Wednesday

photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on Just writing about very casual photos
26
Feb 20

Just writing about very casual photos

Bought gas this morning. Watched the rain turn to snow and marveled at how gross the parking lot looked, which is to say, a lot like a wet parking lot in semi-dark conditions. It’s the most central European experience I can offer you today. Brown turns gray and it’s too cold to qualify as dank. And it was almost the first thing in the morning. But at least the price at the pump was good:

So thank you, Kroger fuel points for the discount.

Forgot my lunch today. I guess I was just too excited about fueling up. So I had to get a sandwich at the nearby sandwich place, which meant chips. Which meant choices and new packaging and …

Cool design, I guess, so they’ve increased the cool, but perhaps not the ranch. The look suggests a chip went subatomic and left only the excess seasoning. There is a little extra seasoning. I’m not sure it required new packaging. You could give me the new chips in the old bag and I would have thought there was a new man on the special spice machine last week. The new guy is always more interested in the customer experience than the corporate bottom line, after all. But that soon passes when the veteran first shift crew talks him into toeing the line.

At which point the new guy becomes just one of the guys, on his way to being the old guy. It happens overnight. Literally. Before he knows it he’s working a double on the third shift because that guy is the manager’s brother-in-law. Everyone knows he’s the weak link, the third shift brother-in-law. No way he’d be working that schedule if the manager liked him. But you know how it goes. And so the formerly-new-guy bitterly starts thinning out the spices.

And that’s when the new design on the chip bag is outdated.

But will you even notice? There’s so much going on, if you’re not leaving big, smeary, fingerprints on everything, how could you notice it all?

There isn’t enough extra cool ranch for big, smeary, fingerprints.

I took a picture of some of the wood stain in the garage, because I needed to make a note of it for my current project. I’m going to start sanding soon. I think. I hope. So here are some stain cans.

And so now I’m spending the rest of my Wednesday evening enjoying getting to go home with some of the day still left in it. Working late on Tuesdays and then having a regular schedule on Wednesday is an unusual thing. Challenging on the at the beginning, but the back end, this is a nice feeling: free time.

Makes getting gas first thing this morning worth it, I guess.

IU / television / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on No one even made the “Oh my!” joke
19
Feb 20

No one even made the “Oh my!” joke

I met this guy last night in the television studio. He took part in a nice little segment about the local petting zoo of discovery and wonder:

The handlers, for lack of a more appropriate term, were wonderful with both the animals and the students who were working the show. And some of their creatures work school and other promotional events all the time, so they apparently take it in stride.

The ladies said the animals would do better out of their carriers than in them, so after a moment of “Awwww,” and a second moment of photographs, the crew got down to work and did a nice job pulling the program together. And the hosts created a tight little segment with their furry guests.

Off-camera the lemur jumped on me. And I learned that a bengal cat will grow to be a bit larger than a domestic feline. This one was still growing. We were told that you can tell them apart mostly by their softer coat and their personality. They generally behave more like dogs, she said. But this guy was too chill to be bothered by anything going on around him. That lemur wanted to be the star, however. You can see it in here:

The news show was done after that. I missed a lot of it, trying to be useful, downstairs working on other things.

Driving home this evening, I had a nice view of the sun:

Something about the angle of it in the sky, even as it was descending toward the horizon, is starting to feel different. Like the sun is bigger, brighter, and should-be-warmer. It isn’t yet. But either some ancient neuron in my brain has begun to detect the seasonal shift or my keen powers of critical observation are seeping into my subconscious.

It still isn’t warm — nor would you expect it to be warm here just now, but on general principle I demand it nevertheless — so either instinct or perception is wrong. But there was a feeling that an optimist might ascribe to optimism.

I’m a resigned realist.

Probably I owe Phoebe a photograph. It was a rare evening, indeed, when she chose to sit on me. If she’s going to choose to cuddle with someone it will be The Yankee. (And almost always on one of the blankets.)

This is a thing she does near the end of her time cuddling. Having rolled over, she stretches her full body out. I’m not sure if she’s surveying the ground below her, or just enjoying the moment or trying to wake up or fall back asleep.

Eventually, she pushes off with her back legs and gracefully rolls toward the floor. Here’s the side view before that happens:

I think we’d now, finally, have to use three hands to count the number of times she’s voluntarily sat with me. It’s progress. Maybe she was jealous of the bengal cat. Maybe she’s noticed something about the sun, too.

memories / photo / SCUBA / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on The great thing in the grate
12
Feb 20

The great thing in the grate

I made a little animated photo as my new pinned tweet. I mention it because I know you are deeply invested in this sort of thing. You are. All of you. Deeply invested. Profoundly so.

My last pinned tweet had been around for quite some time. Summer of 2015 I took that picture. London. Everything was different then, everything was the same.

We took the above picture in Roatan, Honduras last summer. Everything is the same.

