photo / podcast / Tuesday — Comments Off on I produced a new-old show and you can listen to it here
16
Jan 18

I produced a new-old show and you can listen to it here

I drove on this today:

Fortunately, most of the roads between here and there and back again weren’t like that. Just the first road and, logically the last road.

Now, what you can’t see, because I faced the wrong way for that photograph, was the house about four doors up the road. The man that lives there runs a landscaping company and, this time of year, he also does some road plowing. I know this because he has two pickup trucks and he puts a plow on both of them and then leaves them on the side of the road.

There’s probably an insurance issue at play here. And I’m not being mean-spirited; just yesterday I saw the guy do two really thoughtful snow-related acts of kindness for strangers. But, man, drop the plow and dry the road.

I’m thinking of going door-to-door and collecting a little extra gas money for the guy. How much would it take to plow one simple street a few times? I bet I could get that after just a few doorbells.

The mighty Jordan creek River has frozen over again. Just on the surface this time, and not quite to the extent that it did a few days ago. I’m assuming there are names and ways to measure and express all of that. Other than, “Wow, a moving body of water has frozen. Again. That’s an eight on the Demoralization Scale.”

Ahh, but it looks pretty you say, sure:

Know what looks better? Viscosity.

I have re-started an old podcast series. It might sound familiar to you. Problem not. It was always small and humble. And, guess what, it is going to stay that way! The premise seems to work, though. I invite guests, media members and people who just read a lot of news, and ask them to tell us about the most interesting story they’ve found that day.

And so here’s my colleague, Joe Coleman, on the re-launch episode, talking about, well, you’ll see:

I put together the music this weekend. A little jazz drum sound, some Brazilian guitar and a Cuban horn. I like how peppy it feels. But most importantly, what did you think of the show? Leave me a note in the comments. And then come help me clear off the neighborhood road.

adventures / Monday / photo — Comments Off on It snowed a fair amount
15
Jan 18

It snowed a fair amount

Signs, we all see them. We see so many of them that we tend to tune them out. But we should really pay more attention. Consider:

“Crazy weather! Snow & ice is coming?”

Look, I’m not here to pick on the nice people at the hardware store. And they are very nice, I visit there a fair amount. I won’t even make a joke about their forecasting abilities. First, they work in hardware sales, not weather forecasting. Second, I don’t know when they put that message up. It could have been before all of this came down on Friday. Like I said, we tend to tune signs out.

But can we give a nod to the punctuation there? I feel like a lawn sprinkler has just come alive, gained sentience and learned part of our language, but none of our syntax, while I standing nearby reading a label on salt spreaders.

I’ve maybe spent a little too much time over in their paint and wood stain section, and the fumes in the fertilizer area can get to you, too, but I think they might be a bit cavalier with their punctuation.

My exclamation point, exclamation point view all weekend:

Since it started snowing on Friday morning, and we’d done all of our shopping and prep work around the house and made sure we had no plans, we just sat there, looked out at that and read, all weekend. It was terrific.

We also let Allie, The Black Cat, out to explore in it:

During some snow last winter we took her out on the porch, but she wandered around for a few minutes yesterday afternoon. She’s not an outdoor cat, but in her heart she’s an intrepid explorer of things close to the house. And if she can find dirt, she will roll around in it. Snow, well, it felt weird in between her pads, but she didn’t mind traipsing around in it after a minute or two.

You could tell, though, she knows she’s an indoor cat, and this is not cool:

Me? I’m nice and warm:

I have a lot of shirts from school colleges all over. I like the ones that are named after people or tiny places, rather than big cities or states. And this one is a small private school just outside of Philadelphia. My god-sisters-in-law went to school there and they had an extra shirt and it came to be mine.

The school is named after Zacharias Ursinus, a 16th century German theologian. That’s the Latin name he gave himself, which all the cool kids did back then. But his was a pretty direct translation. His given name was Zacharias Baer. Baer, Bears. Get it?

I’m sure all of the freshmen learn that before the snow falls on their first winter at ol’ UC.

