I didn’t forget you. I got into Washington DC late last night, had a flavulous meal with Melody and Simon, slept, had a pleasant and interesting conversation with some ex-Muslims, had brunch with some local CFI people, gave a talk or something, signed a whole bunch of books, took a long cab ride to Dulles, and am now sitting in an airport waiting for a magic winged cylinder to fly me home. I get back to Minneapolis around 9, then drive home to get there about midnight, and then I get to rise up in the morning and go teach a couple of classes, which I’ll be preparing for on the plane.
I haven’t had much me time lately, but I did make a new friend, thanks to some generous Hordies.
So what have you been up to lately?
We have a few pictures of the event at GWU.
If only I still lived in DC. >.<
Thanks PZ for a great book talk. My favorite quote from your reading was “…we’re all alone together. And that means you aren’t alone at all – you’re among friends” which encapsulates the anxiety that many people feel without a heavenly father figure but offers the realization (as well as challenge) that we must solve problems together.
That’s too much cuteness, that. Sounds like a wonderful time, I hope your weather was nice too. (Getting stormy here, looks like early winter is on the way.)
I’m trying to work today, so I should be ignoring bloggery stuff. Yeah.
Just home stuff. Replacing the battery in the black probe, doing laundry including bedding; both bed have to be remade, slicing and dicing for the spaghetti sauce, cooking spaghetti noodles, and after this break, cooking the meat, onions, garlic, mushrooms, green peppers, and dilute with canned tomato sauce, and add a wheel barrow of herbs and seasonings. Let that cool before packing for later use, and heat up plannedovers for dinner.
Took the suburban train to the northernmost station of our fair city, and led a social bike ride to a winery “visitor centre” about 20 miles out. Got growled at for daring to eat our lunches on their front lawn, so we decamped and didn’t buy the drinks there as we had planned. Some people simply don’t know that visitors are to be welcomed. Had a great day out and emptied a bakery along the way instead.
Read an article on discrimination against women in cycling and had a quiet grrr moment. Wasn’t me, I don’t do gender/ageist favouritism. Had a terriffic downhill & tailwind ride back to the station.
I hope you have a comfy ride home in your flying aluminum tube.
Me, I’ve spent the last few days digitizing old 8mm home movies using an 8mm projector from 1939 (a Keystone Croyden R8); my 74-year-old father-in-law asked me if I could get it working. So I did. There are about a dozen reels with it, some are genuine home movies, in color, from the late 1950s to 1960, which are fascinating.
Then there are the stag films. Wasn’t expecting that, but they’re good for laughs – very tame by today’s standards.
There are also some films of Canadian national parks – I wonder if they’d be useful to present-day ecologists to see what has grown where since the 1950s?
Working. For me “Sundays” are equivelent to Tuesdays, and since it still the beginning of the month, we are getting swamped with calls. Not only that, I don’t get off until 9:45 pm tonight and I’m scheduled to put in four hours of mandatory overtime starting at 6:00 am tomorrow. So, I’ve got get home, eat a quick dinner, get to bed, catch what sleep I can, get up at 4 am, put in my OT, then work my normal 1:00 pm to 9:45 pm shift. Then I’ve got to do it again on Tuesday.
All this for $11.00/hr.
I was at the library and picked up “Embassytown” by China Miéville. I was really happy about his “The City and the City” and this one didn’t disappoint. A great, thought-provoking and funny novel. If you like this author, you’ll like this, too.
It’s mostly about language and culture, in the context of political upheaval in a town of aliens and their human colonists. It stays interesting a hundred pages after you think it should have ended. Really, I can’t recommend it enough. I had a great time with it.
Composing a screed.
Trying to get stuff done, making people mad at me, feeling inadequate in everything, the usual.
Did go through a spate of baking breakfast items, so we have a small cache of savory breakfasty stuff in the freezer to use in the next week or two. Breakfast is always troublesome at our house, so hopefully this will make things easier for a few days.
love the octopus!
Did several demos with my GSD for Responsible Dog Ownership Day . So very, very hot out on that field. Gah! But he performed admirably despite the heat and the distractions.
Now we’re chilling in the house – I turned the ac back on since we hit 92 today. Autumn cannot come fast enough for me.
Ah, DC. I hope it was a good day for seeing the sights. Dulles is a long ride out.
It’s hot, but not intolerable here, which is a good thing.
going back to school to be an MLT looking at all the mostly repetitive classes first semester before anything interesting begins.
Yesterday I picked up my shiny new electric bicycle; I made 1/3 of a knit cotton lace bag; and I had a fabbo no-cook dinner of pizza, salad, pears in red wine & chestnut cream.
Today I tried to fix the doorbell (no luck) and the sink faucet (success!), and then went with my wife and my friend to Foggy Bottom to see a guy reading before a pink octopus from his latest book and defend it well with humor, and finally went out to a Mexican restaurant with my son. It was a pretty good day.
