Monday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Monday

cycling / IU / Monday / photo / running / video — Comments Off
9
Mar 20

A run, two rides, but mostly cats

Happy Monday. This week is going to be a memorable one, you can just tell, can’t you? It will. And if you can’t tell, come up for air and read the news. It’s going to be a memorable one.

But before all of that begins, we have our new usual Monday feature of checking in with the cats. Let’s see how they spent their weekend.

Phoebe discovered a new place to sit on the stairs. We have a small landing, and she’s familiar with that, but this step gives her a commanding view of the foyer, a window and escape routes up and down the stairs. I’m sure that’s how she thinks.

Poseidon spent part of Saturday night curled up in a big fuzzy blanket. I think he’s coming around to the lifestyle:

They got two new toys in the mail from a friend this weekend. They are little lizard shapes with some hardcore strain of catnip inside:

They are jealous cats, so jealous that despite there being two of the identical toys, they are fighting over the lizards. So now we’ll have to hide them.

Some naps, for whatever reason, are cuter than others:

We went for a run on a sunny Saturday. I am now tasked with running ahead and taking pictures. So my sprints should improve, because the job is to get far enough ahead that I can find a good spot for a reasonable composition, stop, turn, open the camera, frame a shot and watch the runner run through:

It’s a good chance to catch my breath, though, before having to run on and catch back up. But, check this out, same picture:

I got the two-feet-off-the-ground shot. Not bad for trying to do all of the above while winded.

On Sunday afternoon I got in my first bike ride of the year. And this evening I had my second bike ride No photos or videos of either of those. Or probably for the first four or five rides. I have to remember again where all the gears are and what all the levers on the bike do again, first.

I shot this after today’s bike ride. And I am suddenly very interested, once again, in natural sound.

The late night show produced this episode for you last Friday. The guest is one of our professors. Ordinarily my critique would be that you have to go find people outside of our own buildings. There are a lot of reasons for that, groupthink, the burden of real producing, the what’s-entertaining-to-you-isn’t-entertaining-to-everyone phenomenon, but that concept may not apply to Susan Kelly, who is quite entertaining indeed:

Anyway, for the rest of the week, and whatever else is coming to us soon, I hope your times aren’t that interesting.

Monday / photo — Comments Off
2
Mar 20

Checking in on the felines

Had a nice weekend. Had a plan for all of the things I was going to do. I think I did two of them. So that was … progress, I guess. I did a lot of cat cuddling, instead, for the most part. Let’s check in on the animals.

Phoebe enjoyed a Saturday in the sun.

I’d gone outside to conduct some very important solar power experiments. When she sees someone outside who she knows should be inside, she does a great many tricks to get your attention and entice you to come back in. I liken it to human-trained dolphins. “Come look at this trick!” There’s a lot of flopping and flipping upside down. Some of it more graceful than others.

I also got the rare Phoebe cuddle:

I am the second choice here, and that’s fine. When she’s desperate, and if I can get a blanket quick enough, she’ll sit with me. About a month ago I stopped counting how many times it had taken place — because I would need to use a third hand to keep track. But when she’s really cozy she climbs up on you like this. I have had four of these now.

She disappeared as soon as I took that photo, so thank goodness for safety shots, I suppose.

Poseidon is doing just fine, too. He had a sleepy weekend:

Who could blame him? Sleepy weekends are pretty awesome.

And how was your weekend? I hope you accomplished precisely what you needed to, exactly what you wanted to, and not the first bit more.

cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
24
Feb 20

Leave room for cream?

Friday night we saw Bert Kreischer, who is as clever and frat-tastic as ever. He played two shows at Butler, and we stood outside in about 20 degree weather until almost the published curtain time, which meant the actual start was, of course, later. Someone said he started the first show late, and that it went long. So the rest stood to reason. That meant we were going to get extra comedy, but first we had to move seats. Because I sat in the wrong row. Joke’s on me!

Anyway, the show was terrific. If you like bawdy material it works. He can put the whole room in his hand and give them whatever he wants. The crowd control of it all might be the most interesting thing. They’re just stories. Stories he’s spiced up for maximum impact, and often even the tangents are deliberate, but how he can hold a room for 90 minutes just telling tales is interesting.

Near the end he basically took requests, because he’s reaching some interactive iconic level of comedy now. I assume that’s owing one part to his talent, but another to the times in which we live, how there are bits online everywhere, and how he has embraced the intimate part of fandom that social media creates as a bit of his act.

And of course he has to tell The Machine story because, as he said Friday night, a Facebook version of that story changed his life and put him where he is today, which is selling out shows across the country and about to premiere his third Netflix special.