It is about time for another dive. We’ll do some later this year. The problem with being so land locked is that you can’t do it readily. This is an obvious issue. The other side of that coin is that when you do get the chance, you maximize your dives, to the extent that your body can handle it. (There are some fatigue issues arising from oxygen and nitrogen at depth, eventually, and the eventually of that chemistry does catch up to you. Unless you dive nitrox, which I do not, as yet, do.) We did 20 dives over six days in Roatan, for example, knowing that was it for the year. If you could just get into the water (of the sort that you wanted to be in) more readily then we’d do so. I’d sit on the bottom of a pool for hours, if you’d let me.

Oh, look, here I am doing just that last May.

It was a peaceful experience, no currents to fight, no corral to avoid, no depth considerations to consider. Just sit and breathe. It was, then, a contemplative non-dive. Many things were considered in that high school pool, the first high school pool I’ve ever been in. (It was a Saturday.) The first one I’ve ever seen, I think.

A lot of profound thinking is going on in that photo, as you can tell. Mostly about all of the things that find their way to the bottom of a public pool.

errands / music / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on I see a woman in the night with scissors in her hand
5
Feb 20

I see a woman in the night with scissors in her hand

I’m not one to go in for aesthetic as a driving principle. The concept employs a lot of people, and it is obviously effective. Sometimes in obvious, sometimes in ever-more subtle ways. It’s just not something I think about a lot, or give a lot of credence to — which is the huge and obvious error, of course.

Use this shade of paint or that one. Put the product on the aisle, at eye level or on the end cap, I don’t care that much. Place your advertisement in this commercial break or in that magazine. Good for you. Burn incense in your shop, or just go crazy with the oils and potpourri. I’ll say “Whatever.”

I notice those things, for the most part, but it doesn’t obviously sway me one way or another when I do. I’m not immune. I wouldn’t suggest it. We’re all susceptible. But I think that the subtle has more impact on my decision making process than the obvious. I think this is because most of my shopping and errands and such are very task-oriented. And the task is usually “Find the least expensive thing possible.”

So a coupon is a good thing. And today I had a coupon. For a haircut! At the place I normal endure! This was a half-off coupon, and it expires tomorrow. So, tonight, I made a stop and had them take about half my hair off.

But while I’m sitting there waiting for my turn, I made a decision about hair aesthetics:

Just do an image search, and you’ll get the bigger point, of course. But also, I’m not the world’s biggest Neil Young fan.

The lady that cut my hair this evening was nice. We chatted, which I rarely do a lot of sitting in that chair. I think they probably appreciate the break, usually. But, tonight, we found ourselves talking about the weather and the upcoming snows — which aren’t forecast to be nearly as frightful as she seems to think.

She lives up on a hill and when it snows her car can slide down the driveway, even with the emergency brake engaged.

What happens if you park sideways, I asked.

She lives in a duplex. Parking sideways would block in her neighbors.

So they could park sideways, then, and you could call the boss tomorrow and say you’re blocked in?

This thought had never occurred to her. I could tell because I saw a glance in the mirror, where she was looking for the boss.

And my hair got cut, which was, perhaps, the productive highlight of the day.

Wednesday — Comments Off on Cough and sniffle
29
Jan 20

Cough and sniffle

The answer to yesterday’s question, of course, is neither new or original. But it is highly specific, and the reiteration of it here is, in of itself, an indictment. That answer is: we’ve run out of ideas.

Why, yes, there was an idea factory in St. Louis once upon a time, but a downturn in the economy wiped out all the big thinkers. Well, the ones with experience, anyway. You can always hire younger, less wisened and hardboiled thinkers. And so they did. Once those people got settled into their offices — by which we mean new, open floor plan with first-come, first-sat bean bags — they put their heads together and came up with this.

“Let’s just talk about what celebrities are saying on their Instagram stories!”

And, thus, all of the good ideas were gone. Like the clean water, and many people’s pensions and their faith in institutions.

I’ll try to come up with another answer about this later in the week, too. Maybe I’ll have an idea.

Anyway, another gray day has passed. Or so I’m told. I spent it all under the cold and caring embrace of fluorescent bulbs. The high, the weather sites tell me, was 34. The condition, I’ve been assured, was cloudy throughout.

I don’t know if you make prop bets on anything, but I — a person with no interest in gambling about anything — have recently learned of their existence. A radio show was talking about the over/under on the Super Bowl’s national anthem and someone mentioned this phrase, “prop bets” and so, of course, I had to google it. And now I feel much like a veteran bookie. Anyway, if you’re into prop bets, just bet that it will always be cloudy here, until about, April. You’ll win far more than you’ll lose, and the numbers will work out for you in the end, if you can get someone to take the action.

The forecasters are teasing us with unseasonably warm temperatures and possibly a glimpse of stellar fusion over the weekend. They’re also promising ice crystal precipitation before then.

My especially good cheer has to do with trying to avoid another cold. I had three or four days at the beginning of the year wishing for an end or change of symptoms. Things got better, and several days later the cough and lingering head cold side effects snuck away. Now, they are coming back. It starts with the itching throat — so if I’m not saying much, that’s why — and, after several days of being tired and yet unable to sleep well, it will end with me taking a lot of zinc and vitamin C and feebly conceding which symptoms I would keep, if I could just breath or not cough or whatever is vexing me the most. It isn’t the flu, but it isn’t fun.

We’ll have some more fun, tomorrow, though.

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