family / photo / running / Tuesday — Comments Off on Plastic spatulas are the key to faster paces
17
Dec 19

Plastic spatulas are the key to faster paces

I had the great good fortune to visit with my grandfather today. We’re trying to talk him into going to dinner with us tomorrow night. I’m sure he will, but we just have to work on him a bit more. We are determined and persuasive.

We also stopped by to see my aunt and uncle, who married us in 2009. (And I officiated his daughter’s wedding in 2016, but that’s a different story, I suppose.) Sat with them for a bit and then strolled into town to do town things. There are the regular provisions to procure. And then, of course, there are three or four items we can’t find at our own local, inferior grocery store. Each trip we return with cans of this and boxes of that.

It’s never cans of that and boxes of this. Have you ever wondered why that is?

I think it is because the this would run right out of the boxes. Leak right through the paperboard, right onto the shelves and floors.

I stood on a ladder for a good long while yesterday. It was time for the annual light bulb changing event above my mother’s television. It requires a great climb and I am still agile enough for the work. The hardest part is moving a giant ladder in from the garage and into the living room.

Since I brought the ladder in for that, there was no reason to take the ladder out the back and get onto that gutter my mother asked me to look into. There was a slow drip, for days, she said, after a big rain. And could I see what was going on?

What was going on was that the gutter needed to be cleaned. The backyard of the house sees great sun, but that gutter does not, and the asphalt runoff from the shingles was just sliding down into the gutter, never drying, always accumulating and now, in spots, had started growing moss.

Grab yourself a spatula and some bags and start removing the gunk. If you can find the right size spatula or spoon, or garden hoe, you can make shorter work of it. Because it is a long gutter, I filled up most of a garbage can.

It was also a very tall ladder. And it might have impacted my run today, which was a picturesque and slow 3.69-mile experience.

I discovered a road running alongside the nearby high school. The map tells me it runs all the way to the water. I didn’t grow up here, and I didn’t run all the way down the road, so the road was new to me and I’m taking the map’s word for it.

But that first little bit of that new road:

It turns out, you can miss the pines. This morning I realized I miss the pines.

I ran about six-tenths of a mile down the road. It sounds like nothing, a thousand yards, but it felt like a lot. Anyway, the road apparently branches off three different times before they all drop down to the river and a little creek inlet. I didn’t go that far because life has taught me that if you get to the water you’re going downhill. Which means you have to go uphill.

And none of that for me, thanks. I just ran through pastures and by one little house. There are more down by the water. I know they are there because several cars passed me by. Several nice cars.

I always wonder what that’s like. In my neighborhood there are a lot of sidewalks and walking paths. And of course there are a lot of young people running around. You begin to see the same people if you are out there enough. But, here, where we are running just now, it’s just roads and houses and businesses. There are broad shoulders on the highway, but I can’t recall having ever seen a lot of people running around these parts.

I bet the local folks don’t see a lot of people running around here, either. And I bet these last two days cars going by have been wondering what that crazy fool is doing out there.

I wonder that every time, too. But at least I am wondering in slightly warmer temperatures this week.

(Spatulas are good for cleaning gutters. If you have an old plastic one you can cut it to the proper width. A good spatula speeds up the process, then, hopefully reducing the time you spend on a ladder.)

adventures / family / Instagram / memories / Monday / photo / running / Twitter — Comments Off on Beginning the holiday travels
16
Dec 19

Beginning the holiday travels

The thing we celebrated this weekend:

That was yesterday. Still a good story, still the best story.

On Saturday we went for a run.

This was notable only for two reasons. It was my third day of running in a row. Eleven miles since Thursday! I guess I am better, or healed or whatever, and starting to round into shape. Good thing, too. I’m running out of “first time since” sort of incidents.

But now, I guess, this means the real running can begin.

The other thing for which this run was notable:

These skies. Good gracious. Hang all this, I say. We’re leaving tomorrow! Which was yesterday. Which we did; which was the plan anyway.

