Tuesday

adventures / Alabama / family / Indiana / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on At the summer solstice
21
Jun 16

At the summer solstice

The sun is big and warm and that’s just about right. Daylight comes a bit later here, since we moved, but it is still bright over dinner, and we eat late. If only it stayed like this all year around.

It seems I can’t even mow the wildflowers in the side yard, reaching up and out as they are. I am presently cutting around them.

But it is nice and warm, but not overly so. The trees are nice and green and the grass is bright. You can hear the stream babbling nearby, if there’s no noise and you get close enough you can sometimes hear it before you see it. And, for the first time in as long as I can remember, you can’t really hear any road traffic.

There are roads, of course, and there are hills. We are going up and down them. Slowly, really. We’ve been out to discover a few new restaurants, mostly when we didn’t want to cook, and met a few nice people, most of them from our new bike group.

They meet twice a week in the evenings in a church parking lot near us. And we’ve been following them around, sometimes wishing they’d go faster and sometimes wishing they’d go slower. This is the first time I’ve ever ridden in a group and it is an adjustment. But we’re learning some roads.

Otherwise, we’ve just been unpacking and resting up from the move and learning the new house and recovering from the old house. There was much to paint and move and then the professional movers, five guys out of central casting, came and packed the rest and loaded it and hauled it all away. A few days later the physical evidence of our lives caught up to us. Even the parts we thought we were staying on top of caught up with us eventually. And I’m not talking about the painting, which we’d also hired out to the professionals.

Eventually, I’m sure, everything will start to feel normal again, whatever that is. Probably after all of the boxes and wrapping paper are gone and I can find things in the kitchen again and know what light switch controls what in the new place. Everything will be normal again after that. I wonder when it started being unusual before all of that. Longer than I’d imagine, I bet.

So this is an usual quarterly report, but a proper one. We wrapped up one life and are getting ready to start a new one. So the solstice is a good time for this. Do you know where the word comes from? It’s Latin. Sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still). Nothing stands still. It is just a question of which direction you want to go.

cycling / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on Happy Flag Day
14
Jun 16

Happy Flag Day

We have a flag. It is not yet on display. We’re still displaying other things. Allie, meanwhile, has found her first favorite spot:

The Black Cat is a creature of habit. She’ll spend part of her day here or there, following the sun, being around us, watching the outdoors, curled up asleep. I always wonder what makes her pick her spots. Well, the sunshine is an easy one, but the rest seem like something just short of chance. And, after some amount of time — forgive me, I’ve not charted this all out — she’ll rotate into entirely neat spots for whatever reason. That landing, where she can catch a bit of the early afternoon sun, is her first spot.

Here’s a scene from a quick 18-mile bike ride yesterday:

We’re still learning roads, and so it was no surprise that it was a surprise that we wound up at a place where this could happen:

I’m not a taker of street signs, but that’d be a neat one to see on a wall somewhere, wouldn’t it?

Also the 300-700 feet footnote … I’m sure that has to do with seasonal water levels, but it does seem a bit vague, doesn’t it?

So many mysteries.

cycling / family / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on The B-Line
7
Jun 16

The B-Line

Riding some of the trails this morning:

This was, I believe, on the B-Line. Bloomington has created a three-mile long paved path that basically bisects the city. It is part of a larger plan which, supposedly, will provide paths and trails to all points of the town when the project is completed. Part of that path is just behind our house and you could walk on it and the various sprawling sidewalks and paths that sprout from it for a fair distance. (Forgive the imprecise measurements. I’m new.)

Anyway, nice and scenic. This is more for walking and running and maybe a casual ride. You wouldn’t, we found this morning, put your bike on this and start hammering at it. But, still, a pleasant route, and one without cars.

We had to get in the car today. Drove up to Indianapolis to pick up my mother-in-law from the airport. It wasn’t a bad drive, except for the construction. I wonder how many times I’ll say that before they finish the construction. (Exactly the number of times I have to go to Indianapolis, would be my bet.) They are working on a giant interstate project and part of that work is between here and there just now. I’m sure it’s coming along with all due speed.

Anyway, she’s come to visit and help us get settled. She got in the house and was ready to work. What a lady. Good timing, too. My progress has slowed to road construction levels. We joked that we were leaving a room for her, and we’ve left part of that room for her to unpack. I’ve pretty much had my fill of it all.

Cardboard is an adventure, until you start getting cardboard cuts. That’s a powerful disincentive.

adventures / Bloomington / Indiana / IU / photo / Tuesday / windshield time — Comments Off on Fists and blades
31
May 16

Fists and blades

Here we are:

We are here. So if you’ve been reading, you knew we were moving. Today we’ve arrived. We’re in Bloomington, Indiana. The Yankee and I will both be starting at Indiana University’s Media School in time for the fall. We’ll be together. No more week-long commutes. No more 142 mile one-way trips to work. No more lots of silly things.

But we’ll get to all of that another time.

Right now, almost everything we own is on a giant truck and due here tomorrow. We drove up the two cars, which were loaded with the cat, three of the four bikes and not a spare inch of extra space.

Seriously. We’d set aside an area in the old house of stuff that was going with us — things we’d need, things the moving company said we should take ourselves and enough stuff to survive a day or so without our belongings — and somehow we managed to get every bit of it into the cars. If you’d asked me to fit eight more molecules into either car I would have had to quit after the third one. But we’re here.

Scenic drive up, too:

We hit the local Kroger. That place is huge.

Tonight we’re staying in an Airbnb. There is honeysuckle out front:

Tomorrow our things arrive and we sign the paperwork on our new house. Apparently we’ll now do both of those things simultaneously. How that’s supposed to work, we don’t yet know. But, hey, that’s just another thing. We’re so used to housing weirdness at this point (You should hear about our selling experience, criminy.) that it hardly even registers. By noon tomorrow we’ll just be down to unpacking.

cycling / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Sometimes I think we’re just here for the cat
3
May 16

Sometimes I think we’re just here for the cat

I rode 30 miles on my bike today. Just enjoying a few big loops around the neighborhood, really.

I should have carried the cat along with me. She sometimes has extra water …

Allie

Also, she did this the other night:

She likes cheese flavors.

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