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Just go go go

Worked today, doing work stuff. Enjoying the beginning of summer by getting ready for the fall. I had an actual lunch! We got takeout from Chick-fil-A and ate it in a parking lot between Panera and Fresh Thyme and a funeral home. It’s a glamorous life, to be sure.

After work I got gas. Paid $3.19 a gallon, which was a dollar off the sign price, because of the Kroger fuel points plan. This loyalty program is one of the three great things about our local grocery store. And, at the beginning of the year we took advantage of what is essentially Kroger Prime. Used to be that every dollar you spent was added into a formula for a reduced price at the pump. Since you’re shopping for groceries anyway, this was an easy and obvious thing. But now your dollar amounts are worth double in the gas reduction formula. We signed up before the war in Ukraine and inflation drove up the prices, and so this has paid for itself several times over already.

After that, and I know you’re riveted, I went to the hardware store. Got some tack cloths. At the house I sanded wood until it was time for dinner. (And almost all of the sanding on this ridiculously long-stalled project is now down.) And then I ate and washed dishes and did a very small amount of house chores until it was time to write this. And here you are.

Five years ago tonight, we were with the Indigo Girls.

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I think that was the seventh or ninth time I’ve seen the Indigo Girls live. I don’t go to a lot of concerts anymore — indeed, I think I’ve been to one other show, in 2019, since then, and we had two others canceled in 2020 — but Amy and Emily, I’d never turn down. They never disappoint.

OK, the sanding isn’t done. Everything is done through 400-grit. Later this week I’ll do the ends to 800-grit. Then it’ll be ready to clean and stain and install. Which is good, because there’s an ever-growing list of other things I need to make.

So, this summer work, bike and build is how I’ll get ready for the fall.

Auburn / Glomerata / history / music / Thursday / video — Comments Off
5
May 22

A light day

Ever get fundraising letters and emails from your alma mater(s)? This 1922 copy circulated in newspapers around Alabama, a sad story that came from one of my alma maters, and it is more impactful than all of those donation letters.

This was part of an important campaign for my alma mater. Auburn was in a deep economic hole compared to the other schools in the state, which had been uniquely successful in creating a deep economic hole for all of its schools anyway. So all that spring of 1922 they prepared for this campaign that they hoped would raise $1 million dollars which would equal … quite a few more million these days.

It was a substantial ask, am ambitious plan and, if you’d be willing to listen to the whole of the tale I can draw a pretty clear line between that campaign and the institutional politics that still appear there, 100 years on.

Ralph Boyd appears in the papers one time before this syndicated piece, in a small brief about his death in Montgomery that February. His last surviving sibling passed away in 2017.

And here he is the year before, somewhere in this group photograph from the 1921 Glomerata, the university’s yearbook.

In the 1922 yearbook there’s a mention of the Greater Auburn campaign. They called it the greatest thing Auburn had ever undertaken. But there doesn’t seem to be a mention of young Ralph Boyd in that edition.

So there’s not much here today, but I did run across that, which is really an excuse to share the greatest century-old graphic you’ve ever seen.

That’s recyclable, is all I’m saying. It’s also amusing that they were using the Auburn name in the university’s campaign efforts, a formal usage if you will, decades before they changed the institution’s name.

Something a little fun … Penn & Teller!

And something amazing … The Punch Brothers!

More tomorrow, I assure you.

cycling / IU / photo / television / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
4
May 22

Coldest 62° ever

I believe I had the last meeting of the semester today. Things aren’t over, but the meetings are. And the activities are wrapping up this weekend. Once those tasks are complete, we’ll be doing … summer things.

Personally, I think everyone needs a few weeks off, unscored against their vacation time. It’d do everyone a world of good after the last few years. It’d be useful for the year to come.

Just you wait, someone is going to say this out loud in a few months, but you heard it here first.

But no one listens to my ideas.

Makes the meetings fun.

Here are some more of the programs IUSTV has produced at the end of the semester. I’m told there’s still maybe one more show to roll out this week.

They are still editing and producing shows during finals week. It’s impressive.

Robert Steven Mack is interviewing American Enterprise Institute’s Dr. Zack Cooper, about China’s relationship with Russia and the U.S. after the invasion of Ukraine. Pretty hefty stuff.

Riley and Alex follow the fan shenanigans — I’m just going to call them fananigans — during Little 500 weekend. It’s real atmospheric stuff. Fun, enthusiasm, silliness. What a campus should be — at least part of the time.

It took me two episodes to get it, but I’m a slow learner. That show grows on you in a hurry. I’ll miss it over the summer, but I hope it comes back even bigger in the fall.

