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With the days getting blessedly longer, I can actually see more and more daylight. This evening I even left the studio in time to see a bit of the sunset.
So there I was, standing on the top level of the parking deck, looking off to the west thinking, what would this look like in black and white?
I should probably keep this one in mind, don’t you think?
Spring might just be here.
Because, you know, middle of April is about when it should show up.
The Little 500 races were this weekend, which is how spring finally knows to make its appearance. I got to go to the men’s race on Saturday.
'Mericuh.
Let's race!#Little500 @iubloomington pic.twitter.com/mxXGx3Xl5L
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) April 13, 2019
Cutters win the 69th running of the men's #Little500. It was their 14th win. They were also the defending champions, as noted by their yellow kit. @IUBloomington pic.twitter.com/a3XuPskySO
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) April 13, 2019
(Spring, when it does make its grand old way here, can be rather nice. This means there might be more than a few flower photos in our near future.)
It was a big weekend. It was an early start on Saturday morning. The Yankee had a half marathon around campus.
Don’t let the angle fool you. It was a long uphill finish and she did this one as a training run. She actually ran to the race, and then did the half. That’s what you do when you’re gearing up for another Ironman. You run to the run you’re supposed to run.
It was a run a year in the making. This particular event was canceled last April because of weather, so she got an entry into this one.
We picked her up at the finish line. We being my stepfather and I. He called last week and said he was going to come up and help with a project. He drove up this morning, we picked up The Yankee and dropped her off. We went to the hardware store, picked up some lunch and then started the project. This was the first cut:
I’ve been telling him about this plan for about a year, and I think he just got tired of me asking him for advice on the small bits of this and that. I’d purchased specialized tools for this and picked up the right lumber. Some time back I cut the eight-foot pieces into the pieces, 57 and 23 inches. And then got busy with other things. But we spent Saturday night and Sunday afternoon making all the rest of the cuts.
Now I just have to do all of the sanding — and there is so much sanding to be done — and the finishing before I assembling my giant tie rack shelves. It’s going to hang on the wall behind the door in my home office. Ties will roll up and fit in little 4×3 cubby holes made from intersecting half-lap joints.
It all started with the first cut, above. And, at some point, I’ll be able to go to that tie rack each morning and think about how Rick came up and spent two days with me making it. I’ll admire how he made such precise cuts with new dado blades on a crooked, secondhand table saw using a ladder and some plywood as an out-feed wing. Each piece has eight or 16 1.5 inch cuts, depending. And they all have to snuggly fit into one another. We goofed on just one cut — remarkable considering the very basic setup I built — and Rick was able to salvage that one with some creativity, wood glue and careful sanding.
Some of the blooming shrubbery around the house this week:
Flowers mean bees. And the sound of the first bee of the season is something we should always remember. The first one I heard this year was on Saturday.
If you stick around for three or four minutes, you get one worth keeping.
There’s a lesson in that somewhere.
Saw this on the way to lunch. As sidewalk art and advertisements go …
Maybe I should be scared, or find this comforting. Just let it be quick?
We went to the theatre tonight:
I bought these two seats as a part of our Christmas gifts. These people behind us were not a part of the deal:
The show was Whose Live Anyway? which is, of course, the traveling live version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? The cast included Greg Proops, Jeff Davis, Joel Murray and Dave Foley. I’ve watched Proops for forever, but Dave Foley is … well, Dave Foley.
Before the show our section was given slips of paper. We were asked to write a sentence which might get used in the show. The slips were taken up and they were distributed to a few of the players. The bit was Murray and Foley who were sudden empty-nesters. At one point Foley reached into his pocket, pulled out a slip of paper and read my line, about his character’s daughter.
“She’s from Canada. You don’t know her.”
So a Canadian comedian I started watching 30 years ago said my line which, for about that same amount of time, has remained one of the simultaneously dumbest and most brilliant jokes I know.
It was a really fun show.
I’m trying out a new look. What do you think?
Proudly wearing my new socks, which my friend, the thoughtful Dr. Ann Pegoraro sent me. (I just sent her socks, too, so that’s our thing now.) These are Baie d’Hudson socks, and they are fancy.
I doubt there’s ever been that much color between my shoes and slacks.
The sports crew is goofing off in the studio for my amusement:
Here's @Matt_Cohen_ and @m_dugan44 on the award-winning™ @IUSTVsports. Tune in. #gifdbykenny pic.twitter.com/5C3CCQvI04
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) April 4, 2019
And then getting down to business:
When you need someone to do marathon reads promoting all the awards your television station wins you call in @m_dugan44. @IUSTV @iustvnews @iustvsports pic.twitter.com/fWRs03J5qP
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) April 4, 2019
We had to record some extra promos tonight, since a bunch of our news people, have recently been nominated for awards from the Society of Professional Journalists. Michael Dugan did the promos, bragging on Andrew Lamparski’s general news nomination for a story about prescription drug abuse and Meredith Struewing’s feature news nomination for a local circus school. They’re both sophomores, so we’re going to get plenty more stories from them in the next few years.
