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Monday / photo — Comments Off on That was a quick week off from blogging
17
Aug 20

That was a quick week off from blogging

Welcome back! It’s been a week away, and what a week! Let’s see what you missed … a few bike rides, a few runs, a good joke based on a 70-year-old book, and a nice mini-essay based on a 24-year-old book.

Also, I got to visit with the bunny that lives in the front yard.

So a full week, really.

And then on Friday night I had a lovely video chat with my sister. There were two videos on Saturday evening, and that’s how those have become second nature. You get invited to an anniversary party and then you just stop by with someone else to just catch up.

I feel like we should devote a room to this purpose. Comfortable chairs and good light, room for a good two-shoot. Something to consider.

Anyway, it was back to it today. Another week starts, a week before classes begin. Lots of emails and a flurry of text messages and Slack messages and if you can put a group into the loop we’re having to keep track of it messages. There are schedules to build and productions to arrange and tutorials to record and meetings to attend and scripts to write and two or three podcasts to record.

And webinars. Six hours of webinars this week. Six of 18 hours on the same platform this semester. Or maybe 27. Perhaps it is 36. The scheduling has made it difficult to determine. Suffice it to say that, at the end, I’ll be well versed on a new tool we’ll soon be using.

I did three of those hours today, and then wrote a 300 word summary for others. It turns out it isn’t that difficult to get 180 minutes of highly specific material down into a few paragraphs. You just have to let your readers infer a few dozen important things.

At any rate, the pace is picking up as we get closer to the semester, as it should. And that’s good!

But how have the cats been since we checked in with them now two weeks ago? Just dandy, thanks for asking.

Phoebe is still showing off, this time on one of her cat trees.

And Poseidon is seen here taking a nap on the stove top cover.

We made that thing out of leftover wood to keep cat paws off hot stove eyes and it’s now one of their favorite spots.

We sat on the deck one lovely evening last week, and they were most distressed.

Watching a cat meow and not being able to hear it is one of the small pleasures. You should take advantage of the small pleasures. The good thing is there are a lot of those out there.

Take a day and jot each one down as you run across it. You’ll be surprised how the list starts to stack up.

Friday / IU / photo — Comments Off on The floor needs more witticisms, really
7
Aug 20

The floor needs more witticisms, really

Had the opportunity to go to campus today to do some work. We were producing some instructional videos. How to mount a camera on a tripod. How to turn it on. How to change the settings. This sort of thing. Useful stuff. And beneficial to do in a video form because it will maximize the return on time investment. Teach a basic thing to a camera, so the video it captures can be seen over and over by students as necessary, rather than continue to give boutique, small-group presentations of the same material. It’s a good approach. The circumstances of the day have made it an imperative, even if it’s something we’ve intended to do for several years.

People ate lunch in a room that will hold socially distanced students in our first classes next week. I sat in a chair where some future industry giant will sit, and watched people munch on sandwiches.

There are soap dispensers and wipes and stickers about. One suspects more signs will go into place in the next week or so.

A few places where a person sits that custom and decorum suggest will still feature human interaction now have a cling wrap structure around them. Some of that went up today. Chairs are spaced and excess furniture is stacked. We saw to that a few weeks ago.

And, in general, the mood will be:

There are a lot of plans in place — testing, prophylactic, event restrictions and limitations — hopefully it will be sufficient toward the cause of educating students and conducting research and all of the other things that take place on campus. Or, all of the things that will take place this year. Some of it will be quite limited, sadly. That’s the mood. No gathering please.

Taking next week off from writing here. No particular reason. There’s some work stuff and a break sounds good and, when I do come back, there might be an actual tidbit or two to catch up on. So, until then, be safe. Exercise grace and patience with one another, and yourself, and we’ll catch up on August 17th.

adventures / cycling / photo / Thursday / Twitter / video — Comments Off on To get even with yesterday
6
Aug 20

To get even with yesterday

This was yesterday. We had a bike ride and I worked at it a little bit and sweated and probably made some straining faces in-between big gasping breaths and managed to stick on her wheel for a while.

And then I passed her and she had to chase me for a change. She, of course, was able to do this effortlessly.

And when I got in I did the thing I’ve been meaning to do for a few days now, but I’ve gotten a little negligent and forgetful about for some reason. I cleaned and lubed my bicycle chain.

It’s a simple process, you take off the computer, flip the bike over, wipe all the gunk and grease off the chain and the put a little drop of this on the links and then spin it around the cassette on the big gear and the little one, enjoying the smell and the satisfaction that you’re ride will at least be quiet the next time you get outside.

We’re going to learn. Eventually. Today will not be that day.

This was my biggest contribution to the internet today. I think you’ll appreciate it, as well.

More on Twitter, and check me out on Instagram as well.

photo / Tuesday / Twitter — Comments Off on Tuesday is getting even with me
4
Aug 20

Tuesday is getting even with me

I worked on campus yesterday. And I’m feeling it today! It was the sort of day that makes me glad I went to college. It was a highly physical day. We moved furniture. I sweat a lot. I only hurt myself twice, and on two separate tables.

One, I was trying to flip over a table and dropped it squarely on both big toes. You walk that off, in time. The other time, we were moving tables, via under-sized hand trucks, from one building to the other. This was a half-mile odyssey upon which only one table was destroyed. It wasn’t mine, at least.

It was sunny early, and then turned gray by midday.

And when we left at around 4 p.m. we were heavily invested in dodging rain drops. And that’s probably the part that left me the most achy today.

Probably not, but let’s go with it!

