I wrote of this last week — because we saw this last week, and we went back there again, because the fullness of life allows you to have a routine Tuesday lunch meal if you have walking-distance choices. And so we go to Chipotle, which is pretty good here, and I’ve only gotten sick once there, thank you very much — and I get to write about it again, because we saw it again.
As noted last week:
The carefully selected handwriting. This is the sort of thing that’s discussed before it’s done, right? “No one could read my handwriting,” and so on. Then there’s the frowny face. And the first-person. It has grown self-aware. And is sad. Now, is the sadness brought about by the existential dilemma of being a soda dispenser? Is the sadness because the dispenser knows this isn’t her fault, but is rather a faulty hose somewhere between here and the syrup? Maybe the grief comes because it knows a manager — the third shift leader in charge of liquid refreshments — forgot to fill that order.
Or maybe there’s a legal issue. It wouldn’t be the first time. Forty-some years ago Barqs was sold outside of the family, but the heirs, the Robinsons still had some companies with the Barq’s name and so the trademark battles began. The 5th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the family, so it was the root beer’s new owners that were out of order and … here we are.
It’s the same note. Someone fixed the problem on the Barq’s, and then decided to take that strip of paper, because it’s going to happen again, because Gerald is closing next week and Gerald is just the worst.
(I’m assuming no Gerald works there, and bear no ill-will to him. Unless he is closing, and unless he’s the beverage guy and unless he is, in fact, the worst.)
Today, as you see, the problem is with Mr. Pibb and, why, I’ve just noticed everything there is a second tier soft drink. I’ve only just noticed this because I don’t drink them, of course, haven’t for about 16 years. I do enjoy tea, however, nectar of the gods, and Chipotle can usually make a good tea. Not this week, however. It was unsweet. Gerald. He’s the worst.
What’s the point of Chipotle Tuesday if the tea is bad? Leftovers, I guess, but really.
This is the point of Tuesday. Time in the studio. Me and my old friend Camera 4. Go way back. The stories we can tell. Makes the other cameras jealous: I could have had that shot.
Camera 4 was one of three cams that helped shoot a band tonight.
All the cameras got in on some sort of programming or another. You can’t have the electronics growing jealous of one another. They’ll tell Gerald.
Here’s the other show the students produced this evening:
You know what they say, all the cameras can get good shots if they’ve got good operators.
As far as I know, no one says this. But they should.
Did I mention it snowed this weekend? Had a bit Saturday. We ran through flurries on Saturday, and around some leftovers. There has to be a name for that pesky bit that never disappears because there’s no direct sunlight because there’s no sun, right?
Look! Here’s proof we ran in temperatures supporting snow.
I think this can also serve as the marker of the day when I decided I’m over running in the cold for the winter. This dovetails with my desire for spring, which is arriving just on schedule. According to the many decades of my keen observation, that should be kicking in next week, if I lived in a sensible place. But here, it’ll be two more months. First there will be a fake weekend of spring, and then it’ll snow into April with the sole purpose of demoralizing us all. But while it isn’t spring, I’m ready for spring. And I’m ready to run in spring, which means my outdoors activities might get a bit selective in the coming days, because we won’t see 40 again until next weekend.
(But, if you give me something in the low 50s I’m going to go for a bike ride, and I won’t even wear all the winter stuff. Just some of it.)
We had a bit more snow on Sunday. It was the best kind. It was big, fast and arrived with minimal adhesion properties. Looked nice in the video though:
At the grocery store this morning, one item of note:
They’re changing the design on the packaging. I’m not going to get into a breakdown of this sort of thing. There are people who do it at great length, with a zeal that puts them between completist and exhaustive. And they probably do it much better than I could. But the new design, on top, is worse than the old one. I go to this grocery store for two items and this is one of them. The other item recently went through a label redesign, too, and I have only so much bandwidth to dedicate to visual identification. Designers, keeping this in mind, keep the changes relatively small, which somehow makes them more significant.
The new orientation of the pastries gives away the game: it’s the same pop tart. I already miss the motion of the flavor banner, and the backlight-style treatment of the branding. Except for the font used for the pastry count. That’s an improvement. Going from two strawberries to one, though, seems the wrong move. The whole thing seems the wrong move.
But that’s a Monday. And, hey, as Mondays go, that’s about the worst of it for me. Which is nice. And I got it out of the way first thing in the morning, which is better. And it didn’t snow today, so there’s also that. And we might see the sun later this week. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Friday / photo — Comments Off on That time of year 7 Feb 20
The amounts of snow have been negligible, at least. But it has been cold enough to sow. And it always looks like it, of course. And that’s the trouble, this time of year, isn’t it? The calendar says we’re about to turn into the second week of February. Now, where I’m from — by routine and habit and reasonable sensibilities — that means we’re aboooout a week away from seeing those first little green sprigs and shoots of spring.
Where I am, it means I have two more months of gray skies. What that means is we have to find two months of stuff to talk about without complaining overmuch. It’s annoying, really. It annoys me, being annoying about being annoyed. Maybe I need a good, all-encompassing, immersive hobby. Also, it’s going to snow again on Sunday.
But tomorrow, it’ll just be cold. One day we’ll stop doing that, perhaps. In April.
