It has been a day. So here are some lovely tree blooms.
It will rain tomorrow, and the blooms will probably disappear then and soon after. Enjoy them while you can, while it is still their day.
photo
24
Mar 15
This isn’t Ham-let, and I bacon your pardon
I swam 2,700 yards today. That may be more than I’ve ever swam before. It didn’t even seem hard. It felt like everything slowed down, my breathing was better. My arms were better, maybe my technique was a tiny bit better. Also, I think I better understand the purpose of a pull buoy. Funny how that works, using something to find out it works. In the last two hundred yards I got weary, but I’d swam almost a mile-and-a-half by then.
So then I went for a three-mile run.
I do not know what is happening.
The company running the dining on campus is undertaking some renovation. This was a significant part of their successful bid to take on the food service, which has met with some criticism and hardware in food. There has been under-cleaned silverware:
Lovely piece of silverware in the caf today. @CafProbsSU pic.twitter.com/CEGdnxrTuk
— Tate Holcombe (@TateHolcombe) March 23, 2015
I guess if you're looking at the bright side I found this on the bottom of my plate @CafProbsSU @SamfordDining pic.twitter.com/9E6gZs2d1D
— Eric Biancalana (@EricBiancalana) February 22, 2015
Idk bout u, Sodexo, but this is not my definition of clean @CafProbsSU pic.twitter.com/8P7bsY1Sgr
— Tori Mills (@tmillsss) February 21, 2015
A lack of silverware:
Well the caf has given up today in terms of silver wear @CafProbsSU pic.twitter.com/qkl1KdvRLP
— Ariana Coyne (@arianacoyne17) March 8, 2015
Some packaging issues:
I didn't realize that our food came with the packaging. @CafProbsSU @sodexoUSA pic.twitter.com/JoRcKSHUyR
— Camille Honts (@camillehonts) March 3, 2015
Plenty of oil:
@SamfordDining "Would you like pasta with that oil?" pic.twitter.com/pM2zwFktiD
— Carter (@CJKrohnie) February 18, 2015
Undercooked chicken (I’ve also enjoyed this):
@CafProbsSU when your chicken is this color… pic.twitter.com/yekSw1cE1K
— Sarah Tuttle (@queentut24) February 18, 2015
And underplucked chicken:
@CafProbsSU loved the feathers in my chicken today. pic.twitter.com/1x52pAkNe6
— Hannah Snell (@snell_hannah) February 6, 2015
So they’re fighting an uphill battle. But the renovations — which took a lot of criticism for delays in the fall — now feature a walled off area. The purpose is to create a dirty room for the renovation that won’t contaminate the undercooked food and dirty dishes. Now, though, the students are railing against The Wall.
Behind that wall:
There was a great walls of Jericho reference online already this week and this room was only erected two weeks ago.
I’ve spent some time with the food service people and I can sympathize with their lot. They are, of course, central to campus life. And when there is a difficulty, or a series of them, the impact is widely felt and difficult to overcome. But maybe the new renovations, slated to be done by June, maybe that’ll help. Of course clean dishes and better-prepared food would too.
The weird thing is that a lot of the faces on the front side of the cafeteria are familiar, holdovers to the previous company. So the problem is somewhere else.
They’ll get it there. There are too many good people involved.
But, if you’ve ever wondered what undercooked green beans taste like, they aren’t good.
It was a big workout. I’m thinking a lot about food. It seems I’m back pretty quickly to that place where my body is begging for more calories. It is a two-way street, this sort of exercise.
Dinner was better. I stared at this sign and made puns.
“I never sausage a thing!”
“This cowboy is bacon me crazy!”
What’s for second dinner?
22
Mar 15
Catching up
And now the 168th installment of the weekly post of extra photographs that haven’t already appeared on the site.
New rule: If you are using three or more fonts, it better have something to do with Vanilla Ice.
You pull up next to a bus, inspiration strikes and you drive all of your designer friends absolutely nuts with your irreverence.
@kennysmith If only it were possible to commit an equivalent grammar crime in a 140 chars. #picworth1Kwords
— Chris Arnold (@cjarnold) March 19, 2015
That’s not bad for a Wednesday afternoon.
The Yankee and the Black Cat do yoga. Allie is very interested in this lately.
