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Auburn / baseball / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
27
Mar 14

Mizzou at Auburn

I went outside and did something today! This was preceded by a few hours resting in bed. I feel better, for the most part, but I’m just so weary. That’s gotten old already.

Anyway, there was baseball tonight. Auburn is hosting Missouri for a three-game series. The attendance was announced as a sellout, the first of the year.

Blake Austin slides in for Auburn’s second score of the game:

The third base umpire blew a call and the head coach, Sunny Golloway, let him hear about it. So did the fans, for quite some time.

It was a pivotal call and, perhaps, cost Auburn the game. The wrong Tigers won, 4-3. The problems were of the familiar variety. Auburn had four errors and stranded eight.

The great thing about baseball is that they’ll play again tomorrow.

photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
25
Mar 14

So wrapped up in my mild sickness, and so bored with it, too, I volunteered to go get groceries. Anything to get out of the cough factory and sniff assembly plant that the house has become. Somewhere in between alternating bouts of cold chills and full-on flop sweats it seemed a good idea to go get the groceries.

Then, I figured, I could walk to the side of the grocery store and take a picture of the cattle in the adjacent pasture.

Of course there was another arctic blast moving in as I did this, but that’s never dissuaded anyone from doing sensible springtime things in the spring.

Everything is blooming. All of the flowers and flowering trees are trending toward gorgeous. Any moment now every other tree will achoo out their beautiful spring greenery. It’ll dip below freezing tonight. And I can’t breathe.

But I got a cart full of groceries and a photo of some grazing cattle!

I do not know what is happening. / Monday / photo / swimming — Comments Off
24
Mar 14

The place that hurts

We saw this scary little stand of dead trees on the way home yesterday. We actually saw them on the way down on Friday, too, of course, but we resolved to stop and take a few pictures. We could make True Detective jokes about this place:

I don’t know if you’ve been watching True Detective, but the thing I’ve taken from the show is that the location scouts did some amazing work. The place in this picture, outside of Waycross, Ga., could be an alternate shot for the show.

Also I meant for this to be some sort of allusion to how I’ve been feeling: like a burned out stand of trees in a clear cut area with standing water everywhere. That’s how I’ve been feeling.

I started coming down with something on Friday — right about the time we were passing through this place in Georgia, come to think of it — and it has only gotten steadily more interesting. We even made the almost-midnight trip to an out-of-town drug store. How cliched can I be?

This morning marked day three of filling my system with whatever medicine we bought. I did pretty well in getting in front of the sinuses or allergies, so it hasn’t been too bad so far. But! We had to drive through this nightmarish setting again, and if the allergens were there, well, I have a double dose and tomorrow will just be fun, won’t it?

So we went swimming today. I agreed to this because, I figured, I can’t breathe on the surface and I don’t try to breathe underwater, what could be the harm? I didn’t know we were going swimming when I had my breakfast of an apple and peanut butter. Also, I haven’t slept well since Thursday. (I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep at all on Friday night.) And so on …

We got to the pool and it was configured for the long course style, which I have never swam before. So instead of doing 50 yard laps I would get to do 100 meter laps. That wall at 25, I learned today, makes a big difference.

But I swam it anyway. I swam 1,800 meters, which is 1,968 yards, which is 1.118 miles.

I do not know what is happening.

Did I mention I might be the first person in the recorded history of lap swimming to sprain his wrist from hitting the water? How exciting is that? I’m not sure how I managed to do that, only that after some time my wrist started hurting — let’s blame lousy form — and that I wisely continued swimming.

So now I’m sick, have a little sunburn on my neck, haven’t slept well or breathed right in days, have a slight fever and a mildly sprained wrist.

I know one thing that is happening: I am falling apart. I blame Waycross. Give me some time and I’ll figure out how.

If I don’t hurt myself more, first.

photo / weekend — Comments Off
23
Mar 14

Catching up

The weekly post that passes off old pictures as current content. This week some are older than others. On with it, then.

One last look at a strip of Ferdinandina Beach, a lovely little place:

At the Ribault Club, where my friend Chadd got married on Saturday, the giant tree where they said their vows had lights like these on all of the major limbs:

The rest of these have been sitting in Photoshop waiting to be used for weeks. So we’ll rush through them. We met this dog, who was a total ham for the camera, at lunch one day:

Some of the things you can buy at one of our local lunch shops:

Some more of the fresh vegetables you can buy at one of our local lunch shops:

adventures / Auburn / friends / history / photo / running / weekend — Comments Off
22
Mar 14

Chadd and Kristi’s wedding day

We had lunch on the beach. We ate sandwiches while we watched the waves. Not a bad way to spend the noontime hour:

I saw a turtle:

This was our path to the beach:

We took a run this afternoon, an easy 3.57 mile jog along the beach and the road beside it. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon.

Oh, you wanted to know about the wedding? This was the site, on Fort George Island:

The Timucuan Indians called it Alicamani. They were met by the French explorer Jean Ribault, who found his way near this spot in 1562. The home itself is named in Ribault’s honor. The Spanish pushed the French out, of course, and then the British overran what was then San Juan in 1702.

In 1736 James Oglethorpe, the governor of Georgia and our friend from Savannah, named the island and his fort St. George here. The Spanish took over the region once again in 1783 and then three Americans became the owners of the island. Two of their plantations still exist.

After the Civil War the island fell into the hands of a carpetbagger from New Hampshire. Then came the trains, and the yellow fever and a fire that wiped out much of the little island. In the 1920s came the first car. The Ribault Club was built in 1928 and was, from the start, a playground for the affluent. Recently it underwent a four-year renovation and hosts parties and weddings and, oh look, here comes the bride:

Her father walked her down the aisle. Later, he offered a toast to his daughter and new son-in-law. He was shaking so hard I’m not sure how he saw his notes. But it was a beautiful speech. Very nice man.

Here are Kristi and Chadd, just after they exchanged their vows:

And their first dance. Chadd is a smoothy. Who knew?

The big finish:

It was a lovely ceremony. For dinner we sat at the Auburn table. Everyone there was just a little older than me. They said I was the one that picked up Chadd’s pieces when they all graduated and moved off to the real world ahead of him.

“Really” I said, “he was the guy that helped give me my start. It was a small thing, maybe, but … ”

So you were the one with the puppy dog eyes.

Probably, yes. If I look at the path of my career it is easy to see how integral he was to a lot of my progress. I was thinking about that when Chadd’s brother offered his best man toast. It was a great speech, about how consistent and dedicated and unflinchingly moral Chadd is. As a speech it felt right in every sense, and it was wonderful to be there to see the start of this new part of his life.

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Mizzou at Auburn

Moooo

The place that hurts

Catching up

Chadd and Kristi’s wedding day