photo « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

photo

photo / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
15
Oct 19

Morale comes in many flavors

How it starts is, you see that first maple leaf fall. The one you can’t ignore because it was on a diseased or detaching branch. Maple, being nature’s quitter, is always the first one to go. And then you see random moments like this, when the sun is just right and something in the background and the polarization of your sunglasses catches the proper glint:

Then a few leaves hit the ground, and suddenly the birches have joined the maples in their emotional decline. That creates beautiful moments, of course. And those moments turn into a few days. You hope those days turn into weeks, such that you begin to not even notice it anymore. As if that could happen. And, if you’re lucky, you can get that without a big storm coming through to reduce the world to pointless sticks poking into the sky.

Autumn is nice. It’d be lovely if you could put the on-rushing winter out of your mind, before it chills the spirits. Better to just put yourself beyond its reach.

If you need something to watch, you need television. And if you need television you need a morning show. Got you covered:

They learned to make pizza and did a winery feature in that episode. Why they don’t go somewhere every week to go learn and try new things escapes me. It seems to me like it’d be the most fun show you could do.

Or if you’re reading this late at night you might need the late show:

There’s a very famous and successful a cappella group on campus and they joined the show for fun and a lot of water. I didn’t get that joke, but there’s plenty of good stuff in there. I especially enjoyed the package where one of the guys from the show tried to join the group. He sang Ode to Joy in the style of … well, a character most of us grew up with.

Otherwise, more television this evening. Saw an old friend at the tapings. Enjoyed a few meetings during the day and slogged through a few other ones, too.

Tonight we wiped out the last of the weekend’s leftovers, a tasty pork curry. That’s a success. Progress! Achievement! A big spot in the refrigerator reclaimed! There’s also the downside. Now there’s no more no-dishes nights. For the last several dinners it’s been no more difficult than opening the dishwasher. But now we’ll be back to original cooking and original dishes and, boy, isn’t life tough?

The difficulty of the evening is trying to fit a giant Tupperware container into the washer so you don’t have to do it by hand. The danger to morale in the knowledge there’ll be something you do have to scrub tomorrow. And then the nightly ironing of tomorrow’s clothes. That’s always a tricky one, when it comes to morale. And you never know which way that one will break until you see the wrinkles you have to deal with.

IU / photo / running / Thursday — Comments Off
3
Oct 19

If only you could blame cardboard for all your problems

We went for a run this morning. We went for a run this morning because the weather broke. We went for a run this morning because it was about 30 degrees cooler than it was when we could have gone for a run yesterday evening.

So I got in a slow and sluggish 5K, because it was a morning run. And while it isn’t that I’m not a morning person, I’m just not a morning runner. Or, perhaps, a morning exerciser in general. That part may have to do with the morning person thing. Anyway, we ran on that path, and when we did a few trips around this little manmade pond. That’s not my house:

We beat the sun (above the treeline)!

At the end of the day I chose to take an elevator. I looked at the little pedometer on my phone, to justify the luxury, and that, and my attendant aches and pains, were how I remembered that I had gone for a run this morning.

In between I fired off the requisite rounds of emails, had lunch with my bride, assisted in the purchase of equipment that needed to be purchased, had a few meetings and other office things like that. We were also in the television studio for sports shows, and we’ll be back in the TV studio for another show tomorrow morning.

Tonight, for dinner:

The chicken is pretty good. The waffles … I’m not sure how you even miss on waffles, but that one was something of a miss. I think they deserve a second try, sometime, though.

At home I caught up on a bit of reading, fought with the cat, who just haaaaas to be in the garage. And it doesn’t matter that I’m trying to do him a solid by bringing in some cardboard boxes he can play in. And Poseidon will play in the boxes. I don’t feel I can leave in there by himself long enough to change from my suit, so there I am in slacks on my hands and knees being thwarted by a cat who has somehow lost all motor function.

Eventually I got the push broom behind him and pulled him out from underneath the car. Cat curling is the nicest thing I wanted to do.

