Thursday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Thursday

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7
Mar 24

This gray, grey week …

It is going to be sunny tomorrow, I know this because I looked ahead at the forecast. And also because I saw some color to the sunset.

After four days in a row, now, of rain and/or gray skies, I’ll be pleased to see some blue in the air and shadows on the ground.

This is just four days in a row, mind you. But it makes me wonder, how ever did we live entire winters like this?

I did go outside a few times today. I am conducting a towel experiment. The experiment is trying to get the smell of ethanol out of towels. I put the smell of ethanol in towels after Poseidon broke something with ethanol in it. (It was one of those cute little floating thermometer doodads. We got it for Christmas one year, one of those $10 and under parties, so the broken gauge is, itself, not a great loss. The almost two hours I spent cleaning up the mess is a different story. As is the three times I’ve washed these towels, and, perhaps, my sense of smell. That I continually have to hide more and more and more things from that cat is the biggest loss. We’ll be living in the basement, and he’ll still be finding ways to destroy things upstairs, I’m sure of it.)

I have five big bath towels blowing in the breeze, and also six kitchen towels. And my fear of having them around an open flame has diminished somewhat. But they still stink.

So, anyway, I was outside, and I noticed this. I believe it is a camellia.

I don’t think I even saw this last summer or fall, until we had cut away a few years of overgrowth. It sits along one of the back corners of the house and it’s a bit out of the way.

The blooms might have already had their show and come and gone by the time we arrived last summer, too. (I confess to not knowing the calendar of every plant ~~under the sun~~ under the dim gray clouds.) But! It’s going to be beautiful in just a few more weeks, you can tell already.

I wonder what color it will be. I wonder what else we’ll discover when the flowerbeds start their show.

This is what it looks like outside. Also, this bird was circling me, until I pointed at him. He moved down the street on the next gust of air. All casual like.

“What? Me? It’s just the thermals, baby …”

Anyway, grading stuff. I hope to wrap up this round of grading by tomorrow, after which we’ll be precisely halfway through the term.

[…]

I just tallied, and removed, the total number of things that leaves to assign and grade over the course of the semester, and then deleted those two sentences and the final number. It’s not a small number.

You know what is a small number? I’ve been challenging myself on Zwift to ride with a robo-pacer that’s faster than me. Previously I held on to the better bot for 17.3 miles. Today, when I joined his already-in-progress ride, he dropped me after just 2.3 miles.

Still set two Strava PRs, though. One on a slow and steady climb, and another on a sprint that Strava tells me I’ve done 123 times before.

Strava said I hit 30 miles per hour on that sprint. That’s not a small number. Even in the moment it didn’t feel hard. I think the fastest sprint I’ve ever produced was about 36 miles per hour on a false flat and probably a tailwind, so that’s why I kept waiting for the other people’s avatars to keep trying to come around me, but no one could, which is nice. I won a 500-meter sprint that means absolutely nothing!

Thursdays are all downhill after that.

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29
Feb 24

Just some more miles

Grading. Forever grading. What I’m poring over is a basic hard news story assignment. There’s only about 40 of these, and most of them from various school board and town council meetings. There are a few people who went to the same meetings, and that’s fine. The students found different angles to report on. But what’s most interesting, to me anyway, is the news they found.

Sadly, a lot of these meetings aren’t getting covered in the small towns because of the spiral the news industry is presently in. Some of the stories my students are writing about are absolutely worth the reporting. Some of the stories are quite good. I know I’ve learned a lot about some of the regional goings on from these stories. I hope my students are getting something out of the feedback. It’s a treat to write all of that feedback, but it can be time intensive — sometimes, I think they, are longer than the stories —

Me? Write long? Never.

Today’s bike ride was interesting. Let’s set the stage. A week ago, this month became my most productive bike riding month, in terms of miles. I’d put in more miles in 22 days than I have in any single month in the last 15 years. (This probably helps explain some aches and pains.)

Somewhere in this area on today’s ride, I eclipsed my first thousand miles of the year.

Definitely helps explain some of the aches and pains. And also the parts that feel pretty good. That’s probably not a lot, 1,000 miles in two months, but I’ve never even had one month with 500 miles or more, until this month.

