said, it was a beautiful afternoon yesterday. Here’s a bit of video proof.
And here’s one more shot of Lake Lemon, which we cruised by just before the “big climb.”
Now, today was a day for an easy ride. Another pleasant afternoon. I got in from campus, we sat on the lawn furniture for a few minutes and then headed out once more. Just before this photograph she said, “Where did my speed go?” And just after this photograph we turned left, and she caught some exclusive cosmic tailwind …
Bang, she dropped me. It took no longer than the time required for me to tuck my phone back into my jersey pocket.
The next part of our route offers a turnaround point and I saw her there, 4.6 miles later. By then she was riding so well I figured that would be it. But I worked hard on tired legs over the rest of the ride — managing an 18-second PR on a Strava segment and put in some ridiculous mile splits, besides — and caught her just before she turned into the neighborhood.
Tomorrow is a rest day, after three days where I asked a lot of my legs, who aren’t used to that right now. The next several days might be rest days, too.
It’s never a rest day for Phoebe. She’s doing some cat yoga here. I think this position is called “I forgot my other leg.”
And here’s a photo of a cat somewhere he shouldn’t be. Go figure.
It means a lot when we’re in one room and hear a sound from elsewhere in the house and the immediate reaction is “POSEIDON!”
It means something else when it wasn’t him and we don’t even feel bad about the verbal scolding. You figure he deserves it for something else he’s getting away with somewhere.
Which is what you should be doing, getting away with something, somewhere. But come back tomorrow for more stuff here. There will be more stuff here.
This fine day will become important later. We have three trees in the backyard that bloom. Two of them are brilliant, one is a bit shy about it. All of them will be in full-on leaf mode in just a few days. But, for now:
We went for a bike ride today, it was a terrific afternoon for it.
And here’s a two-photo installment for the irregular and not-at-all exhaustive Barns by Bike series.
Let’s check in on the cats, who are doing just fine, thanks. Phoebe is stealing a lap nap here.
She’s been sitting on this box, but now she’s discovered there’s an inside on the inside of this box.
Discovery is a fascinating thing. This one cardboard construct suddenly has many purposes! One giant leap for feline-kind. Also, I like the idea of tail-as-telescope.
Poseidon didn’t discover anything new this week. Sometimes sticking with what you know is where it’s at. He’s catching a nap on the stove cover. He knows it is warm there after you make breakfast.
He did, however, rediscover the refrigerator. He can’t get enough of it. And it’s weird. “Get out of there! But … first … let me take a picture of you.”
