Palm Sunday 2008
The lectionary readings on the balcony, freshly-roasted coffee in a pink mug, a gentle Gulf breeze to stir the spirit–Palm Sunday 2008.… Read the rest
Category: Travel
What I Learned In Atlanta
I just returned from five days in Atlanta attending the Southern Educational Congress in Optometry (SECO), one of the largest optometry meetings in the world. It had been a while since I had attended so large a conference, and I discovered that I had some catching up to do. Since most of you weren’t able to go too, I decided I would share a few things that I learned:
- Be careful if you use a hotel elliptical trainer. If the “glide” track is angled differently from the one you use at home, it can ball up your calves into knots making it extremely difficult to walk for the rest of your stay.
Banes, Blessings and Broken Banister Knobs
Have you ever seen the same thing a million times, but in a moment of great clarity, suddenly seen it in an entirely different way? If so, then you know how I felt last night as I road-tripped with Eyegal and some good friends to the beautifully restored Alabama Theatre in downtown Birmingham for a showing of the classic Christmas feel-good film, It’s a Wonderful Life.
A television rerun or a DVD don’t do the deed like the flashing neon sign, the gleaming, waxed floors and the gilded, cathedral-like trimmings of The Alabama. Throw in a Wurlitzer that rises like a wailing phantom from beneath the stage floor, audience sing-a-longs of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” and “Buffalo Gals” and a retro Disney cartoon for an appetizer, and you suddenly find yourself drifting back to the 1940s, a time when real gentlemen wore woolly, tweed suits and flashy fedoras down to the corner market, and ladies, in their form-flattering skirts and soft, feminine blouses, charmed passersby and flaunted their sizzling sexuality without shedding a single stitch of clothing.… Read the rest
Archives
One of my favorite parts about visiting my Mom in Virginia is exploring the museum that is her house and searching among the archives and exhibits for long lost treasures.
Among the items that I’ve found (and rescued) in the past:
- My collection of Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars (unfortunately, I couldn’t locate the Hot Wheels Supercharger Sprint Set)
- My baseball and sports card collection (and it is a very good one if I have to say so myself)
- My scrapbooks from elementary, junior high and high school which contain old class pictures and portraits, 4-H and church camp ribbons, newspaper clippings containing my super-amazing, jaw-dropping feats on the tennis courts and cross country trails (heh), my acceptance letter to Duke University and goofy letters from an old high school girlfriend which still hold the slightest hint of perfume.
Time to Move On
On the way to Roanoke last week, we took a turn on 460 West for a short side trip to Blacksburg and the campus of Virginia Tech. I had planned to walk the drill field area, check out any remaining memorials and perhaps take a picture of Norris Hall and post it here. But it was a gray, overcast day and spitting rain. The thought occurred to me that the weather was merely reflecting the sorrow and the tears that were still being shed in that place.
As we drove around the drill field, we noted that the spontaneous memorials had been removed, replaced instead by a permanent one currently under construction in front of Burruss Hall.… Read the rest
Traveling Mercies
First, the good news: The 1998 Toyota Sienna van with over 165,000 miles which I duct-taped together for the ride to Virginia survived the trip up and back.
And now the bad: The air conditioner did not.
In fact, the air conditioner went out about two hours into the trip on the way up. But thankfully, it was overcast and cool once we hit the mountains in east Tennessee, so it didn’t really matter. It even stayed relatively cool for July during our visit.
But the trip back yesterday evoked way too many memories of those hot retro rides from the 1960s–the choking exhaust fumes, the jarring sound of air brakes, the wet cling of the clothes, the rush of hot air through your hair and into your ears.… Read the rest
Almost Heaven? Not Quite
Yesterday’s post on cars sure got Fusion followers waxing nostalgic. If you haven’t weighed in with your earliest car memories, then please feel free to do so. Hal did, and just to bring the point home, so to speak, he sent us a picture of the now-famous ’66 Plymouth Valiant, customized for those long cattle drives home along congested Houston freeways:
Today, I’m duct-taping together a 10-year-old Toyota van with 165,000 miles on it, saying a prayer, and heading to the Land of No Computers, a place where the electronics are still circa 1975 (and I’m not taking a laptop). That’s right, we’re off to grandma’s house in Virginia.… Read the rest
Cruising
Michael Winerip’s touching and elegant essay, “Young, Gifted, and Not Getting Into Harvard” is the most sensible piece of writing on today’s hypercompetitive college admissions game that I’ve read in a long time.
