Rained all day yesterday. Dipped below freezing at about 8 p.m. And overnight it turned to snow. It snowed all day today.
At the end of it all there’s probably 5 inches out there. It varies a bit from place to place, of course. For instance, under our covered porch we have 2 inches of snow.
The ice was the real concern. All that rain is now under the roads. And our road doesn’t get plowed. As in years past, the city sends a truck down our road so that it may play the walking path behind us. They do not plow the road. (We live in the county.) All of the roads are reportedly a mess, though. We’re under the “emergency travel only” advice. Not that I have anywhere to be.
I worked from home today. Interviewed a grad student about his research via Zoom. I had another long Zoom where we designed an ever-growing television show. It was supposed to be a one-off last year, but it never works like this. They always come back, and we always make them bigger.
And I finally logged off at 8:30 p.m., on a day when I worked from home.
I’m not really sure how that happened. I was doing work, looked up and it was almost 5 p.m. And I still had to prep for a morning meeting. Tomorrow, I’ll manage to get up to an easy 48 hours for the week. At least I didn’t have to risk life, limb, fenders and insurance rates for the last two days.
We purchased a new mattress, and it arrived yesterday. My lovely bride got the thing upstairs without me. She took the old mattress off the box spring, put the new one on last night. A mattress, you would think, is one of those things you want to go down to the showroom. Kick the tires, lay on it for 36 seconds, and all of that. Well, where has that ever gotten you? A mattress that works for a few years before you buy a foam topper, which works for a few years. Eventually your sleep patterns leave impressions in all of that, so the foam topper comes off, and the now old mattress isn’t much better. And how many times have you done all of that?
So she found an online service. Good reviews. Excellent return policy, and time will tell about their guarantee language — and whether the company has any longevity under this business model. She did this unilaterally, because the old one has been bothering her the most, she’s a bit more particular, and that’s how it works. Whatever makes you, quite literally, more comfortable, dear.
The new mattress, I learned last night, is a little taller. You need a running start. And as we discussed this afternoon, the biggest and most immediately noticeable thing is that you can just, sorta, roll over. Not every muscle group needs to be activated to make a common turn from back to side.
If the new mattress does that alone it’d be a win for internet merchants everywhere.
As for the first night’s sleep part, it seemed unremarkable. Pretty much the ideal, right?
All that sunshine from the last few days has regressed to the mean. And that’s just … mean.
The day, being a Thursday, slowed down a bit compared to the earlier part of the week, and I managed to put in just eight hours, so it the net perception was: null. Many people worked from home because of close contacts to Covid-positive people, and I have to figure out how to do that, without invoking karmic problems.
I spent part of the morning working on a podcast. Today we enjoyed our usual once-a-week Chick-fil-A takeout lunch. The afternoon’s highlight was probably cleaning up some Google Docs and preparing for a Friday morning meeting.
After a few days of doing everything rapidly it is nice to luxuriate in spending too much time on one thing at a time, is the point.
The television folks have uploaded two of their most recent sports shows for you. Here are all the latest highlights on all the coolest sports around here.
And here’s another sports show, featuring different perspectives and probably more fun than you should have outdoors in Indiana in January.
There will be another studio talk show online tomorrow. And another simulcast TV-radio project after that. There are also all of the online chats they do. The sports media students simply don’t stop anymore. It’s impressive when you consider the rest of the demands on their time.
The daily duds: This feature is going away because I realized that the goal was pointless. I was trying to document looks so I wouldn’t reproduce them too quickly, but that’s impossible without a proper indexing system. So today I’m just showing off this lovely pocket square my in-laws got me for Christmas.
Also, that’s one of my favorite sports coats. It has character and comfort, which is to say that, once you get past the print, it’s super soft.
And tonight’s dinner, because it looks healthy enough to brag about.
That’s three nights in a row of healthy things. We’ll have to blow this up tomorrow.
IU / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on Another long day 20 Jan 22
Without even intending to, I managed to stay in the office late for a third night in a row. But I got out by 7 p.m., so that’s an improvement?
“Improvement.”
Not that anyone acknowledges such things, or even notices. Makes you wonder, sometimes, why you spend so much time under the ol’ florescent lights.
Well, first of all, it’d be too cold to be outdoors just now.
