running

family / Friday / photo / running / video — Comments Off on Good pace, pizza and pucks
27
Dec 19

Good pace, pizza and pucks

The holidays are over, the holidays continue. Christmas has a way about it, doesn’t it? So much build up, so much frantic build up in these shorter holidays years, and then you hit all of the parties and family fun and then … there’s that paper pile, your presents and the now empty tree. Good thing we’ve come to think of all of this time as being about the people, then. Good thing we’ve had the time to spend.

We are fortunate that way. It’s back home and back to work for most people, but we are able to enjoy an early start and a delayed ending to the holidays. So the holidays continue.

Nice run this morning. I ran around the park where The Yankee played as a child, where we took our engagement pictures in a nor’easter 11 years ago last week. It’s much warmer today, thanks. Also, the roads have been freshly paved.

We went to Pepe’s for pizza salad. They make the best salad pizza you can find anywhere.

Truly great stuff. And my in-laws were nice enough to bring us, and to share. They’re kind people that way.

Here’s Frank Pepe. He opened his first restaurant in 1925, after he ‘d come to the U.S., returned hom to fight in the Great War and then returned to America and found his way into the restaurant business. We’re dining at the third one, which opened decades after he died. The guy in this photo has no idea there are going to be a dozen stores bearing his name.

He started out making two pies and selling them off his head. And now here we are. The server did not bring out our pizzas on her head, which was a bit of a disappointment, but that was the only disappointment.

After dinner, a dilemma! We went to a minor league hockey game. The Wolf Pack at the Sound Tigers, in a battle of compound nicknames. The Sound Tigers are the home team, and a part of the Islanders organization. The visitors are in the Rangers farm system. You’d cheer for the home team, because they’re the home team. But this is a Rangers family. So this was a confusing time. A confusing time mollified by my new favorite past time.

Who knew they needed a go kart on ice? They ran this guy out in between segments of play and he was purely a stall. The promo was watching two guys race across the ice putting on a fire fighter’s turnouts. They were too fast, so this guy got to do his laps.

The Sound Tigers won 5-1. Also, it was teddy bear toss night, which was great fun to see. After the first goal people toss their new stuffed friends onto the cold, cold ice as part of a toy drive.

If only we’d known, we could have continued the giving. It should never end, after all.

adventures / family / Monday / photo / running — Comments Off on And another travel day
23
Dec 19

And another travel day

When last we spoke, gentle reader, we were in Alabama. Or we were leaving Alabama. Or had just left Alabama and were back in Indiana or were on the way. Or something. It’s difficult to keep it all straight this time of year, really. Now we are in Connecticut, for example.

It went like this. Shorts and t-shirts on cool Alabama winter days. Then two days of sun and snow in Indiana. Don’t believe me?

Saturday in Indiana:

Sloppy Saturday:

Still so very Saturday:

This was Sunday on the church’s property:

Then a before-the-sunrise flight to New York, where New York things happened. My in-laws picked us up and we had lunch at a Connecticut diner, before going for a run on the beach. This is today on the Long Island Sound, in Connecticut, looking back toward New York:

It seems improbable, really. And an awful lot of people were out to take advantage of the moment. And we had another December run in shorts and a t-shirt, this time in front of the Christmas cottage:

And now, most of the shopping has been done, most of the errands have been run and we look forward to beginning the Christmas festivities once again:

The many fine Connecticut traditions start tomorrow at dinner.

family / history / movies / photo / running / Thursday — Comments Off on May the mamma mia be with you, neighbor
19
Dec 19

May the mamma mia be with you, neighbor

Got it a little present last night at the hardware store. We needed parts, and this was one of the next things I was going to acquire anyway.

It was this or a router. And I think I’ll use a Kreg jig kit more often. Because, having spent more than a few minutes on Pinterest, I have come to realize that the entire DIY industry is entirely a front to prop up sales of Kreg products. But now I can make pocket joinery and there’s a custom drawer build in my future. (When I finish another pre-existing project or two.)

This morning I repaired two panels of my folks’ fence that were felled in Monday’s storm. It seems as if this fence has been there a while. It was, in fact, in the yard when they bought the place. And it seems that if a determined wind blows through the neighborhood one or more of the brackets holding one or more of the panels is going to fail. So they are replacing the thing bit by plastic bit, basically.