I was tired by 8 p.m. — I blame the shorter days — but I’ve just finished, at 11-something, looking for the other cat. The search went from casual to concerning after the second sweep of the entire house, including closets and garage. Phoebe was hiding in one of those boxes I brought in when I got to the house this evening. We tent it up so they can sit in and under it and she found the dark back corner, the one without a motion sensor light.

Cardboard. I am defeated by cardboard. And cats.

I think we should recycle sooner.

errands / hobby / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
1
Oct 19

About that

I had yesterday off. And unlike the last two times I had an off day, I did not go into the office for a meeting.

So I went to the tailor instead. New suit pants need sizing and that guy is the man for the job. It would be helpful if the tailor’s name was Taylor. Once, in some parts of the world, names were tied to vocations or locations. It had its conveniences, not the least of which was that it bound people into one place and role. Why, some ancestor of mine worked in metals, I guess, and look how far I’ve come since then.

…

Well, I’ve just looked up the other five of my most proximate family names. They are all English, or diminutive of German, or maybe Greek, or just rare and relatively unknown to the Internet. One site says there are 242 people in the U.S. with that rare name. Surely that’s an underestimate. But I didn’t even know I had that name until well into adulthood and I don’t think I’d ever heard it around the ancestral haunts, so I’d agree it is rare. But it, and the rest of the family names, seem to be without detailed insight and description. Not like “Smith,” I guess. Not all names, it turns out, are terribly patronymic. But names ought to mean something.

Anyway, the tailor did his measuring and marking. I went to the store, where I saw this this scarily detailed poster. Despite it’s insight, it leaves off some important suggestions: after counting money, before and after performing surgery, after high-fiving your mechanic, after pulling a double-shift in the infectious diseases laboratory and so on.

Also, the instructions are missing. That’s a deliberate choice by some germy Batman villain, I’m sure. But we’ve all been to a restroom and where people demonstrate poor hand hygiene. Warm-to-hot water, soap, 20 seconds. Sing Old MacDonald song to yourself if you must.

MacDonald, by the way, is a common Scottish patronymic surname meaning “son of Donald,” meaning “world ruler.” So Old MacDonald was one of the less ambitious members of the clan, one supposes. Anyway, the Internet goes on — oh, how it goes on — to tell us that MacDonald is from the Gaelic Mac Dhamhnuill.

Anyway, I’m sure the merchant has noticed the problem with the poster. It’s not the dirtiest restroom you’ve ever been in. Nothing that a coat of paint and some better lights couldn’t fix. But here’s my worry. If your initial read, as the merchant who placed that poster, is that you should tell people when, you are absolutely right, and you should tell them how.

At home, sanding wood this afternoon. I’ll be sanding wood into my golden years, but it’s going to be a nice project, when I get through with the sanding in 2024. (There are 10 pieces still to go on the sanding. They are substantial pieces. I’ll get three or four done before next week, I hope.) So there I am, sitting in a chair in the garage, in between the cars, taking down some western pine from milled and kiln-dried lumber, into the dimensions required for the project, and then through sandpaper of 100-, 150-, 220- and 400-grit. The end pieces will then get a few passes with 600-grit. Then I have to somehow de-dust 24 large pieces of wood, condition, stain and seal them. And then I can assemble the finished product. It’s going to be awesome.

In 2024.

Oh, also, welcome to Catober. You met Poseidon earlier in the day. You’ll meet his sister, Phoebe, tomorrow.

They’re neat. OK, she’s neat. He’s a complete and total handful. That’s the first picture I took of either of them, and it almost perfectly encapsulates his personality. We got them midway through the summer and they are now getting good and settled in. We’ve more or less learned their styles, they sometimes acknowledge us.

We’ll do the photos throughout the month. I just couldn’t do it in September. Maybe, I hope, it’ll be a bit better here.

Poseidon got his name because his original one was not good, and he also loves water, so now he’s named after the god of the sea. Phoebe, on the other hand, came to be associated with the moon in late Greek mythology, but she was originally a Titan with gifts of prophecy and calmness. Names ought to mean things.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo / running — Comments Off
30
Sep 19

The exercise of the weekend

We did the Outrun Cancer fundraiser Saturday. It was a beautiful, warm, not-a-cloud-in-the-sky, late summer, early autumn day. The sort you can’t take for granted. The kind you do. It’s more apogee than perigee, but definitely neither. It could go on forever, but you know it won’t. You wouldn’t mind if it did, though. You’re not that lucky and so don’t take it for granted, this warm sun, the sting of sunblock in your eyes, the sweat everywhere.

