It wasn’t a big freeze, so the thaw couldn’t be that big either. You don’t need a big freeze to cause big problems, though. So, as I assured my grandmother, I was staying put. I had no need to be anywhere until things got warm and dry. Everything dried up yesterday. We crossed back over above freezing today.
At lunch, the outside world was starting to look like this again:
There were four squirrels wrestling and playing and fighting in that tree. You can see a few of them in that shot if you look long enough.
I stuck around the office until just after 4 p.m. The roads were dry. The first intersection on my way to the interstate, a crossing of two four lane roads that had apparently looked like a war zone, was fine.
When I got to the interstate I found all of the local media setting up on the overpass. Tonight’s story: traffic.
From the entrance of the interstate, to the next interchange, which is about seven miles, I counted 43 abandoned cars.
The thing of that is that most of that seven mile stretch includes a high wall at the median. You have no way of knowing how many cars are sitting over there, waiting for their owners, people desperate enough to walk in snow and ice two days earlier.
So maybe you saw the Kick Bama Kick video. Perhaps you saw the one that emerged last week, of the Auburn University Marching Band. That floated back to the surface of the social media streams today and so I watched it again. Love that video. It is great fun watching some of those people lose their minds, but then watching them recover and do their job. (Not that you could hear the band in the stadium just then. We didn’t.)
I decided to synch the videos. Watch the drum major in the center. She was great, calling for the fight song just before Chris Davis scored. That’s attention to her craft.
Happy accident, they’re all looking at the giant HD screen in the end zone, but it looks like they are watching the insert box I’ve dropped in the shot. But watch how they all wig out and then get their job down. Just awesome. As is Rod Bramblett, my friend and former boss, who has the immortal radio call.
We bought our first Girl Scout cookies of the year. Our friend Jeremy’s daughter is a Girl Scout. This is her first year. So he called and asked if they could drive over. This is good timing because we are usually visited by the most entrepreneurial young lady in the troop. She goes around selling to restaurants and dessert places.
Sadie, Jeremy’s daughter, beat her to us. We’d also promised to buy from another girl. So we’re buying a lot of cookies, but this is a good experience for the kids. Plus, cookies.
I turned on the exterior lights. A bit later Sadie rang the doorbell. Jeremy has stayed in his car. We discuss the cookies. It was in the 30s, so I invited her in, because we are friends. Sadie, who has the most ironic sense of humor you’ve ever seen on a child her age, says “Let me go ask my dad. For ‘safety.'”
She made the air quotes, which made my day.
So I filled out the forms. We had a good chat about why I invited her inside, why people shouldn’t invite her in, why she should stay at the door and why asking her dad was a very good thing. I’m sure they discuss that when they hand out the Girl Scout sashes, but you can never hear the safety lectures from too many different people.
We sent her across the way to sell cookies. Since they had cookies in the back of their car we collected ours and then removed the rest. They almost drove off without their supplies, until mock guilt at our pretend theft got the better of us.
But we were thiiiis close to establishing a black market for cookies.
Tonight we watchedan episode of the seventh season of the Cosby Show. It guest starred Red Buttons, a comedian and composer. Buttons played the local hardware store owner. He was all worked up about a traffic accident that happened a decade prior. Turns out Buttons’ daughter wanted to marry the son of the other guy in that old car wreck, whom Buttons’ character is still mad at. That role was played by the great E.G. Marshall. If you let that scene play out, below, it is rather touching, with Cosby just sitting back watching two old masters work.
Buttons first movie was in 1944. He was still on TV in 2005, before dying in 2009. Marshall got his start in 1945 and worked until his death in 1998.
They first worked on the same project in 1947. This episode of the Cosby Show was shot in 1991. Fifty-four years in between. Of course, almost 23 years have passed since this episode aired …
The fate of the animated, neon placekicker who welcomed generations of Anniston residents to Goal Post Bar-B-Q had been uncertain since the place closed in September. But this week the Calhoun County icon found a new home — just 2 miles down Quintard Avenue — with the family that established the famed restaurant in the 1960s.
If you like iconic neon, this story is great news. It is quite a shame that the old barbecue joint shut down, but at least the sign will live on.
Tornadoes in 2013 had a minimal impact in north Alabama and for the second straight year, there were no deaths attributed to tornadoes, according to the National Weather Service office in Huntsville.
The weather service today released its 2013 statistical review of tornadoes, which reflected that north Alabama saw its second-fewest number of twisters since 2007.
It was, the story notes, the second year in a row that the area had only two of what are considered “strong” tornadoes.
The program code named “Dishfire” collects data, including communications from people not suspected of illegal activity, and conducts an automated analysis. Among the data collected: Missed call alerts, details of border crossings derived from network roaming alerts, names and images from electronic business cards, financial transactions and travel details.
And, finally, something more amusing than all of that from across the Atlantic, bad British football commentary:
No doubt this will be a hit at Alabama, where they think their team might probably should be in the Super Bowl.
It made it up to 48 degrees today, so spring is on the way! It was overcast, so spring will never show up! It rained, so spring is on the way! It was only mist and drizzle, and who knows what that means?
I ran in that today. Got in just under six miles. I have developed this pain on the outside of each of my calves. It wraps over the shins and then goes just into the instep of my foot. No obvious stretch fixes it. The pain in my left leg is aggravated when I go downhill. The pain in my right leg says you aren’t running up a hill no way, no how.
So I’m devastating on the flats, at least.
Weirdly, at about mile four or so the things stretched themselves out, or the nerves gave up or something. You know that brief moment when the absence of pain is a pleasurable feeling? I was flying at that moment.
I also went to the grocery store today, because I decided to make extra lean turkey spaghetti. Lean turkey is about two bucks cheaper, but this extra lean stuff, when surrounded by pasta and drowned in basil sauce, tastes exactly the same! What a world.
I did not go to the store while running, because I didn’t want the meat to go bad. Sure, we live a half mile from the store, but I run slow. Also, I didn’t want to cause a sweaty scene on aisle four.
Things to read … because there are things, and some of them are worth reading.
Watched this video today. Mike Ditka was slated to speak to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, but he had to cancel. So the group invited Texas state representative Scott Turner, a former NFL player, who gives a pretty good speech:
If someone gave me Google Glass and asked me to tell my own story I’d borrow a shopping cart from the grocery story, sit inside, have someone push and take long tracking shots of everything.
It would keep my calves from hurting.
Thursday — Comments Off on The resolutions 2 Jan 14
We’re never inherently too happy with the year that has gone by. Everyone cheers for the new year, a new slate and all that. This is the time to better somewhere that, in our self-estimation, we came up short in the year previous.
We always seem to ring in each new year the same way, for whatever that is worth. Maybe the end of December doesn’t figure into the calculus the same way. The next day, though, we’ll have taken a full measure of ourselves, found some things wanting and decided to change them. We do this every year, with varying degrees of success.
We do this every year. That says something about us.
So, I suppose, an individual’s resolutions says a lot about them. Here are mine.
Work harder.
Sleep more.
Judge less.
Create more laughter.
Spend less.
Ride more.
Run faster.
Perfect a flipturn.
Eat better.
Learn more.
Listen better.
Be kind.
