adventures / Italy / Monday / photo / video / weekend — Comments Off on Where are we?
14
May 18

Where are we?

This guy just sits up there all day and keeps time. Him, a roller and a lonely squeegee. I wonder how long it took to create that. At least an hour, right? And when does that guy gets a break, who keeps things on schedule up there?

This particular art is in the Amsterdam airport:

Oh, by the way, we’re traveling. And Amsterdam was a layover, but also your first hint. We left Indianapolis this evening — it was supposed to be this afternoon, but that flight got canceled for whatever reason. So, instead of going through Detroit, we went through Minneapolis:

We saw cool clouds. I sent a picture of this to one of my former students:

He said that’s a virga cloud, which produces rain, as we see here, but the dry air evaporates it before the rain gets to the ground. He said that is what often creates the classic wispy look in clouds.

Anyway, our flight cancellation meant we got an upgrade. So we had those nice first class seats that all but turn into beds. This became a red eye, but I can’t sleep on planes. So I watch movies. Only this time the inflight selections were, I felt, somewhat lacking. I did watch Darkest Hour:

I fell asleep in the last few minutes, just before Gary Oldman’s big speech before Parliament. But I woke up in time to have breakfast, or lunch, or who knows, and watched the end of the movie. And then we landed in Amsterdam. And then another flight. And a car rental, and a brief drive and checking in and then dinner. Oh, finally food and sleep.

Where are we?

Here’s your second hint:

We didn’t have calzones, because the regional food here is bistecca fiorentina. (That’s your third hint.) Our host recommended a place, we went there, and had the bistecca fiorentina. And that was a delicious steak.

And now, the jet lag. Tomorrow we’ll figure out where we are.

Friday / IU / photo — Comments Off on Strategic planning
04
May 18

Strategic planning

There is no parking here. This makes sense in a parking lot adjacent to campus on the day before graduation. This isn’t the biggest lot, and it is filled with faculty and staff. But if you block the bulk of it off those people have to of course go elsewhere with their cars for the day and that’s going to be an imposition on others.

It isn’t a problem for me. I typically park in a deck behind all of this. But it is amusing. I’m sure someone had a reason for this and it will become obvious soon.

At the end of the work day the barriers have been reconfigured. (I wonder, too, what was behind that move.) It gave a few spaces back, but for the full day these spots were removed from service for some reason:

I’m sure someone had a good reason for this.

Tonight we are trying a new side-head grip for her face cuddling.
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She loves having her head held. It’s not a squeeze or anything, and no one makes her do this. In fact she’ll work her little face into your hand if you leave it still long enough. I’ve looked this up, and it seems she might be trying to make me smell like her. Guess I’m the wrong kind of smelly.

Cat noses, what are you going to do?

We had some fine company recently, and our company brought us gifts and Allie got gifts, too.

They’re going over very well, as you can tell. Any toy that gets in her box is a sure hit.

OK. The blog is taking off next week, I think. But there will be a lot, a lot, of cool stuff in the few weeks after that. So do mark your calendars. And, in the meantime, you can find more on Twitter and check me out on Instagram as well.

history / IU / journalism / music / Thursday / video — Comments Off on Now here’s something of a different time
03
May 18

Now here’s something of a different time

I had lunch with this guy today. It was, as you might imagine, very cool.

Dean Martin died when I was a freshman in college. And I wasn’t yet hip to who or what could bring about a lasting cool. I suppose he was always the guy that played drunk, or did the occasional telethon. He was one of the old guys that ran around with Sinatra and was old. I’m sure I knew he had done movies, but I didn’t know much about the Rat Pack and I certainly didn’t know much of his music. It was too far removed for me to be anything but too far removed myself, I suppose. (“Little Ole Wine Drinker Me” was a Charlie Walker song that Martin covered. It stayed on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for six weeks. It peaked at fifth on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart and was also a hit in Australia that year.)

I really discovered him after college. His music. His cool. His sound. Dean Martin had the best sound of the Rat Pack.

And, man, he was funny. Just look who is on the stage with him here:

There’s a great Christmas-themed Pillsbury Flour spot and a too-artsy for 1975 America Revlon promo in the middle of the video, too.

And even when he was playing a song for laughs he could sing and sing:

I love that song.

One of our hallways at work has a lot of historic photos from the program. This lady is a part of one of the pictures:

She’s a copy editor in the 1940s at the IDS. But she’s given up her seat in the slot for Ernie Pyle, who has returned to Indiana to visit family and friends. And when he was home he was never far from campus, so here he’s back and reading the paper. The front page story that he’s reading is about the Romanian armistice, so she is looking over his shoulder as he reads a late-August, early-September paper from 1944.

I wonder what she was thinking about, sitting there, posing with the great Ernie Pyle in her seat. He’s a legend now, and he was well-venerated then. I wonder where those lamps got off too.

I looked her up. She might have become a school teacher. The woman I found online passed away just a few years ago. But I’m not 100 percent convinced I have the right person.

Tonight I’m hanging out with Allie, The Black Cat:

No better way to wind down an evening.

adventures / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on What’s your super power?
02
May 18

What’s your super power?

I think we all have super powers. They vary, and some are more useful than others. I have two super powers. One has no practical benefit. The other is that I can always determine the right container for leftovers. It’s a small thing, this super power, but it’s useful.

But it occurs to me that a great super power would be able to see, in the smallest moment that this little moment is special.

I don’t have that one. I’d like it, but instead I just look back on a moment many hours later and realize there was a sweet little perfection today.

The Yankee and I went out for lunch. We walked down two blocks to the local fast food fake burrito shop and then we walked back up toward our building on campus. Just across the street we stopped at that flowerbed and I took a few pictures and a little sliver of video and this was a delightful moment to be with someone important. I’d like to be able to more often realize that sort of thing during, rather than after.

Everybody has one, or two or more. Everyone should have that one, I think. What’s your super power?

cycling / Instagram / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Welcome to May
01
May 18

Welcome to May

We hold onto it for as long as we can, and that makes the days more fleeting somehow.

The sun is getting higher and the skies are growing warmer and those things will keep changing until they reach their own stasis that is its own status quo.

The signs are all there.

But we’ll hold onto this for just a little while.

I actually, finally, got on my bicycle yesterday. I just cruised around the neighborhood, trying to figure out if I still know how to do this.

So far this “spring” I have found free time on days with bad weather and every warm day I was indoors. It’s been almost comical. I somehow get a little more of my time back in the summer. It’s a curious mystery, but it is what it is. This is thing I figured out on my bike today: those things flow right off the back when you’re in the right gear.

Maybe I’ll find a way to get a lot more rides in.

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