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If brains were transmissions, then mine would be a four-speed manual that I’ve red-lined and ground to bits in the quest for maximum performance. Number One Son, on the other hand, has a silky smooth six that he rarely shifts into overdrive. Instead, he cruises down the highway in fifth gear, the top down and the wind in his hair, making good time and covering a lot of ground, but not so fast and so far that he can’t take in the view and enjoy the glory days.… Read the rest
Life Is A Test
It’s ironic that after all my prattling on about basketball these last few weeks, I won’t even be around to watch the Final Four Saturday. Instead, I’ll be at the Southern College of Optometry in Memphis where I’ll be serving as an examiner with the National Board of Optometry. Fourth year optometry students take the Clinical Skills portion of the National Board shortly before graduating, and while for most it won’t be the last hurdle involved in obtaining a license to practice, it is a pretty significant one.
Basically, the students rotate among different stations where they perform various clinical procedures which are commonly done during an eye exam.… Read the rest
The Highway of Life
For the most part, I drive the speed limit. Okay, okay within 5 mph of the speed limit anyway. I was thrilled when the speed limit on Alabama interstate highways was raised to 70 mph a few years back because I had always found that pace to be a comfortable cruising speed. Add to that the 5 mph cushion that most cops will allow as a margin of error, and I never really felt the need to go much faster, especially with young drivers and drivers-to-be scrutinizing my every move from the backseat.
But yesterday while driving back from Orange Beach, it was brought home to me anew just how slowly I drive compared to my peers.… Read the rest
One Tulsa Too Many
Tulsa Union High School proved to be one Tulsa too many for the Grissom Tigers. We lost a body-bruising 2-1 tussle in the final of the Island Cup Invitational tonight. Union, ranked #1 in the state of Oklahoma, was by far the best squad that we’ve played this year. It took us a while to adjust to a team that was just as quick or even quicker to the ball than we were, and in the beginning they were winning most of the 50-50 balls and pinning our defense on their heels with their aggressive, pressing attack.
But by midway through the first half, we had found our legs and launched a few dangerous forays of our own.… Read the rest
One Tulsa Team Down, One to Go
We came away with a hard fought 2-1 victory over Tulsa Memorial High School today in the semifinals of the Island Cup. Like the quarterfinal, we struck early with two quick goals, one of them a work of art–a header off a 40-yard feed from our defensive midfielder. We had several other close chances, and Memorial caught our defense napping with a second half goal which gave them their second wind. But we held fast, and now we face our second Oklahoma team of the day, Tulsa Union, in the final in a couple of hours.
One Tulsa team down, one to go.… Read the rest
A Good First Day
Number One Son and his Grissom High teammates stretch prior to this morning’s match with Gadsden City High School at the Island Cup Invitational in Orange Beach, Alabama.
They must have been plenty loose, because they proceeded to go out and “mercy rule” yet another opponent 10-0. Number One put the finishing touches on that one, scoring his first goal of the season with a nifty shot just inside the left post outside the reach of a diving keeper.
Our afternoon opponent, the Cullman High Bearcuts, proved a tougher challenge. They showed little interest in attacking, opting instead to hunker down with 9-10 field players inside the box at all times in order to keep us out of the net.… Read the rest
A Bad Weather Day
By now most of you have heard about the nasty weather that blew through Alabama today, including the horrible tornado in Enterprise. We drove through some very bad storms south of Montgomery around 3:30PM. The straight line winds and driving rain were a little unnerving, and we constantly scanned the horizon for any sign of a funnel cloud. Thankfully, we never saw one. But others were not as fortunate.
As we traveled down I-65 today, we were on the phone with my younger sister who lives in Ozark, Alabama about 20 minutes away from Enterprise, the hardest hit area. Her husband is a physician and was at the local hospital there when some of the injured started coming in.… Read the rest