We went for a bike ride this evening. She had to do hill repeats. Usually, when I even hear the phrase “hill repeats” I lose two or three miles per hour off my average. But I checked my numbers just before we started the hills, and just after, and I managed to hold everything steady throughout the up and down and up and down and up and down of the hill repeats.

There will be harder, longer hills later. I’ll be slower. The above paragraph will not apply to that experience.

Here we are — well, here she is; I am behind the camera — after those hills, and weaving through the last two neighborhoods before the house. In the last one we found ourselves in an impromptu sprint. We were doing the mid 30s and I was running out of gears.

I was probably working harder at it than she was.

She’s fast.

photo / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
3
May 22

More moving pictures

I was mistaken about the number of shows still left in the tank for IUSTV. I thought there were two. Here are four. And there’s at least two more still to go after this … So I was off by six.

It’s not the greatest miscount of my week, I am sure.

Anyway, let’s watch some stuff. IU Fanshop, which is a show just about being a fan (the most important thing at the park, by the way) they’re talking to people at a softball game. There’s even an appearance from The Yankee in this show.

They also went out and heard from all of the people at the Little 500 races. This is a two-part feature. Here’s part one.

And here’s Not Too Late. Mia interviews some guy named Captain Torrent, a movie pirate, who’s really leaning into the bit. Also, there’s a pet safety segment.

And here’s the morning show, The Bloomington Breakfast Club, with their season finale, which I wrote about here on Friday.

I got in from the office, narrowly avoiding the many traffic hazards along the way. For a time I cataloged them. How many dangerous or nonsensical or stupid things can you find in 4.5-mile trip. Quite a few, as it turns out.

Yesterday an SUV and a UPS truck were each parked on a two-lane, one way road. That means the road was … I’ll wait while you do the math here … blocked. There was also the zipping around people guy. And, later, the person who almost had a violent lesson in how roundabouts work. And we haven’t discussed yet the pedestrians.

It’s an everyday adventure. As I negotiated part of that route today, in the always-neat simultaneous sun and rain, the local radio host was doing his annual bit about the city getting lighter this summer. The out-of-town students are beginning to scatter as they wrap up their finals. We are saying all of our goodbyes and starting to think about having parking spaces and being able to make a left turn in just one red light.

Today I barely made it through a straight intersection in one light. A few months with almost a third less of the cars and people wouldn’t be a bad thing. To say nothing of the buses.

The buses are their own sort of danger.

Scenes from a walk. The golden groundsel (Packera aurea) is back and showing off.

And the dandelions are happily back as well, seemingly everywhere that hasn’t been mowed recently. The public properties don’t get cut every week, which means a lot of puffballs.

The foliage on the trees are on their way, supposedly.

At least the clouds are dynamic, right?

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
2
May 22

Happy May

We went for a bike ride on Saturday. Lovely day for it, but a bit of a breeze, by which I mean a headwind in every direction. Also, she’s well on her way back to being fast again, just five weeks removed from leg surgery.

Which means it’ll be difficult to keep up with her in a week or two. Which means I’ll be in trouble in a month or so.

I must go faster. Somehow.

If it isn’t a fast ride, though, I just linger off the back and turn it into a scenic spin. There’s always some way to win.

We went to the softball game on Sunday afternoon. (At least it was breezy!) It was a good one to see.

Scoreless after seven, Indiana and Illinois went to extra innings in an excellent pitchers’ duel. IU had a chance to win in the 10th, but couldn’t score on a squeeze after finally advancing their first baserunner to third.

In the top of the 11th the Illini scored on two RBI singles to right, but IU was ready for their moment. Suddenly the bases were loaded and senior Brittany Ford drove one to the warning track in center.

Indiana won 3-2 in 11, avoiding the sweep at home and improving to 26-19. IU will wrap up the regular season at Nebraska next weekend.

Let’s check on the kitties, which remains our most popular weekly feature. They’re doing great, enjoying the actual sunshine we’re experiencing now, and yet still cuddling for warmth like we’re in the depths of winter. (I was even able to wear shorts this weekend, at the beginning of May.)

Phoebe likes walls … for some reason right now.

And if a wall isn’t available, there’s always a bit of furniture she can swim up to.

Isn’t she cute?

Poseidon likes the weekends because The Yankee makes a late breakfast and that gets the oven warm and he can take naps on this stovetop cover and enjoy the radiating heat.

That’s the routine.

“WE WANT SOME MEATLOAF!”

“THE MEATLOAF! WE WANT IT NOW!”