And so we’ve come south. We had barbecue last night with friends in Nashville.

And then we drove on, getting in late last night to begin the holiday visiting circuit. This week, with my folks. And so it was that we ran in Alabama this morning. It was gray. Tonight it stormed, even. Hey, it’s warmer.

Ran by these:

Local legend* has it that the only thing two young people loved more than lions was each other. One was the mayor’s kid. And the other’s dad was from the wrong side of the tracks. Their parents wouldn’t agree to the relationship, and so the young woman jumped into the river. In his grief, the boy followed.
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When they pulled them out downstream, the two young people had turned into these lion statues. The local school honors their love to this day.

My run today was awful – and I had a rest day yesterday and everything! — I suppose the long, loooong car ride doesn’t really count as a rest day. But we ran through the neighborhood my folk’s house is in, and then down to the high school, where there is a track, which was closed to us because of construction. So we ran in the school parking lot and an adjoining road and probably somewhere else and it was all awful.

I did get to see a mosaic, though:
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There was a storm this evening. Bad. Violent. We watched it on the radar and we watched it in the yard. At least until the lightning rolled close by. We weren’t far off from going into a room in the basement — as a precaution I’d already gone down stairs to turn on all of the lights and find the appropriate spot — when it shifted just enough to the south.

A dangerous line came through, the worst of landing just a few miles away from where we are. Some houses were destroyed and, as I said on air more times than I care to count: we’ll have to wait until the sun comes up tomorrow to know the full extent of the damage.

Dinner was at a little restaurant that sports this statue near the door.

Yes, I know.

It’s a quiet place, being out of the way from anything, but it is pretty good.

We may be going back when my step-father gets back in town. Oh no. Más enchiladas. Happy me.

*The local legend that I just made up.

Friday / IU / video — Comments Off on We made it — last day of the term
13
Dec 19

We made it — last day of the term

A video our student-employees produced today, the project being the video game design student’s big contest. The student groups pitch their games to industrial professionals. Many teams enter. One will be crowned a winner … at some anticlimactic later time.

Video looks pretty good though. This is the second thing that we’ve produced, at the school-level, that has been entirely run by students. It’s something I suggested about four years ago — something that was probably already an idea — and we’ve finally realized it this fall. And while this particular pitch project is now a traditional event, this is the first time we’ve put it in the studio.

Stars aligned nicely. They did a fine job with it.

Those are the students who are working for the Media School. And now a moment about the students working for the television station.

All of which is pretty great, considering they have to put up with the likes of me. And you just know they’re happy that today is the last day of classes.

photo / Thursday — Comments Off on The best views
12
Dec 19

The best views

Every now and again you should really consider how far digital photography processing has come. You can do this with the camera you have right now, if you shoot something in the dark, and quickly, and from the hip, perhaps while driving slowly, as if you are preparing for a turn.

Which is what I was doing, having driven the last bit of the day’s drive west, it was time to turn south (ha!) into the subdivision where we keep all of our things. The way the house is oriented, the way things surround it, you get only the most brief sunset. So, sometimes, if the timing is right, I can see a bit of sunset on the ride to the house.

It was the second best view of the day.

The best view was having lunch with The Yankee. We don’t do a lot of food photography around here, so there’s not a picture, and I hope you’ll just take my word for it.

I guess, then, that makes this the third-best view of the day:

It was a five-mile run, the longest of my very slow rebuild. We have two solid three-mile routes in the larger neighborhood area, and there’s a solid 10K, too, but I’m just making stuff up at this point. The problem with running something in-between is that you have to get back to where it is warm, and dry, and where you don’t have to run. So there was some willful backtracking through another neighborhood. These were roads I ride on my bike. But that’s a different speed — which changes a lot of our perceptions – and in the daylight.

The house with the fountain, though, has found a Christmas duck.

