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14
Feb 20

Happy Valentine’s Day

And a cold one it is. But the sunny is out, and it became one of those days when the sun made all the difference. If you were dressed in the appropriate amount of layers.

This was the view this morning. Just look at that fog rolling of the creek.

Here is my official work Valentine:

That’s a giant sloth skeleton. Well, it is a 3D-printed recreation of a giant sloth. Story goes that he was discovered on the banks of the Ohio River in the 19th century. Sometime later he was donated to the university and the fossilized remains were on display in a science building. Then, in the 1940s, the bones “got thrown out.”

There’s a bigger story there. That story may be lost to history, but anything told, misremembered, perhaps obfuscated and then glossed over 80 years later becomes an easy recitation of “facts.”

Eventually, it was decided by the Office of They that the sloth should be put back on display as a part of the university’s ongoing bicentennial celebration. Only, no one has the bones. But better than fossils, we can reprint them. Technology is grand! Some of the bones were apparently not lost to history, carelessness, conspiracy or whatever it was. And they were used as a model, along with careful consultation of other ancient sloth specimens. Ultimately, it became a collaborative effort among several aspects of the university, which was probably the most important thing. Our part is … hosting the sloth. The original didn’t sit in this building, but this one is, for a time. The orientation is unfortunate. It is pointing at the newspaper’s offices and it really shouldn’t. Apparently he’s going on tour after Spring Break. A very slow tour, I’m sure.

Had a cookie:

I walked down to the local little cookie bakery where they make custom-ordered treats. Made a video of it for a friend, shared the cookies with some people in her honor. I made sure to enjoy one for myself.

And I saw this on the way to the car after the day’s work was done. Tulips! Sun!

I want to be heartened by this, but I won’t be tricked. Not this year. I remember the video from this morning, after all. And I’ve come to realize: after you see the first tulips here, you still spend two months in sweaters and coats. Three winters, lesson learned.

OK, here’s an important part of the cookie video:

Happy weekend! Find yourself a cookie. Probably you deserve it.


13
Feb 20

Of course you could borrow my coat

Don’t mind me. I’m just over here getting ready for tomorrow.

I don’t understand why we don’t do Valentines notes like this all year long. I have thought up six or seven in the time it took me to make that one, which really took no time at all. I would be insufferable, is what I’m saying, and maybe that’s why this isn’t a year-round exercise.

Oh, the puns.

No one in television knows anything about puns. You can ask them. Very serious, all the time. See?


12
Feb 20

The great thing in the grate

I made a little animated photo as my new pinned tweet. I mention it because I know you are deeply invested in this sort of thing. You are. All of you. Deeply invested. Profoundly so.

My last pinned tweet had been around for quite some time. Summer of 2015 I took that picture. London. Everything was different then, everything was the same.

We took the above picture in Roatan, Honduras last summer. Everything is the same.

It is about time for another dive. We’ll do some later this year. The problem with being so land locked is that you can’t do it readily. This is an obvious issue. The other side of that coin is that when you do get the chance, you maximize your dives, to the extent that your body can handle it. (There are some fatigue issues arising from oxygen and nitrogen at depth, eventually, and the eventually of that chemistry does catch up to you. Unless you dive nitrox, which I do not, as yet, do.) We did 20 dives over six days in Roatan, for example, knowing that was it for the year. If you could just get into the water (of the sort that you wanted to be in) more readily then we’d do so. I’d sit on the bottom of a pool for hours, if you’d let me.

Oh, look, here I am doing just that last May.

It was a peaceful experience, no currents to fight, no corral to avoid, no depth considerations to consider. Just sit and breathe. It was, then, a contemplative non-dive. Many things were considered in that high school pool, the first high school pool I’ve ever been in. (It was a Saturday.) The first one I’ve ever seen, I think.

A lot of profound thinking is going on in that photo, as you can tell. Mostly about all of the things that find their way to the bottom of a public pool.


11
Feb 20

Apologies to Geralds everywhere — most of ’em

I wrote of this last week — because we saw this last week, and we went back there again, because the fullness of life allows you to have a routine Tuesday lunch meal if you have walking-distance choices. And so we go to Chipotle, which is pretty good here, and I’ve only gotten sick once there, thank you very much — and I get to write about it again, because we saw it again.

As noted last week:

The carefully selected handwriting. This is the sort of thing that’s discussed before it’s done, right? “No one could read my handwriting,” and so on. Then there’s the frowny face. And the first-person. It has grown self-aware. And is sad. Now, is the sadness brought about by the existential dilemma of being a soda dispenser? Is the sadness because the dispenser knows this isn’t her fault, but is rather a faulty hose somewhere between here and the syrup? Maybe the grief comes because it knows a manager — the third shift leader in charge of liquid refreshments — forgot to fill that order.

Or maybe there’s a legal issue. It wouldn’t be the first time. Forty-some years ago Barqs was sold outside of the family, but the heirs, the Robinsons still had some companies with the Barq’s name and so the trademark battles began. The 5th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the family, so it was the root beer’s new owners that were out of order and … here we are.

It’s the same note. Someone fixed the problem on the Barq’s, and then decided to take that strip of paper, because it’s going to happen again, because Gerald is closing next week and Gerald is just the worst.

(I’m assuming no Gerald works there, and bear no ill-will to him. Unless he is closing, and unless he’s the beverage guy and unless he is, in fact, the worst.)

Today, as you see, the problem is with Mr. Pibb and, why, I’ve just noticed everything there is a second tier soft drink. I’ve only just noticed this because I don’t drink them, of course, haven’t for about 16 years. I do enjoy tea, however, nectar of the gods, and Chipotle can usually make a good tea. Not this week, however. It was unsweet. Gerald. He’s the worst.

What’s the point of Chipotle Tuesday if the tea is bad? Leftovers, I guess, but really.

This is the point of Tuesday. Time in the studio. Me and my old friend Camera 4. Go way back. The stories we can tell. Makes the other cameras jealous: I could have had that shot.

Camera 4 was one of three cams that helped shoot a band tonight.

All the cameras got in on some sort of programming or another. You can’t have the electronics growing jealous of one another. They’ll tell Gerald.

Here’s the other show the students produced this evening:

You know what they say, all the cameras can get good shots if they’ve got good operators.

As far as I know, no one says this. But they should.


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.