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Thursday

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3
Mar 11

A silver lining in home repair

Anyone know what this is?

After my class today, we had a nice presentation by a small group of students on advertising, one stood stuck around a little longer than usual. We talked about interviewing and resumes for two hours.

I’ve come to conclusion that the most rewarding moments of teaching aren’t in the traditional classroom environment.

So I’m packing up my things for the night and find I have a voicemail. A friend’s in-laws are in need. It seems they’ve had a catastrophic pipe failure that will require re-doing a room. And they’ll need tile. Lot’s of it. The local Lowe’s only has so much, but others near me had more, so I was sent on a mission to buy them all out.

I could sympathize in emergency repair, so I found myself visiting three Lowe’s tonight — I had to pick up a new garage door opener for our house anyway, so really only two of the store visits were for someone else. The very patient people working at the front of each store called their tile-needing customer and let her pay over the phone. I must have $600 worth filling up my entire back seat.

Got home to a delicious turkey wrap from Amsterdam, and then loosened the two screws from the old garage door opener. Opened the new one, wrapped the wires around the contacts, tested my installation (A success!) and mounted it to the wall.

This home repair only cost me $8.

Now let’s review:

When we first moved in we broke the thermostat. That cost $50.

Then I broke the shower head trying to fix a drip. That led to a larger problem which required plumbers, a drywall saw and an acetylene torch. It should have cost us about $1400, the plumber said, since it was a weekend. Fortunately the house warrant and the new shower head stuff cost us around $100.

And then we woke up one weekend to find the frozen contents of our refrigerator hanging out in liquid form on the floor. That cost us $50 (thanks home warranty) plus whatever we paid for ice and dry ice to preserve our perishables.

(We’d been in the house for two months by then.)

Then, in October, the dishwasher broke. Fifty more bucks. (And our second in-house electrocution.)

Then it broke again in December. We had it repaired during the holidays. Yep, $50 more.

This list does not include the bird feeder or the cable/Internet problems.

January we had a month off from from fixing anything, but lately the garage door opener died. For a few days we’ve opened it the old fashioned way, with the remotes in the cars, but now we’re boldly living in the 21st century again.

On the other hand, we haven’t had to re-do a room because roots destroyed pipes and brought a sewer into our home. So there’s that.

Alabama / photo / Thursday — 1 Comment
24
Feb 11

The comps are finished

It isn’t the quantity, of course — few people write more, a few people have written less — but I hope my professors find enough quality in all of those words and pages.

The Yankee, when she took her comps, said that she enjoyed them. I know two people have said that. I enjoyed the readings. I’ll enjoy being finished. One of the questions did appeal to me as a thought exercise. But I can’t say I enjoyed the comps as a whole. But that’s OK. Comes with the territory and it is an important step.

Now I’ll just go back in two weeks, defend my answers and find out how I did.

So thanks, again, for cheering me on and most especially for your patience.

journalism / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
17
Feb 11

On the road

Which means on-the-road differences, discoveries and frustrations.

Like this:

Meet the only iron in the free world that refuses to heat up. I’ll be a little more wrinkled tomorrow for it.

Anyway, we’re in Troy at the Southeastern Journalism Conference. This is the 25th meeting of that august group, an annual gathering meant to promote journalism among aspiring students.

Samford has five nice, excited and thoughtful students on this trip. They’ll pick up awards the school has earned over the last year and compete for more honors in various on-site competitions.

Today the contest was in just getting down here. This trip is supposed to take two-and-a-half hours. We drove through an accident. We drove through one of those improbably slowdowns where nothing was going on at the front of the thing — it was mystifying, no merging, no stalls, cops or wrecks, everything just ground down to nothing for a while. I hate those things, even though I’ve read somewhere that it comes down to inattention. Someone jams on the brakes unexpectedly in a high volume situation and it can impact the road’s behavior for miles.

Anyway, then there was stopping to get gas because the rental car people didn’t give me enough. Then there was dinner – Chick-fil-A, my third visit there in as many days. Then we got turned around, but only for about two minutes.

Finally we made it to the conference hotel. We registered and then moved down the road to our hotel. When I got in my room it was 10 p.m., even. We left at 5 p.m.

Which is when the fun began. No Internet connection. My computer could see the local router, but could not get on. Observation: do not go ask the people at the front desk about this. That young lady wanted it to work really badly, but she had no idea.

Finally I found a phone number of the third-party contractor that provides the Internet service. We changed a few settings and she had me surfing in a few minutes.

Which is when I discovered the iron doesn’t heat up. And, yes, I surf while I iron. You don’t?

So tomorrow I’ll get that replaced.

Also, I’m not sure how the shower controls work. I think someone put that cover plate with the temperature guide onto the wall backwards.

But the soaps smell lovely. I have a huge television and a clean bed. And, despite this place being packed with college students in Troy for the conference, it seems quiet enough.

Tomorrow there will be workshop sessions, the on-site competitions, picking up a few awards, meeting nice people and more.

iPhone / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
10
Feb 11

Snowy Samford

Started snowing in Birmingham around 6 p.m. and didn’t let up, they say, until around midnight. It didn’t snow enough to cancel classes, but there had been a great deal of sledding in the wet stuff and the roads seemed to stay in good shape.

Not sure if it ever really got above freezing today. Everything seemed to stay in place, and the imagined stillness that comes with snow was a nice sight … to see from indoors.

Here are a few pictures from campus this afternoon.

Is it spring yet?

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3
Feb 11

Ice? Ice.

That was after lunch. There was a little bit of falling ice before barbecue with Brian. And it really picked up on my way back to campus. By the time I’d parked I was faced with having to walk through that.

Two hours later, the ground looked like this:

That’s just ice. The sidewalks were slippery and the roads were getting worse. The university canceled classes, including mine, to close early. That decision was just in time. After putting a note on the door, gathering up all of my things and stopping by the boss’ office I made it off campus with pretty much everybody else. It took me half an hour to go the 1.8 miles from the campus to the interstate. The roads got a little slippery and everyone in the city left work at precisely the same time.

After that, apparently, everything got worse. There were plenty of reports of bad roads, fender-benders, an accident with a fatality up north and lots of stories of no progress on the roads.

I found one slippery spot, on an overpass, and soon after outran the traffic and then the freezing rain.

So I spent the evening making recruiting phone calls for our department. One very nice lady asked how the weather was.

“Well, today isn’t the right day to ask that question … ”

She laughed. They were getting ready for it to land on them, she said.

So I worked through the evening on phone calls until it got to late to do that. We had dinner with our friends Shane and Brian. Shane’s father is in town, and he walked in with his Airborne veterans hat on. He cuts an imposing figure, but is a nice guy. Turns out his grandfather was close friends with a former president of Samford. Small world.