These two will, hopefully, be some of the last repairs required on this fence before they replace the whole thing. We’re down to spare part repairs, otherwise. As with anything, you get better at it over time. That first panel, on the left, took a long while. The second one went much faster because I knew what I was doing. Not, necessarily that I knew how to do it right, mind you.

Still, I’m not going to become a fence installer when I grow up.

We went to the movies this evening. While I was out wrapping up the day’s run the women in my life decided we should see A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. It’s a fine movie, but you should definitely read the article first.

While we’re standing in line at the concessions stand — where you buy tickets now because box offices are for oldz, and movie theaters are full of cost efficiency consultants these days — we saw this. Two of the three kids working working behind the counter were fussing with one, and off to the side I saw the price. Someone said something snarky. Probably it was me. The Yankee, always ready for a joke, gave me the I-have-a-reply look and her line let me say “Of course I’m not going to buy one because I’m a grownup.”

The guy in front of us looked back over his shoulder and smiled: Ha! Good one! And then he bought one.

He also asked them to not fill it with popcorn and his drink.

I bet he could have purchased the same thing at Bed Bath & Beyond for half the price. (It’s in the Beyond section, if you were wondering.)

We visited a downtown Italian restaurant for dinner this evening. We’ve been there before, and it hasn’t let us down yet. You’d think, Italian? In small town Alabama? Yes, my friend, but this is Florence.

An Italian immigrant named Ferdinand Sannoner, of Livorno, surveyed all of this land 200 years ago and he named it after Florence, which is just 50-some miles from his hometown. Part of his payment was in land. He died and is buried in Memphis, where his grave sat unmarked for almost 120 years. Today his old property, here, is home to the public library, and a very short walk away is the restaurant where we had dinner. Maybe he’d like that. Maybe he’d like the food. Who can say what a man born in 18th century Italy who lived in the 19th century American southeast would like today.

He’d probably think this was cool, though:

Well, once you explained who Hemingway was. Elvis? Transcends time. That’s the only way we can keep the artful graffiti honest. The restaurant was established in 1996.

I wonder what was there before that. Someone break out the ouji board. Let’s ask Sannoner.

adventures / family / photo / running / Wednesday — Comments Off on Happy 10K to me
18
Dec 19

Happy 10K to me

Don’t worry. This isn’t a running blog, or a blog even turning into a running blog. All appearances to the contrary. I just have a bit of extra time now, my foot feels better (and aren’t we all relieved of that, in the hopes that we’ll stop talking about it) and I am trying to hit an arbitrary goal for the year. So it is a high-volume month, dear reader, and you have my apologies.

Last week I announced that today I was going to run a 10K, my first since mid-March, and so we did. Plus, it had the added benefit of being a good way to welcome in a new magic number.

It was a warm-ish and sunny day. Plenty warm by here, the second mile of the course:

Even in the shade it wasn’t too bad:

Here’s a shot where you fool the processor in your pocket super computer camera. A simple overexposure looks like the end of a day at the end of times. This is the Tennessee River.

And this is the Wilson Dam, which was closed to traffic today for some reason.

Probably for wind or rains or temperature or who knows. They shut it down sometimes. Probably today word got out that we were going to run down here and they turned everyone away for us. Thanks, TVA!

They started building the dam in 1918 and completed in 1924. Two years ago we ran down here and saw a rainbow that, I artfully said, was 100 years in the making. I have four more years to think up a similarly good line to see another one.

There were no spillways open today, but there were no cars on the road either. My mother would tell you she learned to drive on this tiny dam, in the snow. I’m sure it was a blinding storm. But, the story goes, her father’s logic was that if you can drive on this dam in the snow you can do most anything.

It’s a small damn, and the logic, scary as it seems, holds up. I never liked going over the thing as a kid, and back then that was the only way between A and B. The first time I drove over it was, I’m sure, a bright, sunny day — or a perfectly clear night — and there’s little chance of me going over it in anything more treacherous than the rain. Fortunately, there’s another bridge people can take today. That’s helpful for both the nerves and closures, like today.

Look how small those two lanes are!