This run on Saturday was the third run on my current rehab tour. I taped up my foot that morning, added another layer and then considered what I’d done previously. On my first run, earlier this week, I did two miles on a 1:1 run-to-walk ratio. On the second run I did three miles, with a bit more running than walking. And easing back into this is important. So naturally I started this 5K with a solid one-mile run. OK, fine, a good jog. After that I walked about a third of the rest. Probably should have had another walk interval, but I was as bored as the rest of this paragraph.

On this particular 5K course around campus you take the last left, go down a little hill and then right back the other side of the next hill. You hang one more left and there’s probably a block or so to the finish line. On that last hill I saw The Yankee working her way up the left side of the road. So I found myself sprinting up the right side of the road and hanging that last, blissful left, to hit the finish line before she did so I could do this:

No matter the distance, finishing with a smile is a big deal in our house.

We walked back to the car in front of this going on in one giant parking lot:

I counted 25 air fans supporting the front of the bounce house, which is billed as the largest in the world. You wonder if there’s serious competition. And if the other guy has surreptitiously come to one of these events and measured the thing, and found it lacking. You wonder if that’s just a trademark, or if there’s something in China or Indiana or Washington state that is just as big or bigger.

You also wonder about why there were security guards in security t-shirts stationed inside the thing. You wonder about how much those people must hate their boss who made them wear the black one today. It was warm.

Now, ordinarily, I’d be especially excited about a bounce house. But the amount of perspiration would only create even more flesh-on-plastic stickiness.

There was a ball pit, and I missed out on it. I had my fill working at Chuck’s in high school, but this ball pit wasn’t like that. The bounce house was so large that for scale the ball pit was filled with beach balls.

They’d be even more demanding to clean after the inevitable accident, I’m sure.

On Sunday we went for a bike ride in the afternoon. It was a nice 20-miler on another Chamber of Commerce day. I got out front early, because I figured if I could hang on through at least two of the pre-planned turnarounds first she’d give me a big smile when we met one another. (She’d do this if she was in front of me, too, but that somehow didn’t occur to me when I was breathing hard.) At one point I probably had about a minute on her and three guys from one of the Little 500 teams picked me up. I stayed on their wheel for a few miles until their route differed from ours, but mostly answered my lingering question: yes, they are faster than me. And younger, too, what’s more.

So through the first turnaround I had the lead, down by the house with the big drive just before the side road rejoined the bigger state road. And then, at the second turnaround, on the quiet little neighborhood road that feels like a private drive, I saw her again. Closer this time. So now I have to pedal harder and faster, because the next section of road favored The Yankee’s strengths, but after that was the one sorta-hill, which favors me a little bit more, somehow. And after that big hill was the third turnaround. And if I got there then that’d mean three smiles!

And that’s how you trick yourself to going a little harder than you think you could. After that it’s hang a left, two rollers, then a right and down to the second of the big hills. Two more quick turns and then you’re back in the neighborhood and through that area I know there’s not going to be an opportunity for her to catch me. Great! I can do the gentlemanly thing and open the door for her.

As I got back to the house I remembered: She had the key.

journalism / photo / television / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
25
Sep 19

Hey! News!

I went for another run this evening, and soon enough, perhaps, it will become something between habit and de rigueur once again.

Today I got in 3.1 miles, a full 5K, if you will. And I didn’t run-walk it 50-50. I’m told that, given my particular foot issue the run-walk interval is the ideal way to ease back into things. Take it easy is the strategy, and I’m fine with that. But I did run more than I walked today. It’s a no particular-goal-progression I’m after here.

While still stretching, taping, doing exercises and icing if necessary. So if you see my feet going weird directions, it is probably deliberate.

Probably.

Here are the shows the news crews produced on Tuesday night. First the newsier news show, now with a new intro:

And then there’s the pop culture news show:

Hopefully that show will get a new intro soon, as well.

But, right now, I need an outro.

…. Bye!