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adventures / food / friends / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
9
Apr 15

Conferencing

Having registered for the conference yesterday — name tags, programs and no swag, which has disappeared entirely from this conference — we started off this year’s edition of the Southern States Communication Association in the old-fashioned way, attending panels.

My favorite of the day was one titled “From Teddy to FDR: Rhetoric and he Presidential Roosevelts.” There were papers there from Teddy’s classic 1883 Duties speech to women’s suffrage and FDR’s Lend-Lease debates. I liked it because the papers had such an impact and a chronological bent that you can trace so much of the 20th century weaved right through the words and the circumstance of the time.

There were other panels. There was also this guy:

That’s one surprised conquistador. And so there I am, in the cafe at lunch, a ridiculous imitation of a CSI drama, trying to figure out what in his line of sight has him so startled.It made no sense. Whatever goosed him had moved on and he wasn’t talking about it:

But the food was good at Colombia Cafe. And while I don’t normally take pictures of food, this is the sort of enthusiasm that can occur when you have a sandwich for dinner, skip breakfast and have a late lunch.

It didn’t hurt that one of our friends had already been there for lunch, said it was good, recommended that dish in particular and then decided, “I’ll go back with you.”

Conferences are special like that.

Just across the street from the hotel is the Amalie Center, home of the Tampa Bay Lightning. They were hosting the Devils tonight. We got tickets, got inside just in time for the national anthem and see the Tesla generator hanging from the ceiling spark up the dark room.

They just wrapped up the women’s NCAA finals earlier in the week. Hockey tonight, indoor football tomorrow and hockey the next day. The Amalie Center is a busy place. And so is our conference. Tomorrow we have a cool futurist panel, should be fun, if you’re in the area. Teleport your way on in.

photo / weekend — Comments Off
5
Apr 15

Catching up

The 169th edition of ‘Catching Up,’ the weekly post of extra photos that haven’t already landed here.

Rain and sun in Birmingham last week:

And a few more sky shots:

This is sunset over Samford. It was a good show:

Allie takes over the biggest bookshelf in the house. She’s casual about it, so you know she’s up there all the time:

There was a time when two ladders left unattended on a college campus was a recipe for hijinks:

I love it when media members park their trucks just wherever they want:

I got a great shot of this guy, and he got a miserable shot of me holding my phone in front of my face. Fair trade:

Auburn / baseball / Friday / iPhone / photo / Samford — Comments Off
3
Apr 15

I re-define spring

Happy Good Friday.

Productive morning. Reasonable lunch. Nice chat with the dean. Two classes this afternoon, talking feature story generation in one class and profile stories in the other.

And, then, this:

So this is my current definition of spring: I am jealous of people noodling around on cruiser bikes in a cul-de-sac.

Sat with friends and had a grand time watching a baseball game this evening. Then The Yankee and I went to Mellow Mushroom for pizza and pretzels. They’ve been renovating and they moved the wacky, grinning, blinking, glowing cat:

And that’s about enough. I feel like a nice long springtime nap. Probably I’ll dream about riding my bike.

I do not know what is happening. / photo / running / Samford / swimming / Tuesday / Twitter — Comments Off
31
Mar 15

All of these things are worth remembering

I follow exactly one comedy writer on Twitter. And tonight he linked to this essay written, he said, by a friend of his. That guy worked on the Letterman show, and he’s dishing the anecdotes. There’s a lot of fun in these stories:

Bill Clinton was hanging out near my wife, which is something no husband wants. My wife also worked at the show, and the former president was backstage watching the Top 10 List while awaiting his guest segment. I had a joke in the Top 10 that mentioned Chewbacca. The joke got a pretty big laugh backstage, but Clinton seemed confused. He turned and with a quizzical look asked, “Who’s Chewbacca?”

