J’accuse!
I walked into the living room after work, and thought “Well that’s weird. Why is there a big bag of candy on the table?”
I walked into the living room after work, and thought “Well that’s weird. Why is there a big bag of candy on the table?”
“In this century, chatbots write poems
where starlings wander from their murmuration
into the denim-thick clouds of a storm.”
Liz has so many different tests, with so many different products… I’m having a hard time keeping it all straight. When she gives me a recap of what she’s done, I tend to have to ask a lot of basic questions, to try to catch up.
It’s a lot of testing, it’s a lot of variations. It’s all kinds of impressive.
As some of you may know, we get a lot of kids visiting our block for Halloween. We’re not quite on par with Harper Avenue in Hyde Park, but we’re working on it. We get a good turnout, and it’s been a source of fun/joy for both me and Liz these last few years.
Liz and I were out today, with the intention of getting our Flu and Covid shots. Well, I was the one who was thinking I’d get both at once… but Liz convinced me that probably wasn’t the best idea.
Liz had another day in the basement (or should I call it her laboratory). Today’s session involved her trying out powdered dyes – another approach to staining Douglas Fir.
It’s been fun getting back into this project, after setting it aside for so long. It was more of a proof of concept project, but lately it’s been enjoyable to try to improve it a bit.
“The Herculaneum papyri, ancient scrolls housed in the library of a private villa near Pompeii, were buried and carbonized by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. For almost 2,000 years, this lone surviving library from antiquity was buried underground under 20 meters of volcanic mud. In the 1700s, they were excavated, and while they were in some ways preserved by the eruption, they were so fragile that they would turn to dust if mishandled. How do you read a scroll you can’t open? For hundreds of years, this question went unanswered.”
In another odd moment of nostalgia that I can’t quite explain, I’ve had the song “Name” by the Goo Goo Dolls stuck in my head for several days.
Liz has been in the basement a lot lately, doing her mad scientist routine. She’s been methodically trying to figure out how to best stain the new trim we’re looking to purchase: vertical grain Douglas Fir.
Tonight, we got to hear from Iain McAlister, the master distiller from Glen Scotia about the distillery, and its history/place in Campbeltown. Of note: this event was one of just five stops in the US for McAlister, and is his first trip to the US in the past ten years.
Paige, undaunted and ready to continue on to the finish.
Liz tried at least 20 different Italian restaurants, and nearly every place was booked. Again, we waited too long to try ot get reservations… as everyone and their mother was intent on carbo-loading the night before the race. So of course, every Italian joint was fully booked up.
We ended up getting reservations at a local restaurant, Nella in Hyde Park.
Tonight, we met up with them after work and went out for some tapas. Tricia is a big fan of Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba, but we unfortunately didn’t get reservations in early enough. While looking around, I found Jaleo, which looked pretty great (note: this is a restaurant by José Andrés – someone Liz and I enjoyed watching on PBS).
I don’t know that I have the words to describe my reaction to these images of his work. There’s an immense satisfaction I feel, at both the symmetry and colors. There is a rigidity and structure to the vector shapes, but it’s the color that pulls them a bit towards the artistic. It’s phenomenal.