How are you? Did you miss me? I would understand if you didn’t. There’s a lot of stuff out there to see and read and watch and hear and do. And if it isn’t in our faces all of the time, we might not even be aware of it’s absence. We are consumerists of the moment. It has probably always been this way, since society reached beyond some arbitrary critical mass of saturation, but let’s blame it on the Internet.
Shame on you, Internet. There’s just so much of you. So much so, that people won’t even notice me. Or, most critically, notice if I’ve taken the day, or many, off.
Which is what I’ve done. It was a nice idea and I’m pleased with having done it. I haven’t written anything here, or on social media, though I have kept up a little. I’ve just done the other things in life. And, I suppose, that means I’ve had a little extra time. So I have accomplished more stuff! Well, yes and no. Mostly no, but also yes, in a pleasing enough manner. I read four books. Two of them were essay collections edited by Edwin Grosvenor, one on The Civil War and one on World War I. These were both good. It was, I said to a friend, like reading well-written longform Wikipedia posts on specific subjects. I also read Al Roker’s story about the 1900 hurricane in Galveston. It was a book that tried to walk a line between people who want to know about weather and, yet, no know nothing about weather. It is a great and tragic and amazing tale, one somehow lost in the modern zeitgeist. But the book could have done with another editing pass or two. Also, I finished a book about the archeology of the battle of the Culloden battlefield. We visited there a few years ago, and the interpretation is well done for casual visitors. Most battlefields are difficult, for me anyway, to visualize and understand. Not so, Culloden. Part of that is because of the work that’s been done to return the hallowed ground to what it looked like in 1746. And that’s because of thoughtful scholarship like that found in this book.
Things that have happened since we spoke last…
I got sick! There were about six days of feeling rough, eight days of eating zinc and vitamin supplements and cough drops like candy, and three of those days where I was laid quite low. After that, another week of idle coughing and throat clearing. But I’m fine now. It was, as you might expect, a fine way to bring in the new year. But, with that out of the way, I’m good to go and be virus-free until about 2026 or so.
I returned to work after the holidays, of course. (As did you! Was your office different? Mine was exactly the same.)
The beginning of a semester brings its own odd pace. Two or three weeks in, as we are now, the rush of the start is over and we slip into the rhythm of the term. But, in addition to that early semester rush, we’ve also been working toward a project that just wrapped last Friday. CBS Sports was here, producing an episode of We Need To Talk. They used our studio, some of our students and talked to and about a lot of the local sports world. This is the only clip they’ve put online so far:
It was a good show, a good experience for the people who took advantage of it. And, most importantly, we can move on to other things.
Let’s catch up on everything else with photographs.
Poseidon is still getting into everything. We try to keep him out of the laundry room, but he’s fast. And he knows precisely what he’s going for, the bag randomly sitting between the dryer and the ironing board:
We’ve had gray skies:
A lot of gray skies:
It’s just positively charming in its perpetual dreariness. (It’s not.)
We’re averaging one day of blue sky a week. But on one particular blue sky day we had a nice sunset:
It should just happen more often, is all.
I’ve been running, of course. Even as I was trying to get over my head cold. And I have had the opportunity to use the running light that The Yankee got me for Christmas:
It casts a giant arc of light. Probably looks weird coming at you, but you don’t miss things on the sidewalk or path or road. And it inadvertently spotlights deer. Now we both have one of these ONE80 lights, and we’re big fans. If you run, or work outside at night, or need something that’s ridiculously bright and long-lasting and hands free, this is the one you want.
Also, it has been cold, of course. But happily, so far this year, it has been an unseasonably mild winter. Even still, cold enough.
Only a few days this month have been really bitter. And that’s plenty for the year, thanks.
I got to run with Venus, which you can see in the twilight here:
The Canada geese are just moving back and forth from one pond to another around here.
They think, this is south enough, I guess. They are mistaken.
There is a running path behind our house. It has little tendrils that extend out to the road in front of us, but otherwise, it just exists unto itself, ending in a fallow field on one end and almost seven-tenths of a mile away it ends in woods. It is one of many paths around the city, and we’ve been told that they’ll one day all be connected, which would be a great feature, if you think about it. The realization of that goal may well be long after we can be bothered to care, or live here. But there is a bit of progress on our local stretch of pedestrian asphalt. The path behind us has been extended a bit, recently. Now it goes back and behind the newer developments on the road. Meanwhile, one of the other paths (which joins the larger network on one end and just … stops … on the other end) is growing toward our little path. One problem: the creek in between. Well, that problem has been solved:
Now those two paths just have to link up.
Also, the ponds recently froze:
Definitely the kind of weather I want to be outside in. Fortunately they haven’t been frozen solid. Here’s a shot of a larger pond, just a day or three later. And if you squint at the fuzzy background in the distance it almost looks like that’s some sort of alpine village, which would be an upgrade.
It has been cold enough for the cats to cuddle:
Phoebe is also doing just fine:
And now we’ll try to get back into some normal routine around here, too.
The blog is going to take a few weeks off. We’ll reconvene a bit later in January and get everyone caught back up. Until then, may all your resolutions by new and may all your newness be resolute.
