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adventures / London / photo — Comments Off
13
May 15

It was 10 p.m. at home when I woke up here

Where am I? Who am I?

Ahh, the first day on another side of the world. That’s not disorienting at all.

I woke up at about 5 a.m., and then used the eye mask from the plane to try to get a bit more sleep. The morning passed slowly and then finally it was time to get up, groggy, despite a full night of sleep. Yesterday we got in, got a phone setup, had a bite to eat, got settled and went to bed. Today we’re trying to figure out where we are, because most of your perceptions feel out of whack.

I mean I’ve been under-sleeping at home, and now we’ve changed your regular schedule by seven hours.

This is near where we are staying:

Can you guess? The BT Tower is in Fitzrovia, 627 feet tall and was, from 1964 until 1980, the tallest structure in the UK. It is a communications hub, primarily featuring subterranean fibre optic links and microwave transmissions. We can see it from our flat. It just sits there, glowing at us throughout the night. Hence the blindfold.

We had lunch at The Albany and dinner at The Green Man, which was basically next door to The Albany.

Tomorrow we’ll do some sightseeing. If we can figure out who I am.

Monday / photo — Comments Off
11
May 15

And, now, a word from the felis domesticus lobby

Who has it better than the black cat?

Nobody, that’s who.

photo / weekend — Comments Off
10
May 15

Photos on the go

Just a few quick snapshots from a day that started earlier than this guy:

It has been a while since I’ve been up before the sun. I have nights where I finally get to sleep when the sky is starting to lighten up, but this is different. Last year might be the last time I saw the sunrise. I did that for years when I was in the broadcast game. In the office at 4 a.m., on the air before 5 a.m. Outside, during a break, to watch orange light drench the valley. It still impresses me and makes me sleepy, each time I see it.

You sometimes see signs that you know were posted not because someone was proactive, but because some activity needed to be stopped. Usually the sign has to do with something obvious, like this one:

Clanton, Alabama doesn’t have the only peach water tank. And the seam on this one points to the highway, too:

Toll booths, the other thing that makes you notice the poor condition of the road you’re on:

Always makes me wonder where those quarters go. They sure don’t put them in potholes.

Auburn / baseball / errands / friends / photo / weekend — Comments Off
9
May 15

Brown shoes in my size, the second hardest thing to buy

This morning it was laundry. This afternoon it was errands. I had to buy shoes. Buying a specific kind of shoe in my size — and at a price I want to pay — is sometimes very difficult. This is one of those times. But, on the third store, I picked up some nice brown casual shoes that might feel comfortable.

Since we’ve started doing triathlons I’ve come to think of the comfort of my feet as a very important thing.

I also bought some new running shoes this week. I just eclipsed 400 miles in the old shoes and they were letting me know. Three times in a row I went for a jog that turned into an aching-calf shuffle. Well, you don’t have to tell me a fourth time. So that’s two new pairs of shoes in one week.

Didn’t get all of my errands done. The loafers took too long. So we’ll push that on to next week. Today there’s baseball. And then dinner, with friends. And we met our friend Sally Ann and her niece.

We all dined with our friends Jennie and Jeremy, who we bumped into by chance:

Oh yes, I bought a selfie stick today. You’ll soon see why.

Auburn / baseball / Friday / friends / photo / Samford — Comments Off
8
May 15

Last day of class

Last two classes of the term today. I gave a quiz consisting of when their finals were due and so on, the traditional end-of-term easy few points. I gave my not-at-all famous end-of-term speech. The brain is like any other muscle, I say, and you must use it. In our case, write. Write for publication. Write for yourself. Just write. Writers write.

There are a few other points in that speech. Thank you for your patience, I hope you’ve learned as much as I have. (I always learn a lot, even as the person leading the room.) Deadlines matter, I remind them. And I remind them again that it is OK to be passionate about where their interests are taking them, and so on.

In the second class a student pulled up Boys II Men and I tried to hit the back post of the song with the speech.

I forgot about the last chorus and missed the post.

But the speech is good.

Afterward, as I was wrapping up still more grading and various on-campus errands I ran into one of our students who is leaving us at the end of this term. He was there with his father. The student gave me a hug and introduced me to his dad. That’s not a bad way to wrap up classes.

And I got home just in time to shoot this from the car, hustling as I was to the ballgame. There’s nothing quite so nice as a good sunset on the plain. This blurry, out of the car window, cell phone shot isn’t representative of that, but the feeling of being home can’t be described in words or pictures anyway:

At baseball, it was time for rally sunglasses. Almost everyone in our section participated:

Shame the rally sunglasses didn’t work. Ah well. Get ’em tomorrow.