The Facebook version of The Machine story works, he said, because the Facebook algorithm put a key, but unnamed player in the actual story as a top commenter and she verified the whole thing. You can look the whole story up on YouTube. It’s 10 minutes or so long, and if you like bawdy, over-the-top humor, you’d find it amusing.

If that’s not, however, your thing … errrmmmm … here are two quick cycling videos!

The Yankee got her tri bike. And this weekend she braved some cool temps and finally gave it a try. (It’s a cruel thing to buy yourself a bike in February and wait.) The fit isn’t there yet, but she looks pretty pro, don’t you think:

If that one is a little blurry I blame my upload connection and her speed.

But watch this one, she’s coming right out of the screen!

I’ll never be able to keep up with her on that thing.

Also, it is my turn to buy a bike. Hmmmm …

I should mention this:

Yesterday we had sun for a record-breaking fifth day in a row. I don’t remember the last time we saw the sunshine for five consecutive days. Maybe November, for sure in October, if I had to pick a definitive time. Certainly it has never happened here in February. Yesterday, even, we got all the way up to 56 degrees — making for an excellent afternoon for a run. Maybe this sort of weather will happen some more.

It rained all day today. We’re due for snow on Wednesday.

Monday / photo / running — Comments Off
17
Feb 20

There’ve been worse weekend ideas on Mondays

There’s a difference between personality and style. Personality, at its most basic, demonstrates characteristics that help the rest of us distinguishes one character from another. You can see this in siblings. You can see it in twins. Style, meanwhile, is a way of doing a thing. I am talking about the connotation of style that is to do that thing in an appreciable way. Appreciable in the sense of I see the nature of how you handled that, and I admire, sir or ma’am, your elan. Style.

This cat has personality, at the very least:

That personality is usually: Let me aggravate you as much as possible with my understanding of where you don’t want me and my immediate, continual and pressing need to always be in or on those places.

His sister, who I managed to take just one picture of this weekend, has a style. She’s aloof and insistent on very much having her way in controlling whatever is going on. Not in a bad sense, it’s just about her terms. And if you can’t oblige that, well, she needed to be somewhere else right now, anyway.

Here was my original Valentine e-card on Saturday:

And here’s a picture from Saturday’s run:

It was a nice-enough day. Generally cloudy, occasionally a bit of sun, and finally warmed up to 43 degrees. Still that snow, though. So we had a nice easy neighborhood run, and then ran through the next neighborhood, too. Got about four miles out of it, and in no particular hurry.

More from the weekend to pad out our tomorrow. Hey, if your weekend goes to fast, just look back on it with a fond nostalgia for the next two days. Then, before you know it, you’re already at Hump Day. You’re going to spend your Thursday and Friday thinking about the next weekend anyway …

Monday / photo / running / video — Comments Off
10
Feb 20

And how was your Monday?

Did I mention it snowed this weekend? Had a bit Saturday. We ran through flurries on Saturday, and around some leftovers. There has to be a name for that pesky bit that never disappears because there’s no direct sunlight because there’s no sun, right?

Look! Here’s proof we ran in temperatures supporting snow.

I think this can also serve as the marker of the day when I decided I’m over running in the cold for the winter. This dovetails with my desire for spring, which is arriving just on schedule. According to the many decades of my keen observation, that should be kicking in next week, if I lived in a sensible place. But here, it’ll be two more months. First there will be a fake weekend of spring, and then it’ll snow into April with the sole purpose of demoralizing us all. But while it isn’t spring, I’m ready for spring. And I’m ready to run in spring, which means my outdoors activities might get a bit selective in the coming days, because we won’t see 40 again until next weekend.

(But, if you give me something in the low 50s I’m going to go for a bike ride, and I won’t even wear all the winter stuff. Just some of it.)

We had a bit more snow on Sunday. It was the best kind. It was big, fast and arrived with minimal adhesion properties. Looked nice in the video though:

At the grocery store this morning, one item of note:

They’re changing the design on the packaging. I’m not going to get into a breakdown of this sort of thing. There are people who do it at great length, with a zeal that puts them between completist and exhaustive. And they probably do it much better than I could. But the new design, on top, is worse than the old one. I go to this grocery store for two items and this is one of them. The other item recently went through a label redesign, too, and I have only so much bandwidth to dedicate to visual identification. Designers, keeping this in mind, keep the changes relatively small, which somehow makes them more significant.

The new orientation of the pastries gives away the game: it’s the same pop tart. I already miss the motion of the flavor banner, and the backlight-style treatment of the branding. Except for the font used for the pastry count. That’s an improvement. Going from two strawberries to one, though, seems the wrong move. The whole thing seems the wrong move.

But that’s a Monday. And, hey, as Mondays go, that’s about the worst of it for me. Which is nice. And I got it out of the way first thing in the morning, which is better. And it didn’t snow today, so there’s also that. And we might see the sun later this week. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.