A favorite family song …
In a version she might have known as a child, just 29 short years ago. 😉
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4
Mar 12
Catching up
The weekly effort to put a few more colorful photographs on this page, the excuse to go through stuff that hasn’t been seen on the site and add it here, the transparent attempt to have a Sunday post with little effort. It’s the weekly installment of catching up!
Freshman Daniel Koger pitched 5 1/3 innings, allowing just three runs on five hits and four walks, striking out three. Somehow a guy that bunted on base against him with two outs managed to score, walked in, in a one-hit inning. That kind of game for Auburn today.
Jay Gonzalez, who came into the weekend leading the SEC in runs scored, added another to his total today:
I wonder if he was recounting old days at the park:
Someone’s keeping score:
These two people have great seats:
He’s such an easy, obvious target:
We all know this guy:
3
Mar 12
Every day an adventure
Yesterday the high was 78. Today we didn’t hit 58. And the sun was unobscured by clouds for only a few moments all day.
But I did see the season’s first robin:
There were eight of them in the yard, in fact. None of them were on the bird feeder, but they did find some interesting things on the ground.
Fifty-five miles on the bike today. I’d planned to go 40, but much of it was going to be on new roads, which means being lost. Which means extra miles. And that’s how I added so much extra. I missed the baseball game, but listened to it on the ride home. Racing daylight — despite the 55 miles I cut things short because it would be dark and it was turning chilly — I listened to Auburn beat Charleston Southern 13-1. Maybe I should stay away from the park this season. They are 1-3 when I’ve seen them and 6-2 when I am not (or they are on the road).
The nice thing about the ride, aside from the miles, was in tracking down a few historic markers. The first downside was all the backtracking. About 10 or 15 miles were just because of human error. It seems I made a mistake in plotting my map, and so there I was, under a darkening gray sky, no cell signal, up hill both directions and miles and miles to go.
Also I fell. Last week when I tumbled out of my clips I blamed the firefighters. Today I can blame a police officer.
I was at a stop sign, lost. I was trying to figure out which way I wanted to go to make it to my next planned stop. I’d all but flipped a coin and got back on my bike. Look left, right, left and right again. I clip in, look left and realize this car is coming much faster than I’d realized.
I can’t get out of my clips at a dead stop. (I’m not a very good cyclist.)
So I fall over — pow, crash, boom, scrape — onto my hip and forearm.
A truck had pulled up behind me. I lifted my bike off my right leg and unclipped my shoe. I waved to the truck and moved my bike. The oncoming car was a police officer. He saw the whole thing and he stopped. The guy driving the pickup asked if I was OK. I thanked him and sent him on his way. By then the police officer had gotten out of his cruiser and walked over.
“Are you OK sir?”
I’m fine, I said. But while I have you here, I have a question.
And that is one of your less advisable ways to get a police officer’s attention. But I was fine. I scrapped my forearm a bit. It felt like I landed on my hip pretty hard, but it was instantly OK. We chatted for a minute — he was a nice old guy, quick with a laugh. I didn’t realize until the officer left, and I pedaled off in the direction that he pointed, that my wrist was hurting. I guess I landed on that, too.
So I’m icing my wrist.
You know, if that police officer hadn’t been driving by I wouldn’t have fallen over. What civil servant is next?
2
Mar 12
In like a lion
Things are fine here, weatherwise, but everyone else had it rough. That is one impressive map.
Samford, and a lot schools across the state, closed early. That means more time on the bike for me. I felt defeated by headwinds, probably the latent energy that couldn’t make it up into the storms. There were 10 miles out on familiar roads, one of our base routes, and then 10 brand new miles, mostly uphill. On the first half of the return, downhill through those 10 new miles, I was actually moving slower than the ride out. Headwinds are tough like that. Especially when there aren’t any tailwinds.
So I perfected the art of steering at an angle to aim through crosswinds and tried in vain, like every other cyclist, to make myself as small as possible to keep my cross section low. I hit breezes that would drop me four miles per hour instantly. And this wasn’t really even a windy day.
And since we have the informal Where Were You When You Heard Party in the U.S.A. rule around here:
Hey, it is a catchy tune and I needed something to round out the 11 hours on my iPod. Every five or six rides it rolls back around and I stop and take this picture. I have no idea why, really, but it always seems to come along at a time when I need the break.
A blooming tree nearby:
The church at today’s turnaround point:
That place will show up again on the site next week as part of the new Lee County Historic Markers section of the site.
Caught most of the baseball game — they’d moved up the first pitch to avoid the evening’s rain — Purdue and Auburn see-sawed back and forth, but the Boilermakers held on 9-8 after fighting off a late rally. Auburn stranded eight in the game, which seems a fairly low number for the team so far this year.
Hit the grocery store, bought things, boiled pasta and grilled chicken. I’d intended to make some to leave for tomorrow but, what do you know, it all looked appetizing, it all had to be eaten. Hey, I’d burned several thousand calories today. Headwinds.
1
Mar 12
In like a lamb
Earlier this week campus looked like this:
Today on Talbird Circle, just off the quad, this was hanging over passing students:
I love the spring, the variable of the local weather. It looks like England one day and the Caribbean the next. We can have 40 degree swings. Pollen makes every car look like a school bus. It seems too warm for March, but then, hey, it is March. And spring is just 14 minutes away.
A couple of meetings today. Some reading and critiquing the paper. There was even a little grading. I made good time getting off campus, covering some of the distance in the lingering daylight. As I closed the garage door at home the rain came. It was a day of good timing like that. One person left as another person came along. Everyone I needed to run into I ran into while I was looking for them.
That and spring! What else does one need?
Things to read: Nine visual elements
Stuff from elsewhere:
Branded apps have officially jumped the shark. No, they haven’t.
Ad of the day: The Guardian. Not sure if I like this foreshadowing or not.
The signs are everywhere — the signs of crossover. We’re not there yet, but publishers are starting to sense that the time when their business models become more about digital and less about print gets closer every day.
Since the web’s dawn, publishers have lived in a mainly print/somewhat digital world. We’re on the brink of a heavily digital/somewhat print world. The difference means hundreds of billions of dollars, euros, pounds, and yen to content creators and distributors. Get it right, and you win the prize: America’s Next Top (Business) Model.
This is a story from last year, but it is making its way back around today. It is a cute read. Maybe the best part is that a reporter pretended to try to interview a pigeon.
Finally: There’s a new section of the site for Thursdays:
I’m going to pedal around the county and collect pictures of all of the historic markers. That should be a few days of riding and weeks worth of pictures. There’s even an interactive map in the banner!