Which is where this gets silly. I have a spreadsheet with all of these little cycling tidbits on it, you see. Because of that, I knew I could get over 1,000 miles today. And that seemed a great winter goal. Soon I’ll be riding outside again, but to have 1,000 miles as a base, in the basement? It was appealing.

So, when I opened the spreadsheet to add today’s totals to the ride, I looked at the page where I keep the month numbers and realized, if I did just 1.5 more miles, I would have a 600 mile February. Again, not that much, but it’s a lot to me.

So there I was, after dinner, getting back on the bike, just to get that extra 1.5 miles. I did this in jeans, and slowly, because this is silly. But it’s a goal to hit, even if I only just became aware of it.

So I did three miles.

February 2024 is a month that’ll be hard to top. And, since we’re at the end of the month, here’s the big chart.

The green line is a simple projection of where I’d be riding 10 miles per day. The red line reflects my 2023 mileage. The blue line is what I’ve done so far this year.

It’s been a big offseason. And, sometime soon, I’ll be back to riding outside once again.

There are a lot of roads to explore!

OK, I’m out of photographs. I’m going to share one more photograph next week, because it comes with one of my favorite stories of our New Year’s trip. I still have a lot of video to share, but I’m running low on the still images.

Here’s one of me with some grunts and other reef fish in the background. I can minimize my bubbles too!

And this is the saddest site in diving, when you’re back to being just below the surface, and the dive is over.

So, Monday, one fun story, and then a lot more videos in the days to follow.

I suppose I should get back to the Re-Listening project. This is the one where I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. I’ve been (intermittently) writing about them here to pad things out. These aren’t reviews, because who cares, but usually just memories and excuses to post some music. The problem is, where I am in my collection right now, there aren’t a lot of big, prominent memories attached to any of these.

I was in a burning discs phase, you see. A lot of fairly interesting things were getting slipped into my CD books, but none stayed in the stereo so long that I could tie a lot of experiences to them. This installment sees us in November of 2004. A colleague — who also left the newsroom and returned to a university campus, as a social media manager, where he seems to be doing well for himself — made a copy of U2’s “How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb” for me. I can’t recall what I made for him in return. Hopefully it was decent. This is decent.

And so there’s the whole album, if you want to hear it. Nothing quite as iconic, perhaps, as their early stuff, but when I listen to it now, it sounds like U2, and that’s never a bad thing.

Except for the catorce in “Vertigo.” You can still roll your eyes at that.

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22
Feb 24

A new high mark

We opened a ticket with the home warranty people last week. We generally have good luck with home warranty people, though many have nightmare stories. How it works with this particular company: you have a problem, you check to see if the home warranty will cover it, you put in a request … to the people who work for you … to see if they’ll do the thing you pay them for. And then they approve.

An email link comes back. You’re approved! And this company will send a highly trained professional well equipped in the trade will come out and examine your problem, make several deeply intimidating noises as it relates to the issue, criticizes the anonymous person or people who did or didn’t do the things that led to it, and then show you what a career spent in the industry means for creating the appropriately deft maneuvers required with their hands and tools. And what day would you like them to come?

Their system lets you pick three dates, and the general time of dya. So rank order them, which day is best? And why are afternoons always ideal? I selected this Tuesday afternoon, yesterday afternoon and this afternoon as my preferred choices. That way, I could sit here and grade, and do other fun things at home, while I waited for someone to pull up the drive. And I bet you can tell where this little story is going now.

We generally have good luck with home warranty people. Contractors, however. Hit or … what’s that other word?

I’m getting low on photos from our last SCUBA diving trip. This means that, next week, I’ll have to switch over to more SCUBA diving videos.

The things I do for you people.

The things I did for me: several decades ago I took a SCUBA diving certification course. Later, I talked my then-girlfriend into getting certified, as well. Then I purchased the SeaLife Micro 2.0 camera off eBay. Then I boarded a plane and flew to another country, where I endured pleasant temperatures in January and allergies so I could go diving, which allowed me to take this photograph.