Got a call at 11:30PM Sat. I had worked on a pilot for a show a couple of years ago got picked up by a known TV cable channel. They forgot that they needed an underwater photographer and dug my name up off the credits or something. So I got the call and spent the day drifting lazily over the seagrass with a camera. For money… that was nice.
Got some support from my son’s girlfriend, so my plant room got cat boxes cleaned out and floor swept and mopped for me. Also breakfast burritos. So I had time to clean off my desk (NOT a small task), do three loads of laundry, cleared out a bookshelf and rearranged my bead supplies, all while watching football and fixing supper–Jimmy Dean Hot Sausage, tomatoes and onions from my garden, black beans (which I might try growing next year) chili powder, red ine vinegar, and lots and lots of garlic, on rice cooked with beef broth.
Not too bad.
Just a few miles north of DC, I was forced — forced, I tell you — to attend two, count them two, neighborhood parties. One featured fried chicken thighs and authentic New Orleans gumbo, and wine. The other featured FIGS locally grown and imaginatively prepared, some great other stuff, and wine.
“Remember,” I always say, “the Sabbath, to keep it wholly.” –pH
Me? I’ve been providing a crash pad for my old college roomie from over 30 years ago. He’s been sleeping on my couch while visiting friends, family, and business colleagues in Northern Cal. Being under the same roof again with my old best buddy reminded me how we became such good friend and also why we didn’t last more than two years before I insisted on a place of my own. (At one point back then it was like he was dating the entire freshman class of girls.)
Are you going to be at the FESTIVAL of BAD AD HOC HYPOTHESES at MIT next month?
Rented an apartment to an Iraqi refugee.
Is it too late to tell you that I de-gunged the outlet from my kitchen sink + dishwasher + washing machine? Badly designed – when? house is 1805, kitchen a few years later – so that the waste water sits in a ceramic bowl with small slots in it before disappearing down the pipe. It only takes about 3 dead leaves – woodland about 10 metres away and above me – to settle in the bowl and clog it up completely. Yes, I do have a cover over the bowl but they still get in.
Much scraping, caustic soda, boiling water and swearing later it is better – just!
A scientific observation – in this non-ideal situation beef fat behaves much worse than any other potential clogger-up.
My son was driven down to Edinburgh on Saturday (by my wife) to start his M.Eng in mechanical engineering. Other than an initial problem getting his bike out of the locker it had been stored in earlier, he seems to be having a good time – quite a large part of his social circle has gone with him, there not being all that many universities in Scotland! Yesterday my wife took me out to an Italian restaurant we hadn’t visited before – fine, but not so good we’ll be rushing back: rather deficient in atmosphere, food and service good but not exceptional.
I’ve had plenty of “me time” lately, since my pupillage (the first year of my career as a barrister) doesn’t start until October. I’ve been preparing for the move down to London: I’ve rented a small studio apartment (with help from my grandparents) and am going down there this week to accept a furniture delivery. I can’t move down there full-time until later this month, when broadband internet will be installed.
Pupillage is likely to be very demanding, and once I start, I’ll probably be too busy to post here much until Christmas. I’m hoping to specialize in immigration and asylum law, in particular representing asylum-seekers.
Walton@25,
Best wishes for your pupillage! Britain certainly needs a supply of good (in all senses of the word) barristers.
Thanks, Nick!
Walton, I’ll second what Nick Gotts said and good luck with your chosen specialty as this country seems determined to become as hostile as possible to refugees, immigrants and asylum seekers in particular, so you’re very definitely needed.
Thank you, John! And that’s all too true, sadly. The immigration system is astonishingly brutal and violent, and re-traumatizes people who have suffered abuses in their home countries, including children and pregnant women. There should be a public outcry about these things, but there hasn’t been.
I have started planning DarkBaby’s FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY! Invitations are done and will go out as soon as I make it to the post office.
Alexandra
wow
time flies
chigau:
I know, right? My little girl is growing up so fast!
*sniffle!*
Walton, I know, unfortunately, due to health issues there is little I can do in IRL, but I do try with some funding help and I have already lost count of the petitions I have signed or the number of times I have contacted my MP this year, who fortunately, is very sympathetic to these issues. Unfortunately, stamping on the human rights of immigrants and asylum seeker has become a particularly loathsome but favoured hobby of certain parts of the media and politicians.
That is good. Circulating petitions and writing to MPs makes a huge difference – some deportations have been stopped after campaigns of public pressure. And I’m glad your MP is receptive. (My current MP isn’t, sadly. But a few years ago I lived in Oxford East where Andrew Smith, to his credit, actually responded to my emails and did something about it.)
After a depressing weekend (election), I’ve done some retail therapy: bought yarn for a major knitting project. For any knitters out there, it’s Noro Silk Garden 309, and I’m making a sorta-kinda-pseudo-kimono from it, which should look spectacular, Ceiling Cat willing. This pic doesn’t show all the dark grey, crimson, burgundy and tan shades that are also in the ball.
I should call it my Mick Aston memorial knit.
Also this is the ultimate weapon in the battle to protect your password:
http://www.yarnover.com.au/blog/page/7/