Flowers & Pipes

I started my "Sasquatch" shirtless run this morning at 4:49 am. It was already 77 degrees F (25 degrees C) and very humid.  But, I put in a good effort, running for 8.2 miles today (~13 km).

After I returned home, the dog and I were puttering around in the yard.  I watered all of our plants, and then I ended up re-potting the two plants we had purchased for my Dad's and my Father-in-Law's graves for Father's Day.  The plants were looking like they felt rather "squished" in their original containers and needed a bit more elbow room to grow more.  I also spent a fair amount of time cleaning up all of the plants from the cemetery from Memorial Day (mostly clearing away spent flowers so new ones could emerge) and also from the plant I had for my Mom's grave on Mother's Day.  Now they felt all back up to snuff.  I will be giving all of them some plant food when I water them again at dusk.   While I was working, I was reminiscing on how I normally would be puttering around the yard working on these flowers and other mundane tasks while smoking my pipes.  It still does feel odd to me to not have them being a part of my various routines.  And, I do miss them.  

After finishing these tasks by around 8:30, it was already up to 84 degrees F (29 C), so I was more than happy to take my sweaty, furry self (and the dog, who was only sweating from her tongue of course, but is similarly furry) and went inside and went upstairs to take a shower.  I put on my jazz channel on Pandora, and wonderfully, the Coleman Hawkins classic, Quintessence, started to play.  Hawkins is one of my very favorite tenor saxophone players.

Now, being all clean and dressed, I am here at the computer, big, giant iced coffee nearby, my various breakfast items, and I am ready to get working.  My goal is to work on four different Fall syllabi, mostly to try get into my mind the dates of the Fall calendar and also on mapping out how the semester will be differing from normal due to Covid-19 issues, and trying to figure out which things I can easily  "electronicify"  and which things will take more thought and effort and planning.  I am also set to have a lab section of one of my courses be at least partially face-to-face (of course, that is potentially up in the air depending upon how the Covid-19 numbers track through the rest of the Summer) and one other small class that can also *potentially* be face-to-face because it is a small enough number of students that the designated classroom can still maintain needed social distancing.

So, I had a busy, productive morning, and hope to continue this trend as I work at my computer now.  It is now 9:29am!

PipeTobacco