Covid-19 / family / Monday / photo / swimming — Comments Off on What I’ve been doing with myself
17
May 21

What I’ve been doing with myself

Last week we were on the road. It was my first long trip in the car since the lockdown. I don’t think I’ve driven out of the county since then, but we left the state last week. A few weeks ago my happily vaccinated in-laws came to visit, and last week it was time to see my family — the vaccinated ones, anyway — so we drove down to Alabama.

We had some rained a few times on the drive, but mostly we saw dramatic clouds.

They add to the scenery in places where there isn’t much else to look at.

My mother gave me the biggest hug and said I owed her 17 days worth of hugs. I’m not sure how she arrived at that number, but I didn’t question the formula. I expected she would come up with a much higher number. Oddly, the number of days didn’t decrease over the duration of our visit. Canny as ever, my mother.

It was nice to see her, of course, and my grandfather. Both have gotten The Shot. They found a drive-up deal and are proud they didn’t even have to get out of their cars to get dosed. They’ve been quite careful and safe and kept themselves isolated. We’re the most people they’ve each seen outside of a few doctor visits.

So my grandfather came over and I got to give him a hug. What a lovely feeling. We also had hamburgers.

He brought his dominoes and proved how bad we are at math. We are bad at math. Of course he plays all the time — that’s their Sunday thing, they have church via Facebook or television and then he breaks out the bones. Of course he’s played his whole life. The stories he could tell you about his parents counting the domino dots … while I’m over here pointing and mumbling to myself.

They really wore us down in the third round.

When we weren’t losing at dominoes The Yankee got in a few swims. She had a race coming up and has been in the water only once since the weather turned last fall. So we went Rocky IV last week. She donned her wetsuit, tied a rope around her waist and swam while I held her in place.

She had a great race Saturday, finishing just off the podium.

We also made sure to get a few Publix subs during our visit. Around here you have to drive several hundred miles to get a good sandwich.

And then we returned on Thursday evening, with much better weather around us.

That’s such a long drive. But it was a lovely and long overdue visit.

Everyone is doing pretty well, considering. It’s a “not ideal, but we’re still fortunate in a great many ways” sort of circumstance. Normal enough, I guess, or maybe that’s the catching up. It was nice to stare at other walls, to sit at the pool and see and be seen. Fortunate in a great many ways, indeed.

adventures / Friday / photo — Comments Off on Friday in the garage
07
May 21

Friday in the garage

Slept in, enjoying a day off. Fiddled around catching up on the day’s reading until lunch. Had a sandwich and then went to the garage.

I have been trying to get into the garage all week. But events, and timing and desire and other things, so events, have conspired against me. Today, though. Nothing on the calendar, so to the garage!

Moved the car out so I could get to a saw. I had some wood scraps that needed to get trimmed down. Do away with the pointy bits and save the better stuff on the end.

Ahh, the smell of sawdust! Smells like progress!

And then I straightened things up along that wall of the garage. It needed it. It needed cleaning more than I realized.

Doing that I found a piece of lumber that would work for something my beautiful bride asked me to make for her. So I cut that down to size. And then cut it again. And then tried to square it up. And cut it a 1/16th of an inch off the desired dimensions. Fortunately that’s not integral to the project. Nor is the squareness of all the ages. Somewhere there’s a 1/32 inch of a wave in the thing and we don’t care.

And then I sanded and sanded: 100, 150, 220, 400, 600. It’s almost furniture quality.

It’s just a rectangle of pine. It took no time, but the grain is clean and has some nice character when you can see it up close. Most importantly, she’s pleased. Next The Yankee will stain it — she likes the staining part, everyone does. Then we’ll put some legs on it to make a nice monitor riser on her desk.

This evening we went for a nice walk in between the rain drops. Standing on the cement garage floor and then walking three miles or so. I was starting to feel that. Thanks, old sneakers!

Ribs and re-runs for dinner this evening, and then an early morning for a bike ride. All of this makes for a nice way to start a weekend. Still didn’t get to some of the projects I’d imagined for myself last weekend. But it’ll keep.

And this will have to, as well. I’m taking a few days off from here. So this may hold us over until May 17th. There will be plenty of things to see here then.

Until then, though, you can keep up with things on Twitter and check me out on Instagram, too. And did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? Phoebe and Poe have an Instagram account. Follow the cats.

IU / Thursday — Comments Off on Commence summer cruise speed
06
May 21

Commence summer cruise speed

Spent a little time in a podcast booth this morning. I had to record someone saying words. She did a nice job of it. I think she got what she wanted on the third or fourth take. Not bad for someone not used to talking into a microphone. Pretty good for me, some days, and I’ve done this for a while.

And then we moved camera stuff around and three different a capella groups came in, spaced out six feet apart, took off their masks and spit at one another.

I stayed in a different room for that part, thanks.

But I could still hear them! And they sounded great.

They’ll be in a program later this month, and that’ll be nice.

After we returned all the production equipment back to where it normally goes I went back to my office and did office things.

It was otherwise gray and damp and rainy and that was the day.

I’m taking a few days off of work now that things are now approaching the summer pace, and today it really started to feel like it.