It’s both genius and maniacal. Who would design this? Who would approve it? Surely there must have been a board meeting, a marketing whiz all agog over the idea — imagine the images in the bulk mailers — but an MBA asking How is this going to scale?

Market research, says the market research firm, says people with fountains need giant ducks with winter caps and scarves. And over the second martini that started to make a little sense to more people around the table. And here we are.

I can’t remember if I’ve seen this before. Last year, maybe. But it could be a false memory. How silly would it be, and how impressionable would the mind be, to think to itself, while you’re running “Oh, yes, this was here last year.”

So I’ll have to see if it is there next year. If I remember. On a day when I don’t have two other great views. This duck deserves a promotion.

Indiana / IU / maps / Wednesday — Comments Off on nasses Nickerchen
11
Dec 19

nasses Nickerchen

I saw this word used a few years back and immediately fell in love with it: administrivia. It is an American thing, of course, and apparently came out of the 1930s. Can’t imagine why. And it became popular in education circles in the 1960s. Can’t imagine why.

Which is not to say that we’re the only ones burdened with the thing. Administrivia is everywhere. But the way it’s used is delightful. Even summoning up the word is a judgement: This isn’t cool, I know, but I also know it is necessary, and know you know, by my using this word, that I know it isn’t cool. And maybe it isn’t even necessary, but that’s bureaucratic inertia, kid.

Even saying the word is a bit of a challenge the first few hundred times you do it. It makes you sympathetic to the German speaker’s use of komposita.

The first time I saw this word, administrivia, it was on a syllabus. Which was perfect. It was in a bold font. Which seemed useless.

Anyway, that was my day, dealing with the details that must be dealt with in order to do more interesting work.

There was the approval of travel funds, the approval of payroll and the sending out a contract which had most assuredly been sent before. Arrangements had to be made for an office key to be turned in, and the first question about the next term rolled in about that same time. Somehow, another approval was required for the same upcoming travel funds. This prompted a great many notes. There are always programming notes to consider, both looking back and looking forward. And then there were the emails, always there are the emails, and the brief doorway meetings and so on.

The Germans don’t seem to have a word for administrivia, which seems like it would be an embarrassing oversight on their part.

I did learn a fine German proverb looking for it though. Wer den Acker nicht will graben, der wird nicht als Unkraut haben.

Speaking of komposita …

Hey, it was either that or going long on this little news note today: Wet-Nap maker planning to build area production facility, add 90 jobs

Nice-Pak Products, a manufacturer of wet wipes for consumers, health care, food service and other commercial markets, announced plans Wednesday to build a 760,000-square-foot production and warehousing facility in Mooresville, creating 90 jobs.

The Orangeburg, New York-based company already employs 413 people at its existing administrative and production facility at 1 Nice Park Road in Mooresville. The company, which has 2,500 employees worldwide, has operated in Mooresville for 45 years.

A man named Julius had an idea and started it all. He and his son got in bed with Colonel Sanders, and then things really took off. It’s an industry that is projected to have compound annual growth of about seven percent over much of the next decade. Everyone needs clean skin, after all, and some of that growth is going to come from just up the road. And that’s 90 new jobs rolled into what is already that county’s biggest employer.

The company makes products as varied as Wet-Nap, Nice n Clean Wipes and Grime Boss. What, you didn’t think you’d diversify in the wet napkin game? There are all sorts of pre-loaded moisture needs out there, friend, and businesses have to meet those needs.

It isn’t clear from that brief story if this means an additional facility, or a full upgrade and replacement project. Here’s what they have now. The exterior looks as clean as you would expect of such an enterprise.

The new place will be about five miles down the road from the old place, which is opposite a concrete mix supplier. Adjacent to the new locale are a small car dealership and a gutter cleaning service. It just seems a logical place, said a guy who was counting on those civic tax breaks to build the new facility.

They’ll start moving dirt late next year. It’ll be a project where no one goes home with grime under their nails.

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