She’s perfect in it, but the phone could be a bit better so, ya know, we’ll need to go diving again. Darn the luck.

Some photography simply needs to be improved on. Some are good enough to see variations of, over and over. Like another shot of Jennifer, the turtle.

Don’t worry, we’ll see a bit more of the turtle before we wrap up the photos. Jennifer the turtle is a star.

This was one of the views I had on my late night bike ride last night. Alone, it is of no significance. But when you put it all together, it means just a little more. Somewhere, right in this portion of the ride, I set a nice personal best.

It means nothing, really, this personal best, but my spreadsheet likes it. One of the pages on the cycling spreadsheet, there are several pages, is titled “Monthly Marks.” On this page I rank each month by the highest mileage. My top months, all time:

10. July, 2018
9. Feb, 2023
8. June, 2011
7. April, 2023
6. July, 2011
5. Jan, 2024
4. May, 2016
3. Jan, 2023
2. Nov, 2023

And right about at that spot above, this month, February 2024, became my all time high mileage month. And it’s a short month! And there’s still a week to go! And my legs feel all of it!

Tomorrow, we’ll start an entirely new experience on the site. I’ve no idea what it’ll look like yet, but it’ll be interesting, and probably too long by half. Come back to enjoy it all!

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15
Feb 24

It’s Spanish for “shark” (there’s a shark in the photos below)

Site news! I just sold this place! Some joker is buying it for $1.3 million and I’m cashing out! See ya, suckers!

That would be about what I’d say if that were true. And if Kenny “The Jet” Smith’s people want to call me — as we have a longstanding social relationship — which earned me a piece in a textbook a few years back …

Worth a shot.

No, here is the actual site news. The front page photos have been updated. It is now diving-themed once again. For example, a larger version of this photo is there.

There are 10 images in the current rotation. I’ll three rotations of 10 each for a while. That should keep us until the front page needs re-freshening with some other amazing photographs, or when The Jet buys me out, whichever comes first.

That was one of the things on the day’s list. Updating the front of the site, not selling out.

(Seriously, Jet, my number is 555 …)

There were eight things on that list when I closed my computer last night. And I managed to do six of those things today, and did some other work prep besides, so I am satisfied with the effort.

One thing I did, of course, was take a little bike ride down in the Smith Indoor Training Center. I did 66 minutes, which is about where my enthusiasm has dwindled the past few rides, come to think of it.

I did an actual training ride, today, an anaerobic capacity into VO2 exercise. I did this because I read a site recently which said that, without a training plan, I was just doing junk miles. Miles for miles’ sake. I was fine with that, of course, until someone put that particular name to it. My base miles are not junk. And they’ve come with some real exertion. But today I did this interval workout with five sets above my wattage threshold and set some new Strava PRs in the process. Behold! My phone!

I took Tuesday off from riding, opting for quality time, instead. It must have been the right choice because I didn’t feel bad about it, or second guess myself in the moment. Even still, today was my 20th ride in the last 21 days, which is a fair amount for a duffer like me.

On my cycling spreadsheet — everyone has one — I have a page that shows the best of each month. So I know what my most prolific July is, which year had the most miles in August, which September saw the most pedal strokes, and so on. (2011, 2023, 2014, respectively.) I have a separate column for February, because it’s February. And February of 2023 is my most successful year, for now. But that mark is going to get crushed, probably before the end of this week.

We’ll look back on this month and see the asterisk, but the asterisk will be about the leap day, definitely not about junk miles.

Meanwhile, back under water, since I told you about the front page updates and we’re still working our way through the photos from our last dive trip. I found one where my lovely dive buddy is actually demonstrating evidence of breathing.

The first rule of diving is just keep breathing. That’s actually a rule. I got quizzed on one of the dive boats because, someone has to be the fall guy and the divemaster asked me about the first rule. I said, “To make sure my partner comes back up. And also to keep breathing.”

I started diving at the beginning of the George H.W. Bush administration. That guy was just going to have to overlook my flip little joke.

Tortuga!

That’s Jennifer, one of the famous turtles of Palancar Reef. I believe she was trying to introduce us to her friend. Do you see that little overhang she seems to be working her way to there? Can you see what is underneath it?

