Talk about a gorgeous day...
It didn’t take much cajoling to get me moving this evening when word came down that Grandpa was heading to the quarry with my kids in tow. We woke up to a perfect vernal morning, kind of chilly, but great weather for a PT test. The robins have been back for a couple of weeks now, and each day more and more wings can be seen in the trees as they squabble about nest locations and who owns which piece of real estate.
The castin' crew
After 11:00 Mass and the requisite jabberjawing in the parking lot and a trip to our usual lunch hang out, Madame and I went back to the house. Aaron came over and gave us an end of week update on how he’s getting along. Then he casually mentioned that a bit of fishing was on the evening agenda since the younger kids had been begging my dad to take them out since the last warm spell we had.
The smaller of the two I caught
I dusted off the tackle box and jumbled the poles into the Cruiser and headed out.
It was a productive trip. Stevo was the first to reel one in, and it was just under 18 inches according to Grandpa’s measuring tape. A long winter can make you forget what an excellent rush of adrenaline that tug on the line releases, especially when you hook into a biggun’.
One quick skip of a heartbeat, though, and the rusty reflexes jump back to life, the line cuts through the water like a knife, the reel hums like a gyro, and then brilliant green scales flash
Sure beats golf
in the sun and then disappear back into the water with a splash.
The sun finally slid down behind the high limestone wall of the quarry. Monday is a school day and we decided a fire would be impractical, so the gear went back into our vehicles and we headed our separate ways, richer for the experience and hungry for the next opportunity to get back to the water’s edge.
What exactly is an "asocial work professor"?
Things are pretty bad when the largest newspaper in Indiana contains a typo in the second column of the day’s top story. Don’t believe me? Check out the picture to the left.
What happened here? Several possibilities come to mind: The Indianapolis Star relies on spell check to proof copy; the editors all left their glasses at home that day; they were trying to save space by eliminating the real estate between “a” and “social”; they didn’t think anybody would notice since nobody in Indiana reads anymore; there actually is such a thing as an “asocial work professor”.
If the last case is correct, I don’t know if Ms. Adamek appreciated being listed in the same category as disgruntled postal workers and bureaucrats.
Dictionary.com (yes, I know I’m lazy) lists asocial thusly:
asocial (ey-SOH-sh-uhl):
–adjective
| 1. |
not sociable or gregarious; withdrawn from society. |
| 2. |
indifferent to or averse to conforming to conventional standards of behavior. |
| 3. |
inconsiderate of others; selfish; egocentric. |
Get on the ball, Ms. Adamek! Your reputation is under attack.
The wind is trying to knock my house over. One moment it so still that you could drop a feather to the ground, and the next the commotion around the trees sounds like the Cubs won the World Series. It pried a roof off in Cass County earlier today. Indiana spring weather is an angry hoodlum to be reckoned with. Screw your hat on tight or he’ll be wearing it.
This is my thinking rock, latitude: 40.8042, longitude -85.8511
I brought daughter one to Grandma’s and took a trek into the old woods since the ground wasn’t too wet and it got up to seventy today. There’s not like a visit to the Thinking Rock to set your mind right. After a cold winter it felt good. I’m sitting here now as I type this, listening to the wind through the bare canopies, knowing that in a couple of weeks the buds will have burst and the hills and valleys will be decked in delicate green. Ahhh…
See this?
This is me writing.
It feels good. Maybe if I got up tomorrow morning, said my prayers, brought a cup of coffee steaming to the keyboard, set it down, cracked my knuckles and start typing, something would happen.
If it was intelligible, or funny, or thought provoking I might be persuaded to wake up again the next morning and do the same. What would happen, do you suppose, if a few people got wind of it and promised to slip me some stowing money to write something for them?
Until recently, I’ve had a fairly inflexible policy of writing only for kill fees and coupons. But I’m thinking. I’m thinking…
Sometimes the good can only become better with the passage of time. I’m not talking fine wine, mind you. I’m thinking more along the lines of morning after pizza or three day old chili whose ingredients have friended eachother.
I’m referring to the delicacy “paniscaro frigidus” or cold meatloaf. The catsup is my own addition, and though a bit pedestrian, brings back fond memories.
Nothing compelling going on today on the home front, but a Twitter exchange between my J prof from BSU brought to mind a funny story from Fort Hood back in ‘04. My “roomie” for several months was a towering, iron jawed Captain from Michigan who accompanied me on the occasional “wing hunt” to Austin on the weekends, gave staff briefings in haiku, and kept me sane until the wife and kids made it down for the remainder of the deployment.
Halfway through the summer, his grandparents came to visit him and we were driving around Killeen and showing them the sights. I’d previously been in the room when he had spoken with his grandpa shortly after we’d hit the ground, and iron jawed Jim told him that he was enjoying Fort Hood. Grandpa corrected him. “It’s Camp Hood. I was stationed there during the war, and it is out in the middle of nowhere.” Jim explained that it had grown a bit since then.
Anyway, during the site seeing tour, grandma exclaimed at a herd of cattle in a big field. “Look at that! Jimmy are those Longhorns?” Jim turned around and said, “no grammy, Longhorns have these…” he took his hands off the wheel and made a motion toward his head with his index fingers, “long horns.”
