
Oct 23
Happy Friday 13th
Dates only stand out to me when I have something big scheduled for the day. I’m a day-of-the-week sort. I don’t think I always was. Once, in the dimly lit and fuzzy-around-the-edges Before Times, I might have been the sort that operated by dates. But if I know anything about a schedule now it’s because I have routinely reminded myself what day of the week it is, or looked at a screen which can tell me definitively.
I don’t believe this has hurt me in any way. Not a lot of missed meetings or anything like that. But I just don’t think much about the dates. And so it was late, today, before I even realized it was the 13th. Which is odd, because I had a pretty strong, I mean celestially strong, fix on Thursday being the 12th.
Who can say why these things are the way they are. You might argue that it’s an avoidance of something or other, but I think of it as an acceptance of what is. And what it is, at this moment, is the weekend. For this knowledge I thank the egg timer in my head that is forever counting the days of the week, and not simply “the dates.”

We enjoyed a late afternoon bike, just an hour jaunt around the usual jaunty loop. For me, the main roads went like this: fine, then fast, and then slow, then falling-behind-bad, then the don’t-wait-for-me pronouncement which usually comes with falling behind. And then there was the road where I thought I put on a Herculean surge, but it wasn’t, not really. After that I got dropped again and decided to add seven or eight more miles, for fun. So I turned my hour or so into a 26 mile ride.

I have a new idea for a video I want to shoot on the bike, but I don’t feel comfortable enough to do it just now. My wrist still hurts a tiny bit from falling on it last weekend and I didn’t really want to contort it for the experiment.
But that meant I had plenty of time for shadow selfies. My shadow had a pretty decent ride.

During the last little bit, right through here, the sun started losing it’s punch. Between the weakening sun, the moisture on my skin and the breeze, you could tell that all of the changes are coming. Fight it, ignore it, acknowledge it, doesn’t matter. A rain system this weekend will be pushed through by a cold front and that’ll be that.

Which means sleeves and pants (and gloves!) on the bike, so I can still enjoy afternoons finding trees that hang out over roads for photos like this.

But not tomorrow. Not in the rain. Maybe on a partly sunny, breezy Sunday afternoon. Or a similar Monday. Highs approaching 59 degrees both days. Huzzah.
I kid, of course. I’m going to be optimistic about this winter. First time in many years! I have resolved it so. I am going to be optimistic about the winter so I can enjoy the autumn. I am resolved.
This is my resolve.

Here’s the last video from the Queen + Adam Lambert show. I got a good eight days of videos out of this, and so we’ll close the week with the full encore. “Ay-Oh,” “We Will Rock You,” “Radio Ga Ga” and We Are The Champions. Whereas there was someone sitting near us who was surprised and excited that they worked “Bohemian Rhapsody” into the main set, no one in the building was surprised by the encore. Pleased, sure. But you could almost hear people clicking through the catalog in their head. Everyone knows what’s coming here. Everyone knew they had gotten a great show, and they were pleased they’d heard so many of their favorites. (I only missed out on one song, but that’s understandable.)
None of the songs in the encore are among my favorites, but they can’t all be on your short list, and it was still great to see Roger Taylor and Brian May blast and bang their way through the standards. It’s fan service at it’s finest, and there’s nothing in the world wrong with that.
Queen + Adam Lambert have 17 U.S. dates remaining on this leg of their tour. It’s a great show. If you are so inclined, get tickets. You’ll have a fun time. You don’t need the $1,000 tickets, either, to sing along and have all of the Queen memories.
Have a happy Saturday, the 14th!
Oct 23
‘Who waits forever anyway?’
I turned off my alarm and went back to sleep this morning and that was not the plan. I figured I’d have one of those little peaceful moments and then get up and, wait a minute, my lovely bride is asking me if I’m going to get up today. Of course I am, it’s only been … 90 minutes since my alarm went off.
The good news is that my alarm was set well before I needed it today anyway. I had an apple, got dressed, finished pulling my things together and we went to campus, and arrived a few moments early, as it turns out.

I spent six hours in a classroom today. Most of that time talking about video editing software. I used these clips, just stuff I found in the yard yesterday, as examples.
That video isn’t what they saw, but those shots figured into the How To of it all. I think it went OK. Next time, maybe, I’ll do that differently. If for no other reason than I think I was beginning to talk myself silly the second time through. Things were shared. Things were learned. I got thanked a few times.

That was one of the views on the drive home, which currently takes place in that 20-minute window between daylight and the gloaming. It’s such a romantic moment, before the darkness creeps upon us. I think we were talking about sports or some silly policy or something. We were in the car, but it was still a moment, and we might have trampled it a bit.

Just three more Queen + Adam Lambert videos from last week’s Baltimore concert. I feel like I have an obligation to share the North American tour opener. Also, it’s earned me 52,000 page views in the last week … so, yeah, you milk that.
“Who Wants to Live Forever” comes out of the 1986, psuedo-soundtrack to the Highlander movie. The song peaked at No. 24 in the UK. Certified gold there, and in Italy, it never did anything here, except stick in the heads of people who liked that movie franchise.
And then there’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I don’t know how many songs have been on charts around the world across four decades and in two centuries, but this is one of them. (Yes, the opera is the original band recording. They couldn’t figure out how to do it live way back when, and that’s stayed the traditional performance version.)
“Bohemian Rhapsody” is also the most streamed song from the 20th century and, in 2021, it was certified Diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units.
I wonder how the rights holders will re-introduce it to new audiences once more in the 2040s and 2050s.












