Well, Easter was lovely, and quiet. The weather was perfect and we spent the afternoon in the backyard, relaxing in the shade. We had lasagna for dinner, which was delicious. And it was all very calm and productive in it’s own way.
On Saturday we went for a bike ride in the wind.
Not pictured: the wind.
The gusts were gusty, and could push you around. There were two hills and a lot of wind. Did I mention the breeze? I did set eight PRs over the 25 Strava segments on the day’s route. Even my shadow was tired.
We saw this beautiful bit of scenery somewhere between here and there.
I was only able to manage that composition because of the headwind.
The cats were unimpressed by the breeze, housed as they are. They probably slept through it all.
Phoebe was doubly insulated in her little box fortress. (If the cats don’t take over the joint their boxes surely will.)
Poseidon was sitting on my lap the other night and stuck his head through the side of the rocking chair for some reason and it makes sense because you see him staring at the camera, but that’s the wrong takeaway. My phone wasn’t there when he put his head through the rails. The phone was a reaction to his more spontaneous action. The real conclusion, then, is that he’s a weirdo.
And here you can see the rare moment where they are getting along nicely.
These are the shows the students produced last night.
This one took a little doing, but it came together in the end.
And the talk show followed. They found themselves in a tiny bit of a time crunch, but you’d never notice it here if I didn’t point it out to you, which is a great credit to the people you see in the program.
And some of that rolled into the rest of the night, which was the post-production meeting of which I was enthusiastic about last night. It made for a late night, but a useful one.
This morning it was back in the studio almost first-thing for another show. And then I ended the day in the control room while another show was being produced until 7:30 p.m. That means I was there until 7:30 on a Friday, but it also means students were working at their craft that, late, too. You surely can’t question their dedication when you see them doing that.
But now, finally, the weekend. May yours be all the things you’ve been looking forward to all week.
IU / Thursday — Comments Off on Thursdays are the days that fall into place first01 Apr 21
I wore an eggshell blue shirt and stuffed a bright yellow pocket square in my jacket and said “This, finally, is spring time!”
And this morning we had snow flurries. It is April. We are fools.
But it was nothing but mildly demoralizing. The day was the day and the day was gray. The Yankee and I had lunch together after her class. She returned to research, I returned to the office and, then, the studio.
The studio was full of people, a delightful condition in April. There’s always a bit of drift owing to competing interests and other jobs and so on. But we were full up tonight. Happy, energetic people making shows about sports.
We had a nice long talk after the shows, and the sports directors were a-buzz with the possibilities of what is to come. They’re thinking the right way, aiming the proper direction, and they must just have the energy for it. I told them they’re at a hinge point. Each year is an installment. In 2016 it was chaos. We spent 2017 stabilizing the thing, some positive things started happening. Then, in 2018, the students began building a lasting culture. Last year, 2019, they were working on making it professional. Today, that evolution continues.
These are small victories over the course of time, an organic thing built by dozens of people. Some of them are just names to the students doing it now. Most would be complete strangers. That’s the way of it, but it’s a great shame.
There are the tiniest little elements of a lot of people — from bits of script artifacts to music, from shot selections to graphics — built into the shows they shot tonight. Some are off working in TV across the country. Some people are at big national networks. And some are making their marks in other businesses entirely, but they were in the room too, somehow. Today’s successes from yesterday’s successes, and all that.
I’d write more, but it’d be too much and I have to be back in the studio in the morning anyway. And I’ll have some more shows to show you then.
I woke up feeling much better today than I did yesterday, to be sure. Yesterday, waking up was exhausting and a little painful. The aches and pains got better as the day progressed, and I rested a lot. Today I put my feet on the floor feeling normal and almost refreshed.
And then I walked the block-and-a-half into my building on campus and was utterly wiped out. Winded. Hands-on-my-knees just finished a sprint sort of condition. But it passed. And by the end of a day at the office I felt much better. I guess that’s what work will do for you sometimes.
By the time I took this photo, standing in the backyard and looking to the south-southwest at 8:10 p.m., I felt as normal as any other day.
And just like that sunset, he said poetically, my side effects with my second dose of the Covid vaccine are already fading into memory.