Now you can.

Tiburón!

If you’ve been enjoying views from under the sea just off the coast of Cozumel, not to worry. I have a few dozen more photographs, and a lot of videos to work through.

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8
Feb 24

A former student, the yard and dive photos

I had a lovely chat with a former student today. I had her in a class when she was a freshman and knew her all four years of her time in college and, today, I have the great good fortune to call her a friend. She is, and was, a talented human being. She sat in the back of the classroom, quiet as could be, but she took in everything. Everything.

One of her classmates and friends was loud and over the top and could command and intimidate anyone in a room. She was funny, but Sydney just sat in the back and soaked in everything.

Outside of the classroom she became a staff writer and then a section editor for the campus paper I advised. Her senior year, she was the editor-in-chief of her campus paper. She was also the section editor of two local community papers her senior year. She also carried a 4.0 GPA. She also was honored as one of the top journalists in the south that year. I’m telling you, this woman is talented.

Two years ago now she was on a New York Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize, and if you think I don’t find ways to insert that into conversation you haven’t been paying attention. She’s a book editor and still writes for The Times. Even better than all of that, she does all of these other things. In the last few years she’s taught herself to sew and knit and cross stitch. She has taken up, as an adult and just to try it, aerial gymnastics, and she’s getting quite good at it. She has discovered a green thumb. Late last year she and her husband moved to New England. They are way up there, and enjoying their first real winter.

I was telling her how much I admire all of the things she does. As is typical, I laid it on pretty thick. As is typical, she downplayed everything. She said, “My life is full of more things that bring me satisfaction and make me look forward to the future than I’ve ever had before, and that’s not nothing.”

Something about this young woman, her freshmen year in the back of my class, I knew she’d figure it all out. And now here we are.

There isn’t a term for it, short of the greeting card cliche, but it is so heartening to watch people you like thrive. And to watch them discover the things that make them thrive. Oh! It comes from years of mentally cheering for people daily, and then getting semi-regular dispatches. To see people, who I knew best as students, continue to find ways to learn and challenge themselves well into adulthood, it’s really something.

In my teaching philosophy, I’ve always written that I hope to help teach the value of a true education: the joy of learning.

Best part is, Sydney isn’t the only person I know who has embodied that. Maybe that means I’m on to something. I hope so.

A quick spin through the side yard, just to share some different photos. I got lucky with the light on this shrub, which enjoys a nice golden tint in the late afternoon sun.

This stone path doesn’t go anywhere magical, but it seems like it should, doesn’t it?

We have two-and-a-half stone paths, and one of them does seem like it should go to Narnia. Not this one, though, it just takes you to the utilities. But look! There between the stones!

Is that a periwinkle? An euonymus? Whatever it is, the ground cover is emerging in early February! I am heartened once again!

Maybe I’ll get to the backyard tomorrow.

But, today, we must return to our underwater lair. And if we can’t actually do it, we’ll do it with some photographs from last month. To the deep! And before you do it, I’ve already done. I was humming the opening bars to “Baracuda” at about 65 feet here.

This was our dive master on one of our boats. He was serious until he realized he didn’t have to be. And then he was hysterical. Big laugh. I think his laugh amuses him, too. He reminded me of Carlos Mencia, a little bit. Apparently, in his day job, he’s some sort of underwater welder. So he takes strangers diving as a side hustle.

Imagine that. You get on a boat and that’s where you meet people and, to some degree, you’re kind of responsible for them. Now do that and make great jokes that grizzled vacation veterans haven’t heard before. This is the life of a dive master.

Also, he took this photograph for us.

He was very gracious with his time to do that. We wound up getting quite a few photographs. One day I’ll put that on social media and see if the university will share it. And if they do, this will be a new thing, taking that flag to interesting places and so on.

Also, he wanted to take a photo with the flag, too.

But he never asked what a Rowan was, or what that owl was about. He just wanted a photo, which was cool.

I think I can get about two more weeks of photos out of that trip. And, of course, there are quite a few more videos to upload, too. I may be able to pad this out to spring yet!