Walking in the sunset.
Mowed the lawn Wednesday. Had this in the lawn on Thursday. So I picked it, and gave it to my best girl. Take that, dandelion.
A frog in the aquarium at Mellow Mushroom. For ages we thought they might be fake. They almost never move. When we saw them this week they were all over the place.
One of the frogs’ tank mates.
The driveway (I wish we had) …
Seven-foot tall furry mascots help us get over our kid fears.
They also take good mock-selfies, which is now my raison d’Aubie. I asked him to throw his hands up and he figured it out, took my phone away from me and started take pictures everywhere around us. I have 16 shots on my phone now of the people sitting nearby, with Aubie sort of photobombing the foreground. Genius.
Raison d’Aubie.
20
Mar 15
Your typical perfect Friday
This morning we went to the Barbecue House for breakfast. I had the BLT with egg and cheese and a side of hash browns. It was delicious.
I found another bookstore and, finally, the AP Stylebook. It only took four stores, but I have a new book with the latest entries and misuse of the more than/over construction. There will be a new book any day now, of course.
We hit the pool. It was not my best day between the lane lines. My shoulder hurt. But The Yankee gave me some good tips on how to improve my wonderfully terrible form. Only one of the tips she gave me threatened to drown me. I did not swim far, but it was quality. Or so I’m telling myself.
We stopped by a friend’s house. Twice, actually. We were there to check on cats. We were about 15 feet short of pulling into the driveway when we realized we did not have the house key. So we went back home to get the keys, and then back to the friend’s house. These are some of her flowers, because it had rained, and drops make the flowers pop:
We went to the baseball game and watched Auburn beat the top-five ranked Vanderbilt 6-4. It was an exciting game and something of a surprising win. Then we had pizza at Mellow Mushroom, which was delicious. Tomorrow there’s a doubleheader.
19
Mar 15
Got any AP Style?
I was looking for a book, a new Associated Press Stylebook, but one place didn’t have it. A second store was closed.
Going to a third place I had your standard “Don’t see that every day” moment. A bicycle-mounted police officer pulled over a car. The officer turned on a little blue light and the car pulled over.
You can almost imagine the mental calculus going on in the car. But that was a good move, stopping. Oh you’ll get away from the guy on the mountain bike with the fat tires. But he has friends just down the street. And those people aren’t riding bikes.
I believe that’s the first traffic stop I’ve seen by a cycling officer. Now I want to see the officers on the ruggedized Segway-trike get someone making an improper turn.
I rode 22 miles on my bike this afternoon and I didn’t see anyone that would stop for me. But I don’t have a badge or a blue light. I just have the lycra.
Anyway, the third bookstore didn’t have the book. I can try another place tomorrow. I hit Walmart. I was looking for two things, but I only found one. I got a watch battery for an old watch. (Still works! Now I have three watches that might, from time-to-time, help me out. I’ll be late somewhere tomorrow.) So I only found the one thing at the retailer, that let me make a withdrawal at the cash register. These are the details of my day.
I needed the cash because as I was going from one place to the next I got a message from an e-bay seller. We’ve been negotiating the sale of two Gloms. A deal had been reached. He’s in town and so we set up a meet.
So I find myself watching the sun go down from the Kroger parking lot, waiting on this guy to show up. He brought two books. I paid cash. He felt like he got a good deal. I felt like I got a good deal. We were both happy.
Turns out the guy’s a picker. He’s telling me stories about how he used to go dumpster diving, how it is different now. Once, he said, people would come up to him and strike up a conversation. Now he’s afraid they’ll just call the police.
But is it the times or his age? You can probably get away with more in your 20s than 40s, I’d guess.
He feels like he covered the entire area, going through old abandoned buildings, salvaging and scavenging. I wonder how many of those roads I know because of my bike and how many I have no idea about.
The newest condos being built are going up on a large tract that previously had several old, decrepit houses. He says he got the call to go into those houses, that he was the only guy, and that he got to pick them clean for leftover property, repurposed fixtures and, of course, the copper.
The stories of all of the local stuff he finds sounds like a lot of fun.
We probably talked for an hour, mostly with me just trying to get him to show me his collection. Never know what else he might be willing to sell.
Probably should have asked him if he had a Stylebook.