First off, I have to admit that having written something that prompted Bill Clinton to say the word Chewbacca stands as the proudest achievement of my life. (I’m the father of two.) My next goal is getting Pope Francis to say “Wu-Tang Clan.” But the more I thought about it, the madder I got. Yes, Bill Clinton’s a world leader with lots of important things on his mind. We get it. But when Star Wars came out in 1977, Clinton wasn’t the president. He was a regular guy. Heck, his nickname was “Bubba.” A guy named “Bubba” can’t pretend he’s too important to know who Chewbacca is. And also, isn’t Clinton always claiming to be a New York Times crossword-puzzle expert? Chewbacca is exactly the kind of random reference any decent crossword-puzzler would be aware of.

I really hoped there would be a YouTube video of Clinton and Chewie together. Get on that, Internet.

Here at home, Tom Cosby is busy finding a silver lining in the things that are going on at UAB with the athletic department. I haven’t said a whole lot about the UAB story, but I like Cosby’s point of view:

But despite these disappointing aspects, here’s the good thing, no the GREAT thing, that’s come out of all this. This brouhaha has accelerated a rekindling of Birmingham’s civic pride along with a fierce embrace of UAB. Our civic pride was already surging before this debacle but its now quadrupled since December 2 and you see it growing every day.

When has this city ever united like this behind UAB? For that matter, when have you ever seen this level of civic passion in anything? And unlike earlier generations of Birminghamians who years ago let out of state corporations call the shots here, these citizens are letting the UA Trustees know their outrage. And they are making it clear that they believe killing football has the real potential to damage both UAB and our city’s future.

Take all the victories you can.

Time for the weekly update of the work in the cafeteria. They are expanding the center of the space, which has clogged the flow around the main food-substitute procurement area and jammed up the dining area. They say they have the same amount of tables, but they are all in less space because this first phase of the renovation required the building of a dust wall. One must keep the dust out of the food.

They’ve put fiberglass windows in the dust walls, so you can check out the work. This is what I saw at lunch today:

The larger portion of the work has been up in the ceiling and, thus, out of view from this position. I look in every day and the equipment is moving around. The guys working there seem to spend more time doing stuff than standing around watching one guy do stuff. They say they’ll be done with their work by the first part of the summer. I suppose it all depends what they find as they poke around in the ceiling.

Ancient chicken wings from lunches gone by, no doubt.

I had contemporary chicken for dinner tonight, visiting the Chick-fil-A that I visit too much. Even the guys in the back know my name now.

Also swam and ran today. Got in about 2,200 yards in the pool and then two miles of running. It always feels weird to say after the fact, but I got to the end of that second mile and my body and my energy levels agreed: we’ve done enough.

It was that feeling you can’t really describe, or maybe even remember clearly later. The one beyond rubbery fatigue, but down around emptiness. The one where another step was foolish because you were no longer running along on the ground, but rather about 18 inches below it.

Now, having had dinner and sitting in a chair, the inability to run another mile or so doesn’t seem so bad. It is a kindness that the mind sometimes gives us, being able to forget about some of the painful things.

I wonder, if they find something curious in the ceiling, if it is remembered by whoever put it there years ago.

adventures / photo / triathlon / weekend — Comments Off
29
Mar 15

Super-sprint triathlon

The local bike shop — and a host of others, but let’s just say the bike shop guys because they made it go and that’s how we got involved — held a weekend of triathlons. Yesterday was a kid’s triathlon of varying distances based on age.

Today was a super sprint triathlon, a short distance race. The idea was that it would be a good race for people interested in trying a triathlon for the first time or for people getting a start on their tri season.

The distances were a 400-meter swim, an 11-mile ride and a two-mile run. Since I don’t sprint, and since I’m not super, I did not race. We did, however volunteer. It was cold and it is March, but the swim was indoors:

Not a bad day when you get to swim beneath all of those banners in the same pool where champions and All-Americans and Olympians have kicked and stroked.

I’ve never volunteered at a triathlon. I got four jobs. I made a few announcements over a PA system. I collected towels, because the race organizers offered them for the cool temperatures. I had pointed runners to the proper exit out of the transition area after their bike ride and I watched for cars near the end of the race.

Also, I got to watch a lot of great athletes, including our friend Victoria, who was one of those first time triathletes. It was a lot of great fun. We got to be outside for the nicer part of the day and I didn’t have to do anything more than stand and talk in a loud voice.

So, naturally, I took a nap.