14
Oct 22

Just in time: the weekend

A busy week is over, a slow and peaceful weekend has been ordered and is now en route. You can track the package through late Sunday night.

My contribution to the cause today was this. I produced one more video we’ll send out to new students in the next few weeks. That’s four of these videos in the last three days. Now the videos are being edited. The videos, I am happy to say, were left in capable hands.

I’ve had a student work on these. She’s quite talented and I’m pleased that she’s taken on the role of being the project editor. Now I can just give her a few notes and, later, all of the credit for this effort.

We were shooting here yesterday, care to guess?

(Click to embiggen.)

Otherwise, today was fall break for students. So, even though I was working, it was a relatively quiet day. Just what I ordered. (You bet I tracked that package.) I think, though, I’ve hit various different stages in the last three weeks.

The Yankee crashed on Sept. 22nd and a week later had surgery. It was that day, after a week of very little sleep, when real, determined exhaustion set in.

The next day, her mother arrived and a little sleep happened in that second week, which helped a bit. Her mother left after a week. We were fortunate to have her here. Spirits were lifted and I returned to something akin to the normal Merely Very Tired.

Her friend, Anne, came to help this week. That’s been huge. She has basically taken over running the dinner show. Her help with the big and little things where she’s cheerfully pitched in this week was a game changer. I don’t know how to properly express my gratitude when she heads home tomorrow.

My lovely bride has now firmly entered recovery mood. A good surgery, time, good bones, her fitness, beginning physical therapy and Anne willing it to happen has probably done that. She is on schedule, but it’s a slow recovery and it isn’t easy. On top of everything else, she’s also pretty tired. Every time she moves at night she wakes up.

As for me, my circadian rhythm is such that I’d almost rather stay up all night than have a night’s sleep punctuated and interrupted by waking up. We spent two weeks waking up for medicine and I still wake up hearing her move most of the time.

So, in the middle of this week, an incredible sort of fatigue set in. I guess three weeks is the current limit of my first-stage endurance. (This is after the regular day-to-day stress, her bike crash earlier this summer, two other surgeries within the last year, the pandemic and whatever else … )

I stopped protesting about having help with dinner and only meekly protested when she beat me to the dishes last night.

So, after a semi-demanding week — and it should be fairly said that my bosses have been sympathetic and understanding about all of this — I am looking forward to staring mutely at the maple tree.

I’m hoping that, next week, she can finally get a full night of rest. Four weeks removed from the last one, she’s surely due. I might be, too.


14
Oct 22

Catober, Day 14


13
Oct 22

More things from a walk

This feels like the busiest week of the term, he thought with some trepidation, fearing that the thought alone would bring more in some not-too-distant week. This week, then, was perfectly neutral and doesn’t have any more, or less, work or stress than any other one before it, he tried, hoping to balance the karmic imbalances, but he knew it was a fib.

My contribution to the cause today was this. I shot and directed two promotional videos we’ll be releasing to incoming students sometime soon. One was in a darkened gym — couldn’t talk our way into getting the house lights brought up. It’s a straightforward monologue and we’re putting a lot of B-roll with it. The fun part, of course, was the creative challenge of finding making regular B-roll look intriguing and new. Another was a different monologue in a small room with the same concept. We’ll put B-roll with the presenter’s voiceover. Two of these in one day is plenty of a creative challenge for me.

Yesterday I directed another video. That one was a two-camera tracking shot that works through three rooms and lighting configurations. One guy talks for about 90 seconds.

I have one more of these to shoot, tomorrow.

The still ripening fruit from a sycamore tree. I think I took this one because everything is yellow.

But I took this one because, even though the leaves are yellow, the petiole is red.

I wanted to concentrate on the chokeberries — rich in pectin, so a fine candidate for tasty jams and jellies — but then I noticed the fine hairs, the trichomes on the leaves.

Look at the snout on this guy!

Here’s the nearby poke sallet. These berries are slightly toxic.

Seems odd to see a dandelion this late in the year, but that could just be me.

Weeds are only weeds if you don’t want them there. And if they flower, I sorta want to see them stay where they are.

How can this one little branch have berries of all of these different colors?

I forget why I took this photo, but now that I’ve stared at it trying to remember, I found that I sorta like the chaos of it anyway.

Some sort of cotton weed, ready to let go and spread seeds in an empty patch of land.

The fight for plant supremacy continues, no matter what happened in those videos I’m working on, no matter how warm or cool it is, or how tired or energetic you feel. There’s something comforting about that.

Unless these guys are trying to work their way onto your property.


13
Oct 22

Catober, Day 13


12
Oct 22

And now, photos from a short walk

The light was just right, I wanted to go outside and stare at small things for a few minutes, and so I did. This is what I saw on my little journey.

Some things out there are still getting ready to bloom. Hope in October, harbinger of winter.

Some thorns are just … excessive. Some excessiveness is simply thorny.

I wonder, if this leaf looked different even 18 hours earlier. I wonder what it might look like in a day or two, if I could find it again.

It seems awfully convenient that some of these fruits split open for easier access for the birds and squirrels and what not.

These still have a way to go, I guess, but I like the way one part of the branch reminds you of what is missing.

A bit of one of the local sycamore’s bark.

Those trees have such great character.

It is entirely possible that we can see all the colors of autumn in this one beautiful little leaf.

Oh, and this from another sycamore. One of the leaves, still hanging on its branch, managed to catch a bit of sycamore bark.

I like that it was holding onto it. I’ve wondered all night how that happened. Now you will too. Let me know if you figure it out.

More bark, different species.

There are a number of reasons this could be happening. Some of them are normal and natural. The reasons behind this specific instance will also remain a mystery.