Tuesday


13
Jul 10

Nothing from me, amuse yourself with video

I haven’t been feeling well today — nothing bad, just the cotton swabby feeling of medicine head, without the medicine. Sitting or relaxing is fine. Getting up and moving around doesn’t feel so hot today.

So have some videos I discovered. Sadly there is no embed function on this site, but the videos are golden.

Auburn beats Miami 14-13 in Birmingham in 1954. My parents hadn’t even been born when that game was played. Even better, meaning older, there’s this Auburn versus South Carolina game, featuring Shug Jordan and the Phantom of Union Springs, the great Jimmy Hitchcock. That Auburn team was 9-0, they’d outscored their opponents 255-34 before this game. And then Carolina fought their way to a 20-20 draw. The game made Time Magazine, Auburn finished the year 9-0-1, winning the Southern Conference title.

The description on this one says “workers being employed under Works Progress Administration for constructing houses in Birmingham, Alabama.”

Here is the 1939 National Air Carnival and it is clear that these guys might have been nuts. Incidentally, here’s the poster from the 1937 air show:

The 1937 National Air Carnival in Birmingham, Ala.

And here are some driving scenes from Cullman, Ala. and through Birmingham in 1960. The first stretch of interstate-65 you see here might not even be open yet. As best I can tell it would see traffic the next year.

The second stretch you see actually has cars on it, but not many. That section in the middle of the video is supposed to be the drive into Birmingham, but the skyline is wrong. (The last segment of the video, on the surface streets, is actually Washington D.C. The sharp eye of Andre Natta caught the change. A little tour on Google Maps showed me the right street and then it changed again, to this one.)

Check out some videos yourself. When you do, thank Ken Booth; he found the site.

I have another video from there I want to share, too, but I want to shoot a contemporary companion piece. Give me a day or two to get back out from under the weather.


6
Jul 10

Back to the future, at the post office

When out and about to accomplish things, always strategically plan the order of events. It would not do, of course, to visit the grocery store, buy frozen things and then leave them in the trunk for two hours while taking in a movie. You don’t go across town on no gas to pick up a rare book without stopping at the gas station.

I’m a great believer in pre-planning the round of events. There’s a certain order to things. Some stops just make sense A to B to C. Some stops just make sense for traffic patterns. Some sequences are purely psychological.

Like this: Visit the post office first, and then stop by the bank.

If yours is like mine you find little redeeming about the post office. The lines are long, painful and slow moving. The person you finally draw to help you with your transaction is doing you a favor. He or she is really bitter about this, but has yet to make an examination about the choices they’ve made in their life. And, no matter how many extra books of stamps you buy, you always walking away feeling dissatisfied.

At the bank, they’re dealing with your money. And they’re making money on your money. In fact, they are still running a great con that a few keystrokes costs six to 20 bucks of your money every time. Of course they’re happy to see you. And, if yours is like mine you find they’re going a little overboard to demonstrate your enthusiasm to see you.

To be fair, the guy at the post office today was helpful, full of sirs — every third word of the conversation between us was “sir” — and generally competent. The life hadn’t been beaten out of him yet. At the bank the teller was a very nice lady. She reminded me of someone from a lifetime ago and had the same first name, but she was younger and nicer. Could be because she was getting my money.

See?

Uruguay’s run came to a close in the World Cup. They’ll still play in the consolation game, of course, but Netherlands handled them effectively enough, 3-2. The cheap goal at the end didn’t mean much in the scheme of things. The Oranje are right where they want to be heading into the final weekend f the tournament. I’ve always liked the Dutch style of play and it is nice to see them do well here.

Now, who will they meet for the championship game? Germany or Spain? We’ll find out tomorrow. Could be a good game, could be a snoozer.

Pedaled 10 miles this evening. I just ran out of gas right at 10. Could be the absence of protein for the day. So instead of riding more I did a few ab exercises and called that a workout. Tomorrow I’ll eat better and ride more, promise.

We had delicious pork chops for dinner, after which I started scanning things. And then I started editing them a bit in Photoshop. Tomorrow the Tumblr blog returns. The first several dozen things that will appear will be things I brought back from Europe. I have a big stack of water bottle labels, funky business cards and odd looking pamphlets that I picked up along the way. I lugged them halfway around the world, I’m sharing them with you.

Now I just have to figure out the problem with the Tumblr section on the right side of the blog. That’s never worked right, and I’m at a loss on a good widget. It isn’t enough that you see these things on a separate site, you should be able to find them here.

No, I won’t tie it all back into my Twitter account. Though I have found a way to write in my Tumblr, cross-post to Twitter, call it into Facebook and then publish back here. I’m only one step away from what Doc Brown cautioned against, creating “a time paradox, the results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum, and destroy the entire universe! Granted, that’s a worse case scenario. The destruction might in fact be very localized, limited to merely our own galaxy.”

I had to look that up on IMDB, not to worry. Also on IMDB, I’ve just learned that Carl Sagan and I have something in common, we both like Back to the Future.

It seems I’ll do anything to put myself with a prominent scientist.


29
Jun 10

Your basic Tuesday at home

Just house cleaning today. And laundry. Do you want details?

I have a lot of clothes. On those rare occasions when everything I own is clean I realize I need more closet space and a few more hangars. This is an excellent excuse to not do the laundry too often. And it is also an excellent reason why I don’t need more clothes.

I vacuumed this afternoon. The Yankee bought one of those fancy machines on sale last year, the kind that requires you to empty the plastic container every so often rather than the bag you can ignore for weeks on end. I’ve finally figured out how to remove the thing without pouring out all of the dusty findings back onto the floor. It is rare that you find successes in something as mundane as vacuuming the floor, but there it is. I did it today.

I danced a little jig, pouring some of the dust and debris back onto the floor.

Good thing I’d yet to vacuum.

In the World Cup Paraguay and Japan played to zeroes and added on an additional 30 minutes. After two full hours of play they had to go to penalty kicks. Spain faced their Iberian neighbors and gave Portugal the defeat they had coming to them. I’m now hoping to see Spain and Netherlands in the final.

And since Portugal is out, I offer you this tribute to Ronaldo:

Anyway. Tomorrow, I pick up The Yankee from the airport. From the U.S. to Europe to the U.S. to Asia and back to the U.S. in a month … we’ll just have to get her sleep schedule back to normal.


22
Jun 10

Emma


15
Jun 10

Still more pictures

Not much new to show off on the site today. Still working on honeymoon photographs. This latest batch will get the series into Athens. That puts the total count north of 320, with the rest of Athens, Vesuvius, Pompeii and one last day in Rome still to add. That also does not count the various panoramas and two slideshows also floating around.

And I still have an hour of video to produce from the trip.

I’m going to have to make a landing page for all of these pictures.

I am so glad I recorded all of this. I wish I could hire someone to do the editing for me.

Elsewhere, just the usual run of the mill stuff. So … back to it then.