Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

IU / photo / television / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
27
Oct 21

Mrs. Cooley would be proud

I took this photo yesterday of a westerly-facing tree outside of our television studios and didn’t share it with you. Shame on me. The light was catching it so nicely, and everything. So here’s the westerly-facing tree.

Trees, of course, face all directions. That’s the sort of useful information that you keep coming back here for, I know.

And also this insight, a phrase I coined today, but a feeling that has long been on the mind of any expert who has ever talked about their craft to a non-expert.

Shortcuts used shouldn’t always be the shortcuts taught.

It had to do with a conversation about writing, and the root of it is the cliche, you have to know the rules so you can break the rules.

Or “learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist,” which is often attributed to Pablo Picasso, or “know the rules well, so you can break them effectively,” as the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso supposedly said. (And hasn’t the web ruined us on standalone quotes? I no longer believe anyone said anything, but that everything was said by Abraham Lincoln quoting Calvin Coolidge.)

I’m pretty sure I learned the theme from my algebra teacher, of all people. Learn the rules to break the rules. And that’s what algebra was like for me.

How I got through calculus and trig is something of an open mystery.

More time in the television studio tonight. It was the sports crew shooting tonight, and those shows will start to come online tomorrow.

Here are the news shows from yesterday, though. All the local that is news, and all the news that is local …

And the Halloween-themed show that I teased here yesterday …

Why do trees face all directions? It’s a question of survival to be prosperous. Tree branches grow to give the most leaves the most light, because light means they can run photosynthetic process. The rest is us being misanthropomorphic.

Catober / photo — Comments Off
27
Oct 21

Catober, Day 27

errands / friends / IU / memories / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
26
Oct 21

A day that always seemed difficult, but was actually easy

I went to the recycling center to drop off some expired fluorescent bulbs. (Our closets have fluorescent bulbs. I have questions.) There are … one, two, three, four, five recycling centers in this county. Of those five, only one accepts this sort of light bulb. It is not our usual recycling center, which is to say, the closest one. It is three miles away from that one, an improbable nine-minute drive. So maybe it’s the next closest, but when I got down there today …

Always read the website yourself, that’s what I’ve learned. And if you ever meet anyone in charge of the solid waste management office, ask about these seemingly arbitrary Open/Closed days.

So I went to Lowes, for the second time in three days, because that’s the way it works. Lowe’s is 6.4 miles and 12 minutes from that recycling center. And today I needed to pick up a toilet seat. Because I broke the one I’d installed just two months ago.

Whoever heard of that?

I walked down the correct aisle, around a slow-moving couple who were deliberately deciding among off-white bathroom fixtures, and found all of the toilet seats were blocked by a scissor lift. Eventually a person wearing the “I work here” red vest and the “but please don’t ask me about it” expression walked by. I asked her if she could move the store equipment. We discussed the issue and she found that what I wanted was only partially blocked, so she didn’t have to find a person to move the lift. She squeezed in between that and the aisle and grabbed the thing. That was easy.

Paid, walked out, thought about it and grabbed those light bulbs. Turns out Lowe’s accepts those for recycling. That was easy, too. A theme emerges.

I had lunch with my friend, and a former student, Auston Matricardi. He watches things, talks to people, assembles sentences and applies punctuation for a living.

He’s a sports writer. A pretty great one, too.

And the building behind us there is where I work, and where we met. He was also a sports broadcaster. He’s one of those people that’s capable of doing whatever is before him.

The sort that makes the rest of us jealous.

Videos from the studio … here’s the morning show. They talked to a tarot card reader. And they got a lot of tarot cards read. Then they visited a haunted house, and that part is highly amusing.

It’s a fun show, all new people, the crew is largely new, and they are coming into their own nicely.

And this show is brand new, one of two the student television station has launched this semester, a fun look at students making films.

And today they shoot the news shows. One, which I’m teasing here, had a Halloween theme.

You’ll see that tomorrow.

This evening I got home and removed the new broken toilet seat and installed the new new one. So scarred am I from recent projects that I feared the worst, but it was simple: remove two plastic screws on the old one and line up the parts for the two plastic screws of the new one.

I wonder if I can get my money back on a busted seat which is still well within the store’s general policy time. We’ll find out Thursday! (Update: I did.)

But there will be much more here tomorrow. Who knows what theme it will hold. Don’t miss out!

Catober / photo — Comments Off
26
Oct 21

Catober, Day 26

Monday / photo / podcast — Comments Off
25
Oct 21

Welcome to the last week of October

Here is a photo from a few days ago which I never shared. Shame on me. This would have been on a late afternoon walk, on a Monday.

I know generally where it is, but not the precise plant — that’d be taking a day’s notes a little too far, if you ask me. Somewhere nearby, though, on Saturday, another bush was showing off.

Hopefully some critter comes by and eats the berries soon. I don’t know that they’ll last much longer.

Anyone know what this is?

It is a clasping hinge for my china cabinet. My cabinet has four doors, and each door has two of these mounted inside. A little spearpoint is attached to the door and it slides through those spring-loaded rollers and that’s how the doors stay shut.

Anyway, the original piece broke last week. Looked around online. I found a lot of similar pieces that wouldn’t fit, and this guy which looked as if it would almost perfectly fit. When it arrived I was able to make it work without a problem. I’m assuming the patina on the clasp’s finish will catch up, eventually, not that anyone notices. My grandmother bought this china cabinet for my mother decades ago, and it has been handed down to me. This is the one piece I’ve had to replace on it. And I’d like to keep it that way.

We don’t always dine at the matching table, but when we do, it’s nice to think of the memories that come with that furniture. All the card games and board games and family meals and life lessons and good jokes that have come along where that china cabinet and table are a set piece. And now I’ve put a small little bit into it, too. No one will ever know, no one ever needs to. Sometimes it is more than enough that a thing has happened.

Which is an awful lot to say about plastic fatigue, an hour or so scrolling websites and a two-screw installation. But that’s how our dining room rolls.

We got our flu shots yesterday. Set up an appointment in the morning. Walked right in on time, a woman asked us the “Have you been sick?” questions for surely the 1,400th time that day, and waved us on to the next point. Someone pointed us to an open table. We walked up, a young woman scanned the ID cards, her colleague administered the shots. It was very easy.

There were no lollipops. I am writing a complaint email tomorrow. Just as soon as I have feeling in my upper bicep again.

Just kidding. Feels great. Even the bandage did a great job, showing off some quality 21st century adhesive staying power.

Also, should you get a flu shot? I asked that question of the university’s chief medical officer last year in the context of masks and social distancing. (Do you remember all that?)

On Topic with IU · On Topic with IU — Quick Hit – Flu shots

That still seems like sound logic.

As to the masks, the county we are in voted last week to extent their indoor mask rule through November. NO one at Lowe’s today got that memo. It was much better at some of the other places I had to go. I feel as though I spent all day going from store to store, mostly because I did.

Look, here’s a picture I took outside of Kroger, at the end of the day, on my third venture out.

That’ll do. Catch ya here tomorrow for more Catober and some other fine stuff.