So really, this was one 5K, because we had to stop to take all these pictures. You don’t often get all of this space to take a shot like this, and so you better take advantage of it when you do:

Back to the run, then. On the way back to the car, on the back half, somewhere close to mile five, the sun dipped down to look in on me through the trees:

And I exceeded the limit on selfies for the week:

That was all just before I started thinking about how little I’ve eaten in the last day or so. And, look, a 10K isn’t that long. This is just 6.2 miles, or, today, a little over 6.3. But when you’re hungry and you have a long straightaway into the wind and your running partner is way up the bridge from you, and you’re thinking about where you can get a chocolate milk right away, it can seem like it takes forever.

Here’s the dam, from the other bridge:

We stopped at a Walgreens, which has a temporal anomaly inside so powerful that renders the shoppers and the clerks equally unable to complete either side of their prescribed interactions. I must have stood there for about half an hour with a giant chocolate milk in my hand that I could not drink because I was not able to purchase it.

After which, we got cleaned up and went out for Japanese with my mom, my grandfather and one of my cousins. My grandfather doesn’t eat Japanese, but he did have an ice cream while the chef prepared our food. Later, I learned you can eat ice cream with chopsticks. And if there are photos of that I’m sure they’ll never see the light of day. The key is attacking it while it is still firm.

And then we visited the giant hardware store. For parts! I have a project tomorrow. Let’s see how that turns out.

family / photo / running / Tuesday — Comments Off on Plastic spatulas are the key to faster paces
17
Dec 19

Plastic spatulas are the key to faster paces

I had the great good fortune to visit with my grandfather today. We’re trying to talk him into going to dinner with us tomorrow night. I’m sure he will, but we just have to work on him a bit more. We are determined and persuasive.

We also stopped by to see my aunt and uncle, who married us in 2009. (And I officiated his daughter’s wedding in 2016, but that’s a different story, I suppose.) Sat with them for a bit and then strolled into town to do town things. There are the regular provisions to procure. And then, of course, there are three or four items we can’t find at our own local, inferior grocery store. Each trip we return with cans of this and boxes of that.

It’s never cans of that and boxes of this. Have you ever wondered why that is?

I think it is because the this would run right out of the boxes. Leak right through the paperboard, right onto the shelves and floors.

I stood on a ladder for a good long while yesterday. It was time for the annual light bulb changing event above my mother’s television. It requires a great climb and I am still agile enough for the work. The hardest part is moving a giant ladder in from the garage and into the living room.

Since I brought the ladder in for that, there was no reason to take the ladder out the back and get onto that gutter my mother asked me to look into. There was a slow drip, for days, she said, after a big rain. And could I see what was going on?

What was going on was that the gutter needed to be cleaned. The backyard of the house sees great sun, but that gutter does not, and the asphalt runoff from the shingles was just sliding down into the gutter, never drying, always accumulating and now, in spots, had started growing moss.

Grab yourself a spatula and some bags and start removing the gunk. If you can find the right size spatula or spoon, or garden hoe, you can make shorter work of it. Because it is a long gutter, I filled up most of a garbage can.

It was also a very tall ladder. And it might have impacted my run today, which was a picturesque and slow 3.69-mile experience.

I discovered a road running alongside the nearby high school. The map tells me it runs all the way to the water. I didn’t grow up here, and I didn’t run all the way down the road, so the road was new to me and I’m taking the map’s word for it.

But that first little bit of that new road:

It turns out, you can miss the pines. This morning I realized I miss the pines.

I ran about six-tenths of a mile down the road. It sounds like nothing, a thousand yards, but it felt like a lot. Anyway, the road apparently branches off three different times before they all drop down to the river and a little creek inlet. I didn’t go that far because life has taught me that if you get to the water you’re going downhill. Which means you have to go uphill.

And none of that for me, thanks. I just ran through pastures and by one little house. There are more down by the water. I know they are there because several cars passed me by. Several nice cars.

I always wonder what that’s like. In my neighborhood there are a lot of sidewalks and walking paths. And of course there are a lot of young people running around. You begin to see the same people if you are out there enough. But, here, where we are running just now, it’s just roads and houses and businesses. There are broad shoulders on the highway, but I can’t recall having ever seen a lot of people running around these parts.

I bet the local folks don’t see a lot of people running around here, either. And I bet these last two days cars going by have been wondering what that crazy fool is doing out there.

I wonder that every time, too. But at least I am wondering in slightly warmer temperatures this week.

(Spatulas are good for cleaning gutters. If you have an old plastic one you can cut it to the proper width. A good spatula speeds up the process, then, hopefully reducing the time you spend on a ladder.)

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