Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
17
May 17

Petal to the metal

Let’s just get it over with. To the puns ‘n’ roses!

Listen, bud, though some might say we haven’t rose to the occasion, we’re going to have to stem the jokes, bouquet?

Those are on the a bush on the side of our house. The ones I put here yesterday are in a bed on the front of the house. Good soil, I suppose. But I was working around the back of the house this evening. I had to install three sets of blinds.

The instructions suggested this would take 30 minutes per set. This would be possible, perhaps, if all of the parts were there. Or if the instructions were any good. But hey, in one box there were two sets of instructions. But, hey, I got to use my circular saw on something. Measure twice, keep your fingers out of the way, cut once and all of that.

I was done in two hours. Even still, the project isn’t truly finished, but there are blinds in windows instead of in boxes.

When you hang blinds, I think, you see the value of curtains.

errands / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
16
May 17

Thorn to be wild

Well I’m having a lovely week so far. How about you?

I’d like to sleep a bit more, but that’s a problem for another day, it seems. Otherwise, the days are pretty rosy. Take this bush out front, for example:

Rose bush, rosy, get it? (I have another one of these jokes for tomorrow.)

Anyway. There’s the day’s work, of course. And all day long I have felt fairly fatigued. I think it is a lack of good sleep and my ride yesterday. So I took today off from the bike and got some evening shopping in. I picked up a few lights for a photo project and got some groceries and went home for dinner, a bit of house cleaning and to watch the day’s bike race.

That’s the pace of things this week — an easy, one thing at a time, few things a day, one day at a time pace. That’s my pace of things.

cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
15
May 17

Mondays never have clever post titles

The best restive kind of weekend. Slept in and and then did only what I wanted to do on Saturday. This included turning on lights seldom used and in random combinations throughout the evening. Also, I cleaned out the leftovers from the refrigerator. To most people this means dragging the garbage can over and doing the transfer of goods routine. Or the Transfer of Foodstuffs That Were Once Good and No Longer Are routine.

Me, I just ate them. Two dishes from last week that made their way into the fridge were lunch and dinner on Saturday. Then I cleaned my office.

Sunday, I made the mother’s day calls, went to the grocery store, watched a bike race and road my bicycle.

I made several passes on that deer, so I got plenty of fuzzy photos:

Also, nearby, was a rabbit:

Maybe they’ll both come over and help with the next set of leftovers.

Today, back to the office, where things are taking place and some work is getting down and meetings are being held. Then home and, while walking to the car, I saw another rabbit:

I’m guessing it was a different rabbit. It could be the same one. The two sightings were only about a mile or so apart. I don’t know why that first rabbit would need to hop this direction, but it is possible. (Not pictured, another rabbit, which was hiding in the shrubbery.)

And then another bike ride. I did an hour in a low gear, mashing and lifting the pedals as quickly as I can, on the flattest course I could find, where I still managed to gain 503 feet over 16 miles. But I held my highest pace of the year so far. That deserves a handlebar shot:

And another ride tomorrow.

Friday / IU / video — Comments Off
12
May 17

I do not want to hear Tubthumping when I’m 85

Musical encoding is a powerful thing. Researchers are only just beginning to understand its importance, and I imagine it has a lot more value than even the hefty weight of reminiscence.

Now think of it, think of the music someone is going to play for us one day.

Which brings to mind two quick stories.

A colleague here is doing oral histories with alumni who are now in their 90s. She stopped by my office the other day and mentioned some interesting little tidbit in the ongoing process. Two students were in my office at the time and I looked at them and said something like “Just think, someone is going to approach you one day, in 2087 or so, and ask for your recollections about this place.”

And the student goes “2087. That’s not a real year.”

I hear ya, pal.

And, today, we learned that next week my colleague will do an oral history with a woman who is 102 years old. I wondered where that put that woman on the list of oldest living alumni. There’s a story in here somewhere, I figured.

So I called the alumni association and they did a bit of digging and we found out that, last September, the oldest surviving alumnus on record was a 111-year-old alumnus.

Think of it, 111. That’s a life born around 1905 who saw all but the very first planes, and then saw us go to the moon, and then perhaps has learned that we have people living in a tin can circling 250 miles above us. Those and all of the other things that they have seen. All the stories that person must know.

cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
11
May 17

Oh no, we have slowed because H20 has flowed

On tonight’s group ride we went slowly. One of the fastest guys in town was there, but he was in a chatty mood. And various other people were only interested in seeing standing moisture on the road and stopping for it almost entirely, as if the gathering of three molecules in a specific formulation in the smallest of volumes could harm their bicycles.

We stopped a lot. Four times in a 24-mile ride. That’s barely enough to get and keep the heart rate where you might like it. These were flowers I found at the first stop, after just six miles of riding:

Those four stops took place because this is a no-drop group, which means there are plenty of chances to regroup. Or stop and wait, depending on where you are in the scheme of things. The four stops we counted do not include a fifth stop.

Topping the biggest climb of the day, a long and slow 330 feet or so that has hurt me each of the few times I’ve done it, one of the riders in the group had an accident a bit ahead of me. When I got to the top of the hill there were already two cars stopped and someone said a rider had been hit, which sends a chill. But it seems a dog ran out in front of the rider and she took a tumble. Fortunately, she was OK. And fortunately one of the riders was a physician, and one of the people that stopped was a paramedic. After a few minutes, some Neosporin and a few small bandages, she pronounced herself OK, got up and we all rode off down the hill.

The larger group made one last stop, but we skipped it. We were close to darkness, because all of these stops had made a 24-mile ride into nearly two hours. It was damp and chilly and a tiny bit frustrating. I think I am coming to form my opinion on group rides.

On the way back to the house we have to pass over a creek, which was almost ready to to threaten the high banks after more than a week of rain:

All of the water here is swiftly moving, which is more than we can say about our ride this evening.