After my first 24 hours in Chicago...

Friday night, we were off to Steppenwolf Theatre to see American Buffalo, by David Mamet. I hadn't known anything about it, other than it being a classic, and it turned out to be a real treat. The seats were excellent (even though they were in the back row; it was a small theatre), and the play itself was disturbing and well done. "Disturbing" because it said much about friendship and "business" (read, shady dealings). The set made me smile- the stage was made to be a junk shop in a basement, with much of a real junk shop's worth of stuff cluttering the stage, with amazing lighting coming from "upstairs" or from florescent bulbs. Very intricate, as also were the story and the dialogue.

Saturday, we went for deep dish pizza at a nearby bar and didn't pay much attention to the (American) football on the tube, except when the guy next to us at the bar made a comment in our direction about a play. I burned my tongue on some marinara sauce.

We walked around Old Town, and we saw A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant. It was very merry, indeed. Fairly self-referentially funny (it started with a disclaimer about Scientology and Dianetics being copyright, etc etc.) The players were all kids, the set was very simple, and it was a 60-minute show. We agreed 60 minutes was a good length.

Then, to a Mexican restaurant, where our dinner was overshadowed by the blind-date a table over, where the guy really needed a hearing-aid, because we didn't need to hear him strike out.

Sunday: more touring around, including The Art Institute of Chicago, which has added a large wing since I was last there in 2006. High points for me: a temporary exhibit called "Light Me Black" - the floor was drywall punched with a lot of craters, and some hundred florescent tube lights were suspended in the middle of the room. Entering, we were told, "please watch your step and don't make more holes." It was remarkably stark, and I liked that. There was also a wonderful exhibit on Arts and Crafts in Britain and Chicago; not only Frank Lloyd Wright, but Stickley furniture, Tiffany glass, and photos by Alfred Stieglitz and others. I was amazed by two finds: a self-portrait by Edward Steichen, a bichromate gum photograph which appears as a painting- Steichen manipulated the print with brush-strokes to add both white and black shades. I stood there studying it for quite a while. ...And there was a neat piece by Marion Mahony Griffin, a line drawing of a Frank Lloyd Wright house which used space and light/dark in a stylistically Japanese way. I appreciated how the exhibit called out a number of associations between Arts and Crafts and design elements taken from Japanese forms in the mid-1800s- lots of connections I hadn't known of.

In the evening, we popped off to Alinea for the most decadent dinner I've ever had. ( Twelve courses )

So that's how I ended my Chicago trip; with a hangover, pulling my bags through a new layer of snow, back through the Red Line, Orange Line L, to Midway (a bit concerned about time; the train was slow; but then my plane was late arriving), back to Toronto Island, back to Royal York Hotel, where I sat and read for an hour because my late plane meant I missed the earlier bus back, then dragged myself up to the Greyhound station to catch the 3pm bus home, which got me in the door at 5:30.

Which, I'll note, was just exactly 24 hours after the caviar, champagne, and quail eggs.

This life, it is a good one.

Oh, finally: I think Porter was a good choice, but not a great choice. I didn't pay more for the plane ticket, the departures lounge in Toronto was wonderful; but on the way back, missing that bus meant I got home two hours after I'd hoped I would, turning a 7-hour travel day into 9-hour travel. *shrug* It was a good experiment, at least.

The last week has seen me:

* startle Neil Stephenson [1]
* have an annoying contact lens incident [2]
* apply the necessary teachable-moment to a kid outside my workplace who was messing around with my bike when I left the office
* meet Stewart Brand
* watch a superconducting toy train, a sort-of real quantum computer and a really pretty 3-d movie which was narrated by Stephen Hawking [3]
* document the activities of the zombies at City Hall. Well, the zombies attracted to City Hall by a certain video. This was surprisingly fun.
* play with a working reprap, a supposedly self-replicating machine. [4]
* be part of creating and solving various problems; technical, social; problems of planning and problems of execution. Be pleased with some outcomes. Be exhausted at work, but not too exhausted.
* see melted_snowball off on his trip to Japan. Missing him a lot.
* not get enough sleep. Not get the rounds of bugs that are sweeping my workplace. Now if I can just get my flu shots before I have any flu symptoms, I'll be even happier.
* feel simultaneously lonely and not like talking to people. Sometimes I wish I were wired to be more social.
* spending quality time with Rover.

