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This was a window from the flight back home from the holidays.
If you’ll allow me the indulgence of creating a silly metaphor on a poor cell phone photo, this is the way the day has felt: a bit dreary and streaky and indistinct.
But I got some things done. And shivered a lot. The high was 37. The low is 18. Think I stayed inside all day. I’m fine with that.
Went to give blood today. Ran up three flights of stairs, read the required blood literature and so on. Answered all of the donation questions. Some are now done orally, some were done on a computer.
The woman who walked me through the process and drew my blood was thoroughly disinterested at the end of her day. The organizer said they had a slow morning, but things had really picked up later in the day.
I learned that, among the things they are doing when you give blood is to time the donation. I was told this is for health reasons. If it takes you more than 20 minutes, that is problematic. If you are done in under four minutes, that is a different kind of problem. I was finished in four minutes and 17 seconds.
The problem being they give you that little sponge ball and tell you to squeeze often. So I just absentmindedly squeezed constantly.
Accepted the juice and cookies. Decline the t-shirt, though it was a pretty good one.
I did get some stickers:
The young lady that signed us in said they were old. They look it. A lot of people are jealous of them, but all they have to do is go give a bit of blood. It only takes 4:17.
Took this shot while out riding yesterday.
It was my first ride of the new year. There’s been cold and things to do and waiting until we had everything just right and so on.
So we found the flattest 20 mile route we could think of nearby and then added an extra leg on that plan, all of which seemed uphill, which was brilliant in retrospect. We ended up doing just under 23 miles, which was great fun. Then The Yankee got a flat just before we were done. I was behind her, watching it go down before she noticed it, so when she stopped I was already throwing a leg over the top tube and reaching for my pump.
The crisis was no crisis. In a moment we were going over the last hill before home, where I took that picture, the scenery marked the end of a nice ride.
Today was meant to be a rest day. So late in the evening I was feeling antsy and went for a three-mile jog. I’m turning into one of those people, apparently.
The weekly post that allows for older photographs that haven’t landed anywhere yet. Easy Sunday? You bet.
This is my grandmother. She was pretending to fuss at her granddaughter, so I could send her this picture. She doesn’t know how it all works, but she thought it was neat that I could show her pictures of her granddaughter’s children on my phone. She’s a sweetheart:
My grandmother has always been a big advocate of salve. Got a cut? Let’s put some salve on it. Burn your hand on the stove? Here, let me get the salve. Have a splinter? I have a salve for that. Concussion from a high impact fall? Don’t you want me to get the salve? Got a blister? Salve. Traumatic amputation? Here’s the salve.
So when I saw this at a store over Christmas, and it had her name on it and everything …
I also saw this around Christmastime, I think. Next year I’m picking some up for gifts:
Next week may be a bit slow around here, but there will be something every day. So thanks for coming, thanks in advance for even more patience with what you find here. But please do stop by when you can.
Swimming again this morning. I got in 1650 yards, which apparently used to be measured as a mile in the pool. That’s weird because, when you swim as slowly as I do, you have plenty of time to do multiplication and division in your head — several times — and realize, Hey, that math isn’t right.
Don’t do math in the pool. Because the sequence of events that follows is not unlike those Directv ads. And the inevitable “What lap am I on?” is only the beginning.
Don’t do math in the pool.
This evening I went for a run. It seems that if I get a route in my head some part of me feels obligated to do the entire thing, if possible. And there I was, wondering how this felt and why that ached, and enjoying that it was cold, but I was sweating. Wondering how my hair could be wet, the temperature could be 46 and I find that I’m enjoying myself. So I ran and walked eight miles. OK, really it was 7.94 miles, but my first rule of running is to round up. I walked the hills, because of whatever is going on with my legs. The entire route was on sidewalks or bike paths, except for one little bridge. I fairly well sprinted over that.
I don’t sprint.
I do not know what is happening.
Now, as I sit resting quietly, Allie has come for a visit. I moved to take a picture of her cuddliness and my poor posture, and she does this:
I can take photos of her with my camera all day long. She’ll tolerate an iPad being shoved in her face. You pull out your phone, and that is just going to ruin her night, you filthy paparazzo.
Things to read … because reading is fundamental.
A conversation on Mobile Content Strategy with Mark Coatney, Al Jazeera America:
Mark reads books on his commute so he believes that long form is absolutely possible on mobile. In his eyes a 5-minute video is long form. Short form means anything that is a steady stream of consumption: ‘stock and flow’. When asked if he was encompassing that theory by combining into one or splitting into two apps he replied “Two, but I hadn’t really thought of it like that”. One will give the steady stream of information and be more social. The other is a second screen, a companion that will give you more information, go deeper whenever a consumer wants to.
There is a ton of stuff, in that one simple paragraph.
Enhanced fan experiences: The sportd strategy of the second screen:
Consider this: 83% of fans say they use social media during games. Sixty-nine percent prefer phones as second-screen alternatives; 48 percent check scores and 20 percent watch highlights via mobile, according to data from March 2013.
[…]
Not enough is said or written about the engagement teams are having with fans in social. I feel conversations are not genuine enough and too many teams and leagues have built a barrier, not engaging fully with those who appreciate them most.
That is because most teams are terrible at the practice. The exemplar Tom Buchheim uses are the Boston Bruins. “The team uses replies to many fan tweets, even personalizing each response with the initials of those behind the scenes.”
So someone there understands Twitter is a conversation. Good for the Bruins. Why are most professional and big-time college franchises have difficulty grasping the attendant concepts? Buchheim continues:
Game time is go time in social media, and it can be chaotic. But teams should dedicate resources to connect one-to-one with fans more. Share their content. Have conversations. Build stronger bonds. This will only drive further engagement during the off-season and help fulfill social media’s true value — breaking down barriers and connecting people in authentic ways.
[…]
A sports fan’s second-screen options are endless. So are the ways teams and leagues can reach them during live events. It’s imperative fans find value in these experiences, whether they’re watching online, on their couches or in the bleachers. As it becomes ingrained into the sports experience, the second screen must be about the fan, providing deeper engagement, better access and increasing value.
The standard if/then/so structure there is heartening. These programs will figure it out, though I’m not sure why it will take them that long.
Who’s poor in America? 50 years into the ‘War on Poverty,’ a data portrait:
Today, most poor Americans are in their prime working years: In 2012, 57% of poor Americans were ages 18 to 64, versus 41.7% in 1959.
[…]
Today’s poor families are structured differently: In 1973, the first year for which data are available, more than half (51.4%) of poor families were headed by a married couple; 45.4% were headed by women. In 2012, just over half (50.3%) of poor families were female-headed, while 38.9% were headed by married couples.
Poverty is more evenly distributed, though still heaviest in the South: In 1969, 45.9% of poor Americans lived in the South, a region that accounted for 31% of the U.S. population at the time. At 17.9%, the South’s poverty rate was far above other regions. In 2012, the South was home to 37.3% of all Americans and 41.1% of the nation’s poor people; though the South’s poverty rate, 16.5%, was the highest among the four Census-designated regions, it was only 3.2 percentage points above the lowest (the Midwest).
Pew has a chart and a map on that page which say a lot, quickly.
And a more localized view, from Kaiser Family Foundation researchers:
All 10 southeastern states have poverty rates above the national figure. Mississippi (27 percent, second-highest) and Louisiana (26 percent, third-highest) are near the top of the rankings, while North Carolina and Florida, each at 21 percent, are just slightly above the U.S. rate.
Alabama, meanwhile, sits at 22 percent, ranked 15th overall.