Covid-19 / ICR / IU / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on Results: Still happily negative
05
May 21

Results: Still happily negative

Here’s a new thing. I’m running a new campaign that aspires to highlight our scholars in the building. We’ve been mulling this over for a while, but we’re here now. I’m basically in a soft launch, because everything feels like a soft launch right now. So it’s a little social media showing off the thoughtful and important work of people. The idea is that they’ve done the hard part, let us help show it off just a smidge more.

So here’s Jess Tompkins, who has just completed her doctoral work, talking about the research. Kinda neat.

All summer I’ll tinker with settings and styles and, one day, I’ll get it just right. Perhaps, by the time the fall rolls around and we’re back to the new normal — har, har — this will be a part of something larger that really brags on people.

It’s a thing to do.

Walked over to the IU Auditorium for a mitigation test today. They’ve been running spit tests on campus all year, and since November or so, they’ve been doing the lab work here, too. All a part of the work the university has put into keeping students and employees safe. It hasn’t been perfect, what could be? But it has been beyond substantial. It has been thoughtful. It has been effective. It’s gratifying to know that the people that are making the really big decisions are handling things like this conscientiously, and are taking the best advice of the science — from their own experts and points beyond — and applying it as best they can. It’s been the best part of the year.

They did all of this testing with some thought, and some randomization. So it might be that you lived in a place where it would have been difficult to control spread, so maybe you got called in a lot. You might have had some exposure, so you got called in. Or it could be, like me, you got something akin to a jury duty lottery. Sometimes it is just your turn. But, soon after the vaccines rolled out — get your shot — the university decided that once you were fully vaccinated you didn’t need to do mitigation testing anymore.

But you can still schedule your own, even if you’re vaccinated. Looking after people. Anyway, on the walk over:

Anyway, that was one bit of the walk. I enjoy that little stand of trees. Usually a photograph is about timing, but if there’s any sun in the sky it’s the right time to take some kind of picture right there.

Walk in, scan your ID card, get a little vial, spit in it a bunch, and then wipe it down and put it in a little tray. Later they’ll send you an email letting you know how it went. The turnaround today was just over six hours.

Still happily negative.

This is the week where I begin to rediscover free time. During the regular school year I am on campus until all hours of the evening on two or three nights a week, getting done just in time for a late dinner and dishes and trying to stay awake so it feels like I have some free time to read or watch TV or maybe accomplish some minor task around the house. (I usually don’t.) The other days of the week I get to the house just in time to go ride a bike or do something like that. It fills the schedule six days a week, somehow.

But now I can go back to being done at 5 p.m., or thereabouts, and have full, consecutive, evenings to myself. There’s still bikes to be ridden and stuff to do around the house from time-to-time, but it feels different. It’s a part of it, rather than an obstacle to it, somehow.

Monday we went for a bike ride. Yesterday I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I mostly did nothing. Today we were supposed to go for a bike ride, but I got a late start back and so we postponed it and the timing was such that I couldn’t start in on something before dinner. So, again, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

But we had dinner earlier, and at a reasonable hour. A nice change of pace.

Some nights during the school year it’s 9 or later before dinnertime.

All of that wears on you a bit, is all, and when the summer comes I am happy to finally work my way toward something a little less clock-driven.

It’s always nice to see how the other half live.

IU / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on The cats are in this one
04
May 21

The cats are in this one

I did an interview today, and then I edited the video. And then I played with the mysterious settings in Adobe Premiere. Everything worked fine, after a subsequent amount of time. It’ll be up tomorrow.

You learn a lot by being self-taught. That’s what I’ve learned, every time. I spend a lot of time thinking about that when I’m messing around with something I’ve taught myself.

Somewhere in all of that is the joy of learning. That’s probably one of those things that means different things to different people, but to me, it’s pretty straightforward. Instilling the willingness to continue to learn in someone, because they understand the delight of discovery, is to give them the drive to want to do it throughout their lives. And what a gift that is, a gift that defeats the fear, the intimidation of learning new things later. Then a person isn’t stagnant. They continue to grow throughout their lives. What a joy that is.

You know people who just sparkle in knowing a new thing. They positively glow at the opportunity. And you know people who blanch at the prospect.

It’s funny, I used to think of this in the context of the elderly. You see it in people a lot earlier, though. And lately I find myself wondering — not about the old guy who knows he’s lived and seen and learned it all, and yet there’s still so much! — but about that middle-aged guy who thinks he’s lived and seen and learned enough.

And he’s going to stagger through the next several decades like that?

That sounds lonely, and depressing, doesn’t it?

So the joy of learning, of discovery, of inquisition, of invention and creation, it shall always be.

These aren’t the problems of philosophy, but, then, it’s only Tuesday.

If it’s Tuesday, that means yesterday was Monday. And I didn’t do the cat feature. So let’s get to that here.

Phoebe did not like this email.

She did not like it at all.

We were sitting out back and Poseidon desperately wanted to be involved.

Really he wanted to find some place to roll around out there, but we’re on to his game.

And now they’re both onto the idea that there’s a chipmunk living in the back yard. If you’ll just follow their eyes here, you’ll see him too.

One day, they are thinking in their little kitty brains, I will catch you and your days of blissfully tormenting us will be over.

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