Now bring on those super powers.
Here are two shows I didn’t see produced last night, so we can watch them for the first time together. And it looks like they’re trying something a little new here. I could spell it out for you, but I don’t want to spoil your fun.
And from one masked up, socially distant show to another, here’s what’s up this week, with What’s Up Weekly. (It stinks that they have to do this in masks, but I’m proud of how they’ve gone along with that since they came back to campus, and how they’ve adapted to all the other things put before them. “You need a suggestion for how to talk about yourself in a job interview, talk about rolling with the punches and continuing to put your best foot forward, no matter what the old guy insists to foist on you as safety precautions,” that’s what I tell them.)
That was a fast show this week. I guess there’s not a lot going on. Good! It’s not just me …
More here in this, a no April Fools’ joke zone, tomorrow.
IU / photo / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on The only thing I didn’t phone in today was this post30 Mar 21
Took off from work today. Called in sick, by which I mean I woke up at about 7 a.m. and wrote a message in the Slack app and went back to sleep.
Here’s the bottom line. If you’ve ever been sick in your life you’ve felt worse than I do today. I almost have a headache. I almost feel like I have a sore throat. I have the mildest fever modern technology can observe. I am supremely tired. In fact, I’ve spent much of the day in bed. My chief complaint, then, doing my part to stay safe and help ensure the safety of the people around me, is general fatigue.
Well, I’m tired a lot anyway, so a long nap is a nice treat. And so long as I don’t have to move around a lot I can forget how weary I feel. Tomorrow will be a bit better, I’m sure. And the next day, too. And we’re already counting down the days to full vaccination, two weeks from yesterday.
After that we look forward to safely, carefully, seeing vaccinated family. My in-laws are already considering dates to visit, and that’s great! They’re vaccinated and outside their own two-week window, and so we can soon have a nice reunion soon, after some 17 months apart.
That’s what it will take, pragmatic choices, careful decisions. We’ve done that for a year. We’re comfortable continuing in that way. There won’t be any big crowded events or restaurants or exotic travel in our near future, but that’s OK. I appreciate the idea that we’re all a part of the field study. Experts are trying to determine how the vaccines and the real world are working together. And when you think of it in that light a slow and careful transition to more conventional behavior seems like obviously the right choice.
For the immediate future, then, my vaccine will feel a lot like a mental relief. The efficacy data of all of the shots are incredibly promising. People that have devoted their life to this work are very encouraged about what they’re coming to understand and what it will mean for us. And, until that’s written in stone, I can behave cautiously. I’ll be wearing masks at work for the foreseeable future anyway, but in two weeks I’ll feel better about our prospects in general. Some weight may be lifted. Perhaps I’ll lesson the decontamination procedures at the door of the house. Personal Space Guy won’t feel as invasive, eventually.
I’m still going to be mystified by Can’t Cover My Nose Man, though.
Now we’ve just got to get the rest of the populace on board. The concern has to be in the laggard adopters of the vaccine. We are all just treading water until everyone gets a bandaid on their arm.
I saved the cats until today, because it seemed like there wouldn’t be much more going on here. They are doing great, of course. Mostly because they did not get shots this week.
Phoebe has the serve.
She looks as tired as I feel, here.
I’m not sure what Poseidon was doing under the table, to be honest. Maybe he’s practicing to become a repair cat. Who can tell with him.
He seldom explains himself, after all.
Probably he spends most of his time wondering why we think he should feel compelled to explain himself. That’s a cat thing, surely.
There is a podcast to share. This is the one I recorded and edited last Friday. I referred to it vaguely in this space, as well. And now you can listen to it. It was a delightful conversation about children and teens and a year of Covid. There’s a fair amount of “Kids are resilient, but …” And it’s a fine conversation about a fascinating topic with, unfortunately, few definitive answers at the moment.
I came to find, after the fact, an old feature story about Jerry Wilde, the professor I’m talking with there. Some years back he received an organ transplant from a former student. What an impression one person must have made on the other, to inspire them to do so in kind.
And to wrap up a day where I’ve done nothing but sleep and have all of this to show for it, this is a show the late night crew shot in Studio 5. It’s getting meta and awkward, but that’s all in character.
