|
I don’t have an empirical basis for this, but it would seem that any time your punter has more yards than your offense, you’ve had a miserable day and no one wants to ever see it again.
That was Auburn’s 10-28 day, the worst loss they’ve had to Mississippi State in 15 years. Five turnovers will do that for you.
Samford, happily, beat UWA 34-6.
Sounds you don’t want to hear at your surgeon’s office: an electric drill.
Not just a drill powering a bit pushing a screw through wood, but that screeching screw in a knot and the drill doesn’t have enough mustard to force it through sound of shrillness.
That was late today. One of the ortho’s assistants was impressed to note I was not in a brace, but it has been a while. She didn’t know the case. She did tell me to be careful climbing onto the examination bed, so maybe she did know the case.
Anyway, took another X-ray. The doctor asked me to raise my hand over my head, I can. He asked me to put my hand behind my head. I can. He said he was pleased with my progress and that I was making an excellent recovery.
I told him I’ve felt pretty good the last few days, at least when I don’t overdo it. I’m having muscle spasms, but we think that might be the driving.
He told me the pain will go away by Christmas.
In happier news, I work on a beautiful campus:
That’s A. Hamilton Reid Chapel, which I’ve posted here a few times before. It was built in the image of the first Baptist church built in the Americas which was, apparently, in Rhode Island. You can see the resemblance.
The coolest science video you’ll see today, where a Stanford scientist explains how his team’s research is besting steroid-enhanced performance.
“What we can do” he says in the video, “by extracting heat from one hand, is we can dramatically improve performance.”
So we’re all re-purposing our ice chests this weekend, right?
Any day that starts with fruit and grading can’t be bad, right? I think so. Also, apple slices are delicious.
I’m a phase eater. Sometimes I eat a lot. And then, for a brief while, I’ll eat very little. There’s nothing consistent about it, except when I’m in the habit of eating the same things over and over. Lately I’ve been on a fruit kick, which is not particularly interesting to anyone but me, and only then given how many bad-for-me things I typically ingest.
There is a boy in my family who apparently reminds me of me — how he talks and walks and laughs — and I think, “Poor kid.” And then I text his mother and say “If he is like me tell him to study harder and eat fewer candy bars.”
“Enjoy more grapes.”
So I had a small fruit tray for breakfast and graded quizzes this morning. I had lunch with one of our recent grads. We had barbecue, my first ever trip to Saw’s. It is a small little place in a roadside strip mall. There are maybe eight tables inside, we had the corner window. The lady at the register is managing chaos, but thanks everyone who writes out a tip. It doesn’t feel particularly clean, but you can’t make respectable barbecue in a place that aces the health code rules.
A young man brings out your lunch on paper plates. They leave you alone otherwise, despite the lunch crowd and the few tables. There are framed newspaper articles and magazine covers on every inch of the walls. There are license plates above the doors. It is all a thin and perfectly random homage to a sub-genre of food.
Longtime readers know barbecue would be the center of all of my food streaks if it were actually healthy. All things in moderation though, even slow cooked, pulled pork.
Back on campus I had a brief meeting with the editor to discuss distribution patterns and then a visit with my chair, who’s the nicest guy around, and some students about various student things. I wrote plenty of emails.
The guy that can fix my office phone called my cell. He stopped by near the end of the day. This is what he did: glanced at my phone, followed the path of the two cords coming out of it with his eyes, picked one up and plugged it into the wall.
The phone paused, lit up and turned on.
Naturally, I feel like a dope. Turns out he’d had to do some electrical work in a panel in a Jeffries tube somewhere in the building. He did that after I called to complain that my phone wouldn’t work. I didn’t know that, and hadn’t thought to test the highly technical technique of plugging the phone back in to see if it was working this week where it did not last week.
So I spent a few minutes playing with the settings. Turns out you can run your computer off this phone. You can both phone home and phone the Internet from this Cisco IP device. It does not have the ringtone from 24, however. I’m sure there’s a way to do — yes there is.
The engineer that fixed the phone left his notebook in my office. It looked important, so I called his office and someone was still there. He answered his phone, on this same server networked phone. Sounded like he was standing in my doorway.
Pin drop nothing, I could hear the creases in his slacks settling.
So I walked the book over, because this is one thing the phone won’t do. The phone guy will thank me in the morning.
He’ll send an email, no doubt.
Hot day today, even into the evening. I believe she had the right idea:
She does it, her owner said, more than he would like. But the fountains at Samford are just so tempting.
Burr and Forman, by the way, are not buried beneath that fountain. That is a large regional law firm. Some 55 of their lawyers graduated from Samford with their undergrad or with their JD from Cumberland.
Two things to read on the student blog. Steve Yelvington dives into what drives local media traffic and Alan Mutter discusses how Apple and Google are threatening local mobile providers.
Do follow that Crimson blog if you like journalism and think pieces. Also Twitter and Tumblr
The weekly post where I unload extra pictures and call it a day. Sometimes it is pretty, sometimes it is informative. Always it is easy.
Shorty Price was something of an anti-hero, or even a political folk hero, or a nuisance, or someone you rolled your eyes at, for about 30 years in Alabama. He was a roommate and eventual tormentor of George Wallace. He ran against him constantly. He wrote a book. He was a ludicrous football fan. He got tossed in jail from time to time.
Perhaps he was the person to whom the stereotype was attached.
Anyway, this was probably the highlight of his life, meeting Paul Bryant. This became a promotional photograph, as the two “authors” met. This wound up in the Auburn archives, where I found it last weekend. Based on the scribble on the back of the print I’m assuming that a student-journalist at The Plainsman called him for an interview. He asked for a few copies and, in return, sent this photograph. Price died in 1980 in a car accident. The world is less … colorful … without him:
ESPN is terrible at geography:
This guy’s job is to talk into his walkie talkie and spin that sign around. If you are driving too fast he will pump his hand up and down, palm down, to tell you to slow down. I know people that would kill for this kind of job:
I’ve had these matches for a long, long time, at least a decade. About every third one will still strike.
It is Catember …
Auburn opens with Clemson tonight in Atlanta. This will be the third year in a row the two teams have played — and it’ll be nice to see them play someone else after this.
Meantime, Auburn needs to exact a bit of revenge for their treatment on the road last season. In honor of this, the 39th meeting between the occasional rivals, here is a picture from the 13th game in the series. It was October, 1916. Auburn won 28-0. War Eagle was an expression no one used yet, but we’ll say it over the picture anyway.
This picture is from the 1917 Glomerata, which I own, but is a cover I’ve not yet uploaded. You can see quite a few more here, though.
UPDATE: Auburn lost 26-19 in something of a strange contest. Both teams seemed to avoid the end zone for a while. If just a few plays changed Auburn wins. If a few other plays had worked out differently Clemson would have won in a walk. Up next for Auburn: Mississippi State.
Samford, meanwhile, thrilled a sellout crowd at Seibert Stadium by driving 50 yards in the final moments of a game to set up a field goal in the waning seconds to defeat Furman 24-21. It was the Bulldogs first ever win in a Southern Conference opener. How ’bout them Bulldogs?