Anyway, the extra bit of the day that shook up the routine today featured interviewing a bunch of students and a lot of Zoom meetings. And I learned how some new hardware and software will work together in one of our new studios. Not that I have high or demanding expectations for January, in general, but that’s almost enough to make for a banner day.
Except for the extra hours.
cycling / IU / memories / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on Read along as I talk myself into something in less than 100 words 13 Jan 22
Today I start feeling the impression that I’m beginning to wrap my arms around a new project at work. I’ve been working at it for a few days now, so that’s good timing. We’re also bringing two new studios online. And everything is up in the air with Covid.
And we haven’t even got the IUSTV folks back into their productions yet. They’ll start next week, 50-plus days in various studios and 80-or-more shows and a handful of podcasts and all of the live sports and … I probably shouldn’t be this tired in mid-January. I should definitely be this excited.
I also left the office mostly on time today, which was great, because I got to the house and hopped on the bicycle.
Here is my avatar riding underwater.
And look! I’ve never noticed this mountain in the background before. That’s not where we were headed today, but I have been thinking about going uphill, so that was a nice view.
Since I mentioned riding through the volcano in Watopia earlier this week, I figured I should do that again, and actually get a photo.
I set a new PR on the volcano climb, despite getting distracted, losing my rhythm and falling apart in the last 100 meters before the top of the climb.
At the end of each ride you get a little wattage report. They compare your best output over five seconds, one minute, five minutes and 20 minutes to your all time bests. In the five and 20 minute segments this was one of my better rides.
And now I want to start doing laps up the volcano. And returning to the bigger ascents on Zwift.
But first I need to upgrade my bike shoes. My dear sweet old, cheap, Bonties — pictured here when they were still almost new — are starting to hurt my feet.
More than six years and many thousands of miles. Suddenly I don’t feel so bad about that.
Worked from home today — also worked from home yesterday afternoon — because of a heating problem in our building. People that know what they were doing had to work in the ancient steam tunnels and that meant there was no heat on what have been the two coldest days so far this winter.
Late in the fall they went down into the tunnels to do a two day job and it turned into something like a three-week proposition. When the experts got down there they found the problem was much more extensive than they thought. We had no hot water or heat during that stretch, but at least the weather was mild.
Now, it’s bitter cold. You can almost feel it in this photo, which was essentially the look of the day.
This is not my first cold workplace environment, of course, but I sure wouldn’t mind if it was my last. I once had a studio so cold I couldn’t type. As we were taught, you faked your way into pleasantness. Never let anyone know what’s wrong on the air. This had the added benefit of making sure the boss never got repair bills from the HVAC people, too. In my last stop the newsroom and office could get just as painful. The facilities people said too few of us worked up on that third floor, so it was not a … What is the word they used? … Was it priority? They never solved that in eight winters, so, no, I don’t think priority was the word. Oh, yeah! Problem. It wasn’t a problem! And nothing was ever done, no larger complaints ever lodged, no important people ever involved, because it wasn’t a problem, because it was just a few people, you see.
Looking back, that should have been a clue.
Yesterday I had four layers on, and only four because, I figured, sitting in my office while also wearing my long coat would have been silly.
Put it this way, when we received word yesterday we could retreat to warmer conditions, and I got to the house — where my lovely bride, who was raised a frugal Connecticut yankee, manages the thermostat — it felt positively toasty in comparison.
Anyway, the people working in the mysterious steam tunnels said their work would carry over into today, so we were given the option to work from home again. This was a rare treat, indeed.
So I sat in my home office, where it was pleasant, and worked. And at the end of the work day I decided it wasn’t pleasant because I really need a new chair. I was pretty sure, but now I’m convinced. And so I found one which will arrive next week. Or sometime in 2027. It’s difficult to tell, based on this website.
It might seem counterintuitive, but do you know what you do when your backside is hurting from a worn out cheap chair that you bought 10-plus years ago? You get in the saddle.
I set an entirely pedestrian 20 mile-per-hour pace around London.
The good news, the people working in the steam tunnels got their work done today. So we’ll be back in the office tomorrow and I’ll give a silent thanks to the hardworking people that I don’t know, who kept us warm, or safe, or both. And tomorrow is good, because classes begin again on Monday. Tomorrow will be the last deep breath until the sprint to mid-March.