Friday / Indiana / Instagram / IU / photo / Twitter — Comments Off on They’re good at taking care of the roads here
12
Jan 18

They’re good at taking care of the roads here

Look how pretty! Snow falling on our building on campus …

And from inside that building, from a corner window in an unused office on the fifth floor …

All of the schools and the city government closed down. We worked. And the road crews did too …

Sorta …

Happy weekend!

adventures / errands / Thursday — Comments Off on Winter is actually coming
11
Jan 18

Winter is actually coming

It is going to snow tomorrow. It is raining and will continue to rain and then the rain will turn into snow. We are properly provisioned. We have visited the stores and braved the crowds. I saw a Cadillac parked in a handicapped parking space at the grocery store. The driver had cared in equal parts about driving the right direction up and down the parking lot lanes, parking in the actual space and in displaying a handicapped sticker or hangtag, which is to say not at all.

I have laundered all of the clothes. If the power goes out and never comes back, my wardrobe will be in decent shape for a while.

We are prepared to salt the driveway. For not the first time I wondered if they colored this salt a blueish-green to keep people from trying to eat it. Fortunately the cars are already set for cold conditions, which we’ve been in for … oh some amount of time not yet approaching demoralizing.

But there’s no need to worry about all of that. We’re going to have a weekend of peacefully reading and doing nothing and loving every bit of that.

We won’t wake up to a winter wonderland tomorrow, it is going to appear all around us as we work and play.

errands / photo / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on Things you write in and on
10
Jan 18

Things you write in and on

I bought some new notebooks the other night. I have many notebooks and notepads, you see. Some I use. At the office, I work from a stack of legal pads, with each one corresponding to a different role or set of running concerns. At home I have a nice stack of old notebooks and pads and things that I’ve accumulated over the years — and years isn’t overstating it. None of them are of an special high quality, they were meant to be scribbled and written on, but for whatever reason I find I seldom use them. And when I do find a need to write in one, I have the worst time deciding which one I’m going to mark up.

But when I’m on the go I’ve found that I enjoy the one-subject, 100-page, seven-inch by five-inch spiral notebook. They fit in my bag, they are inexpensive, they come in many colors and so I can use one for each subject and they are spiral bound, which is just easier somehow.

And so, having purchased a new handful of those to compliment the two older ones, I can pare some stuff down. I have lecture notes and interview notes and random notes to myself and scribbles between me and whoever I was sitting next to at the time and all kinds of things in those two notebooks. Some of that information is still useful. Some information really needs to be separated, which I spent a bit of this evening doing. (My life, now featuring a notebook of things that just needed to be separate unto itself, in a notebook that might one day see eight percent of its pages put into use.)

While I was leafing through the pages, trying to decide if I should keep this section, or tear it out or transcribe this specific page into a new book, I ran across this page:

I’ve no idea what I was going for here.

As ever, the web helped me figure it out:

I thought that, somehow, someone’s guess might jog my memory, but I’m still at a loss. Leave your theories on what this note could possibly mean in the comments!

I visited the surplus store this evening. This is where the entire university system sends its gently and heavily used products when they’ve reached the end of their time on campus. You can find deals on clothes to cleats to sheets to desks and chairs to high quality picture frames there. So it is good to visit every once in a while, and they have later hours on Wednesday, so I can stop in on the way home and, tonight I was going with a purpose. We basically needed a computer stand and I thought I’d start looking for something I could halfway modify.

And wouldn’t you know it, they were having a half off sale tonight. And wouldn’t you know it, right by the door:

So I consulted with HQ, we took some measurements both of this lectern and of where it might need to go and, long story short, we now have a lectern at home.

What, you don’t?

I was standing in line, beating out some random rhythm with my fingertips and the couple behind me called me out on it. I thought they were trying to get me to stop, but they were just making idle talk while they stood in line with me. They were a little surprised a random guy would purchase a lectern. And they were pretty close to buying my story that I wanted it so I could practice classroom lectures at home.

In retrospect, if I’d told them about the notebook thing they would have absolutely bought that story.

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