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Saturday miscellany

May 30, 2009 by

Numbered, for your convenience!

  1. Yes, I am a terrible person, neglectful of the blog and all it stands for.  I am hoping that my readers have RSS feeds.
  2. The reason for the mushy-headed no-thought around here?  Dunno.  But I haven’t been all mushy-headed no-thought!  Over at my pro blog, I have not one but two new posts. If you’re interested in communications issues, you might be interested to poke your nose over there and take a look.
  3. The light posting is likely to continue into the summer – I’m about to start a very challenging class AND have my in-laws to visit for a few days.  Can’t you just feel the synergy?
  4. Having said all this, the incredible demands I am anticipating will be placed on me over the next couple of months will probably drive me to blogging-as-procrastination, so don’t give up on me completely.
  5. What are you up to?
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The most wonderful time of the year…

May 2, 2009 by

Sorry all, for the earworm.  And no, there are no jolly elves in red suits for this particular non-holiday.  It’s just the first full weekend in May, which means Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival.

The weather looks like it’s going to be …not so great.  Not like last year, anyway.  But that’s okay.  We’re not really going for yarn, just for shearling slippers (mine have given up the ghost after about three or four years of constant use and John, poor man doesn’t have any at all).  There may be a yarn purchase or two.  Maybe.  I’m not ruling it out, but I do have something of a yarn shop in my office/studio/cave of exploded projects, and I really don’t need any more.

Stop snickering, you in the back.  Do I have to turn this car around?

Anyway, time to go jump on John in a very annoying kid-on-Christmas-morning kind of way.

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Endless airplane

April 15, 2009 by

So I found out today that one of my photos was used on a Wired Blog post (don’t worry – it’s creative-commons licensed.  Happy for them to have it, just wish I had been able to take it with a better camera – I didn’t have the SLR then).

More wooden planes

So now I’m posting about a posting that used a photo I posted.

Funny old world.

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Today’s moment of surreality

April 8, 2009 by

Today on the Metro, there were a bunch of people all carrying boxed sets of the works of Edward Tufte with handles on top.

It was like a Magritte painting — dozens of people all carrying identical little white briefcases.

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Overheard at our house, post-party edition

April 5, 2009 by

Me: Are you using Henry* to drain the cooler?

John: Yeah.

Me: Poor Henry.

John: He volunteered.

Me: He’s a giver, Henry is.

John: Yes, he is.

*All fake turtles in our house are named Henry.

Poor Henry

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I could swear I used to know how to do this

March 22, 2009 by

I recently scored a nice, inexpensive, refurbished sewing machine.  I hemmed a pair of pajama pants that were about four inches too long for John, then thought, “Hey – pajama pants would be a nice, easy project in general.”  Cheap, cheerful – great weekend project.  I even found this Instructables article on using your own favorite pants as templates for making your own.  Cool.  We kind of live in pajama pants around here, so this makes all kinds of sense.  John is especially in need of a few new pairs, so he was to get the first fruits of my labor.

John and I had an errand-running day, and we fit in a trip to the biggest local fabric emporium while we were out.  I said, “So what were you thinking about for fabric?”  Poor John looked like realized he was an inadvertent contestant on “Who Wants to be Asked Questions They Never Considered” – a new game show we apparently have in development at our house.

“Um… I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Well, look around.  See anything you like?”

John almost immediately gravitated towards azure fabric with sharks on it.  “I kind of like the sharks,” he said, fingering the fabric uncertainly.

“Okay, you want the sharks?”  I asked.

“I dunno,” he replied.  At this point, I realize that the woman helming the cutting table in this department is trying hard not to laugh.

“Do you want Wookies, maybe?  Tie-fighters?”  I glance over again.  The clerk is doing a fair impression of stoicism, but there’s some quivering of the lip going on.  Her eye is twitching.  “It’s okay,” I tell her.  “Everybody laughs at us – go ahead.”  She dissolves.

We got the sharks.

