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Monday / photo / running / Samford — Comments Off
7
Dec 15

Adventures in packaging

We raced. This is my bib number from this past weekend.

I’ve built up quite the collection of these recently. Now I have to figure out something to do with them. I’m thinking of framing them and hanging them up. Why not?

Anyway, that was a number from a fundraising run from the nearby elementary school. We run the route from time to time and we were here and so we ran it on Sunday afternoon. The aunt and uncle of a friend of ours are in town and when the uncle found out about the run he decided he’d go to. So The Yankee ran the 5K and the retiree and I ran the 10K. He did it in blue jeans. I finished second in my age group.

It wasn’t a large group.

Anyway, despite the term being over it is back to work. I am making hundreds of phone calls to high school students this week. Do you know when you call high school students? At night, of course. And I am calling them from the office, because that’s what I was told to do. Because you need to be an office to use a phone and make calls you’ve been making for years. Something you volunteered for once that has become a part of your yearly efforts.

More fun than all of that, I went shopping and was picking up Christmas toys. And saw these …

Dad was happy he found something to bond over with Billy. Until the next arrow, when things took a turn for the worse. Arrows don’t turn, Dad knows, but after some doing, he managed to convince the investigators.

“What’s that? My cocktail is ready? Excellent!”

Tomorrow, she’d pour herself a double.

Packaging is a lot of fun this year. I’ll share some more pictures throughout the week.

Friday / photo / Samford — Comments Off
4
Dec 15

Wrapping it up

At 6 p.m. on a Friday, the last day of the term, I finally shut down the office. I finally get to drive home. On long days at the end of long weeks like this you return to the motivational messages of the cough drops:

But the semester is over. Time for a break. I don’t mind at all. I will miss these things. Their builders live just outside my office. And when the weather is right they do put on a fine show.

Come back next week for more pictures of … something. Have a great weekend!

photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
3
Dec 15

Remember, you have to remind yourself

Just wrapped the last Crimson critique of the term. For me, it was a 10-hour day after wrapping up last night at 2:30 this morning. For some of the students, it was even longer. Think of that.

I’m never sure how the students stay energetic, but I’m glad they do.

Tomorrow I start the process of nominating them them a few awards. They deserve the recognition if, for no other reason, than how they prove that journalism never sleeps.

Anyway, look! The sun is setting on the campus!

Always a pretty nice sight. You have to remind yourself to go look at such things. You have to remind yourself.

photo / Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off
2
Dec 15

Late nights, long follow-up days

There may be others, I don’t know. I can’t, however, think of any other group that would still be working on their extracurricular projects until 2:30 in the morning. That’s motivation and passion — and clattering keys and tired eyes.

Student media is cool.

And since they were there until 2:30 a.m. I was with them until 2:30 a.m., too. Someone should recognize them. Unfortunately, I am not as cool as they are.

So my cousin and his friend went home on Sunday, and later that night we noticed that he left his work boots at our place. I’ll see him again at Christmas, but I figured I would send him pictures of all of the places his shoes have been since he lost them. Last night they went shopping.

If I’d thought to stop by a shoe store I could have said they were looking for a sole mate. But there was the newsroom to get back to …

Anyway, I thought it would be something I could torture him about. I think I’m mostly amusing myself, however.

adventures / movies / photo / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
1
Dec 15

“You ever fought a dinosaur, kid?”

So we’re back at it again. Another late, late night in the newsroom. This was the view when it was still daylight outside. I did make it outside at some point. Some days it is difficult to know for sure, but here is documented evidence:

Sometime I think I should walk around to trees and just start yelling “Quitter!” at them. That wouldn’t be strange. Would that’d be strange? That’d be strange. Right?

A few more photos from the weekend. We ride bikes through here. It looks different at dusk and at different speeds. And it is dark enough and we’re fast enough here and I was maybe just hasty enough that it makes everything look soft and blurry and distant. But look at those colors:

We went to the movies this weekend. We saw Creed, which was emotionally impactful in ways that I wasn’t expecting. And no one saw that happen, either, since The Yankee didn’t glance over at entirely the wrong time or anything. It had nothing to do with an aging Rocky or mortality, but probably had something to do with thinking of Mickey Goldmill. (Did you know there’s a story about Mickey being written? You want this one to make it.)

Walking out of the theater this little girl saw this poster and walked up to it.

“What’s this movie about, Mommy?”

Mom walks over, reaches down for her hand and says “You wouldn’t like it.”

Don’t worry, kid, no one is going to like this one.

This weekend we also learned that Allie likes cupcakes, or at least the paper.