Anyway, it was nice to see people, at least the part of them between their masks and hairlines. It was nice to pitch in on a big project and make some progress on it. We were replacing furniture in a computer lab and rebuilding some edit bays and the like. Later this week we’ll go make some videos. It will almost feel like normal, if that’s your sort of thing.

I visited the grocery store on the way back to the house yesterday. I mention this only because the sport of mask watching seems to be obligatory at this point. The only people I saw sans-face covering were young people.

College town! What could go wrong!?

The only people I saw wearing masks incorrectly were three older ladies whose noses were born to be free, dagnabbit. What could go wrong, indeed.

I picked up the five items I went in for, stuffed them all in my semi-impermanent fabric shopping bags, forgot to look for the sixth item I was considering and made my escape, through the continuing rain. I was in and out in five minutes, and avoided both the mask deficient utes and the mask inefficient oldz.

The nicest part of all of this is that I loaded up the car with new music today. And, considering how much time I’m not spending in the car right now, it could last a good long while.

I predict you’re going to see more about this story in the next week or two.

The home state is also rocking the good personal decisions, I see.

That’s unfair, as generalizations go. Not everyone who is sick should be characterized as making poor choices. But a great many people seem to be intent on ill-informed decisions and it’s easy to sweep others into that group. To that subset of people, I apologize.

Perhaps you’ve already seen the instantly famous Axios interview. If not, you might. Either way, you might come away with some questions about what it contained. Seth Abramson put himself through the ringer to unpack the whole thing. It’s really something else. Do him a favor and reward his dedication to an unsavory job by reading about it.

And do me a favor by checking out these other places. There’s a lot more on Twitter, and I hear Instagram is popular these days, as well. Also, you can catch up on the work podcast On Topic with IU as well.

adventures / history / Indiana / Monday / photo — Comments Off on Day hiking in the Deam
3
Aug 20

Day hiking in the Deam

Welcome to August, the time when we all try to remind ourselves that days are inconsequential, but months matter, somehow. How are things going where you are? That sounds rhetorical, but I mean it. How are things? Parents are trying to figure out how school will work. Fans are wondering if they’ll see their sports this fall? People are trying to figure out if they can just get their mortgage or rent in on time. Some people are working through a lot, and isn’t it funny how inconsequential some of those things can seem if the big ones are up in the air?

So I hope you’ve been taking a little time for yourself here and there. Mediation. Coffee. Walks. Reading something fun. Dancing sillily to music. Exercise. Whatever it is you do, do a little more of it. You probably deserve it. And if you think you don’t, you definitely do. This is August.

And since it is also Monday, we check in on the cats. The cats are good!

Phoebe literally can’t even. Did we do this one right?

Poseidon, in a rare moment of cuteness takes his break from being a little pill.

I’m kidding. He’s about 50/50. Or 40/60. Definitely he’s 30/70, cute.

We went for a walk in the wilderness yesterday. We saw one family on the trail. They were hiking back up out of the ravine as we were just beginning to work our way down into it. We each stopped, and the mom and the dad and all of their kids put on masks. We put on our masks. And then we all made a wide berth for one another. I waved at one of the kids, and it is obviously too early for all of that for her. Maybe I should have complimented her mask.

The mother and I both worked on smiling with our eyes. It’s probably past due on that, at least for me.

We were in the Charles Deam Wilderness, which gives you 36 miles of trails for hiking, backpacking, and horse riding. I took pictures of some of the humble undergrowths.

It’s a scenic hardwood forest, and the up-and-down terrain is probably beautiful to explore in the autumn. If you’re on the right part of it you can get some really nice views of the nearby lake. We happily crossed a few streams in our four-mile hike.

This was declared a wilderness in 1982 based on some legislation from the 1960s and today makes up 12,000-plus acres of the Hoosier National Forest.

It’s yet another one of those places where we say “Native Americans lived here” and, also, “It was originally settled in 1826.” Clearly people had been there before. It’s got good game, even today, but the agriculture was a bit hardscrabble.

Finally, when the Great Depression hit and the economy turned in this area people were forced out. The government bought up the abandoned land and the Civilian Conservation Corps moved in to return it to a wilderness, control erosion and make it a recreation area.

You can still see some of the old home structures in the wilderness, though we didn’t run across any yesterday. As noted, it’s a big area, which will be nice for return visits and new discoveries.

We did see a few horseshoe prints, even on the trails were horses aren’t allowed. Silly horses, they should know better and read the signs. We only heard and saw a few other people the whole time we were out, and most of them at our turnaround point, at a little cave on the top of the ridgeline. It was a bit underwhelming, as caves go, but I’ve been spoiled by some large examples over the years.

We found this tree on our way back out.

Let’s take a closer look at that tree.

I got photobombed.

There are six other trails to try out, as well, and I’m sure they all feel different in the passing seasons.

The cleanup has been an impressive one. There were 81 farms out here, and corn and hay on the ridges. Given the topography and crops it was probably a terrific example of ten-year land.

Because of today’s special rules of the wilderness act, the only work done today is trail maintenance. So if you know what you’re looking at, it’s an interesting place to see nature making it’s slow and sudden comeback.

In some areas the growth is thicker than others. It’s a space rehabilitating itself.

The Deam Wilderness, I’ve just learned, is the biggest wilderness in the lower Great Lakes region with almost 13,000 acres. For comparison, Illinois has eight wilderness areas but they’re mostly a few thousand acres each.

And, finally, a tree we found in one of the creek beds.

When you’re down in that area with the creek beds, and the hills on either side of you, you have a great sense of being alone. Even in a socially distanced world it felt like a fine dose of quietude.

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