Upon arriving home, I throw the fabric in the wash and grab John’s favorite pajama pants to trace out a template on craft paper.  A few hours later, when John comes back from a bike ride, I have him try them on before I do the final hems and install the elastic.

They don’t fit.

Seamstress FAIL

They don’t fit HIM anyway.

I’m going back later this week for more shark chintz and a proper pattern.

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Groan…

March 17, 2009 by

I just realized today is St. Patrick’s Day: a day that, for me, manages to ruin beer and the color green all in one fell swoop.  (I had thought my shuddering distaste for green beer had been documented before, but a quick Google search shows me I am wrong.  Let me just go on the record then as saying that Bud Lite is an abomination, and Bud Lite with green food coloring in it?  Um… there are no words.)

The Metro should be VERY interesting this evening.  I’m expecting hordes of college students in sparkly green wigs, having started getting their drunk on at noon.  Let’s just hope that I’m wrong.

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A real-life Ann Eliot? Well…

March 10, 2009 by

Persuasion is my favorite Jane Austen novel. Which makes it my favorite novel, since I could take Austen's complete works with me to a desert island and never count myself bored.

I have identified with various Austen heroines in various ways over the years, but only in pieces. Recently, I have been re-reading Persuasion and realized that despite differences in temperament, Ann Eliot and I have the most in common.

While the Jennifer Ehle/Colin Firth miniseries of Pride and Prejudice is probably the best and most faithful adaptation of Austen's novels for my money, if you want something of a normal film length, the movie of Persuasion starring Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds is a beautiful adaptation.

Ann and I both found our love early, but had to let him go until a later date. We differ in that Ann yielded to the titular persuasion of family and friends: her loved ones did not approve of the match. In my case, I knew that it was the wrong time: John and I were in different places in our lives, and trying to make the pieces fit would probably have resulted in a broken puzzle.

As it is, both Ann and I had our happily ever after – but not in the grand Disney fashion. More in the quiet, real-life kind of manner.

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…and now, the weather. Over to you, Bob.

March 3, 2009 by

It is very fashionable to freak out about the weather in DC.  An inch or two of snow never fails to make the local news people completely lose their bananas, and school is often canceled the night before a prospective storm, without ever seeing so much as a flake (other than the aforementioned news people, that is).

However, it is unwise to ignore the peril that is the DC local driving in snow.  Rich lobbyists from Georgia in massive SUVs seem to think that four-wheel drive and ABS cancel out the effect of snow and ice.  Other people in more plebian vehicles drive in a manner that would be considered dangerously stupid on dry roads, rendering them criminally insane when there is ice present.

And don’t get me started on the “plowing” that is done around here.  On some roads, you will see three giant snowplows in a single-file line, the first doing some work, the other two… I don’t know what they are for.  Backup, in the event of possible gang warfare?  On other roads, the plow may trundle through, with the blade held delicately aloft – about an inch or two from the road’s surface, thus ensuring that passing traffic creates a nicely packed layer of ice all the more rapidly.  Or they may never come at all, leaving your local street a lunar landscape of icy potholes.

John and I saw all of this yesterday as we went in for a half day.  We had somewhere in the neighborhood of eight inches fall on our house (we have learned that we live in a funny pocket weather-wise: there were probably only three inches just a few miles to the southeast of us), and we decided to wait out the morning snow and see what happened rather than hurling our bodies into the scrum.  He gave me a ride to the Metro in his four-wheel-drive wagon, and what fun we had.  Who needs a gym when you can have the adrenaline rush of someone in an Infiniti sedan diving in front of you at 40 mph with a half-carlength to spare?  And why go to the ballet, when you can watch four enormous snowplows weaving complicated patterns in front of you on a local multi-lane road?

And people think that politics are our great amusement around here.

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Overheard at our house, evening edition

February 24, 2009 by

“I shall go upstairs and change, and then I shall be returned.”

“You will be returned?  Do I get a refund?”

“Minus a 15% restocking fee.”

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