[1] I saw Neil Stephenson speak twice last week; afterwards, I thanked him for providing fun role-models for geeky people everywhere. I offered that I was occasionally inspired by Sangemon, the "hero" of Zodiac, whose style of bicycling in Boston traffic was over-the-top assertive. Neil looked a bit nervous at this- "I hope you do that safely." I laughed. Anyway, he was very polite.

[2] on second thought, I won't describe it. Not fun. [5]

[3] The toy train zoomed around a magnetic track. The "train" contained a super-chilled magnet and it was propelled by a shove from the demo-guy. The "quantum computer" was very poorly explained by a volunteer docent but it had an oscilloscope readout with a squiggle. And a plexiglass and metal assembly. Sorry, but that's all I got. I found my favourite part of the video, animated by NCSA - flying from the western spiral arm to the center of our galaxy. This was the most effective use of 3D I've yet seen.

[4] This evening I went off to the local nascent "hack lab" (clubhouse for tinkerers, more or less). I brought my arduino and stepper-motor. But I spent a lot of the time there socializing, playing with other peoples' toys [6], and such. It's a cool space, and my life isn't compatible with spending much time there, but I'm glad to see it exists.

[5] but my optometrist's office is 5 minutes walk from my office; and they gave me a new lens to replace the one that was stuck in my eye. Oops, I wasn't going to describe it. Well there you go.

[6] the reprap was a surprise to see in person- by the end of the evening, it was working, and it did "print" a plastic part used to make itself. Re-reading reprap.org, I had forgotten they only produce 60% of their own parts- yes it's a toy, but it's a fairly cool toy.

I'm missing some stuff in this update, but that's what I get for not posting frequently enough.

Back from being tag-along partner in San Diego. I'm trying to convince my body it's actually midnight, not early evening, because 7am is just around the corner.

San Diego was OK. Didn't see anything that made me particularly charmed with the city. Nice climate? Yup. Excellent public transit? Yup. Much to hold our attention for fun? Not really.

We skipped d's conference's Evening Activities: Zoo, and Seaworld. Both were pricey and at least with the Zoo trip, we had a better offer- our friend Joe and his new spouse David came down from the LA area to visit with us.

And Sunday evening, we had dinner with our friend Rob, who was at the conference along with dan.

Food in San Diego? We had a tasty lunch, in an Old City fairly-fake taquria, and we had sushi with very fresh fish last night, but for the most part, meals were only ok.

Last week when we were at our neighbourhood Crêpe place with dan's mom, and our waitress asked what we would do in San Diego, I said we might possibly go to Tijuana, but didn't really have a good reason to. She said, "But what better reason to go, then?" and I couldn't think of a good rebuttal.

So, yesterday I failed to find the birthplace of the Caesar Salad but I did a substantial amount of walking in the process of not doing so. Lunch, which consisted of two chicken tacos, chips and salsa, and a Dos Equis, ran me a whopping $3.25.
My most scary moment in Tijuana was when I started crossing a street and discovered the lights were green in both directions; and the most threatening people I saw were riding police motorcycles (followed up by the guys in military fatigues with submachine guns). The border crossing was extremely streamlined, and smoother in both directions than I expected (I didn't speak to any agent going into Mexico, and the agent going into the US asked exactly one question). Overall, my experience was that of fish-out-of-water, and I wish I had more than a handful of words in Spanish, because I felt terribly rude the entire time I was there.

Efficient public transit in San Diego, as I said. $5 got me a day pass (or $12 for three days) and the light-rail went from Tijuana to Old City (in the north, which was a fun afternoon with melted_snowball). The bus schedules were frequent enough that it offered me three different routes to get to Quaker Meeting on Sunday morning, which seems pretty great.

I have more I'd say, but bed is calling.

Glad to be home! What'd I miss? :)

Oh, to post or to go to sleep. I will take the wiser choice, since I should be rested before getting on the road tomorrow. My plans: leaving around 9:30, stopping for lunch in Kingston, and getting to my parents' place before 3.

But on the other hand: I seem to have a backlog of 9 things I've meant to review from the last few weeks.

Guess you'll have to wait!

Thanks for all the well-wishes for smooth driving. It will go fine, I'm sure; just a bit long.

On that note, G'night. :)

[ps- bike odometer rolled over this evening, 200km.]

In 11 hours we're off to Buffalo, thence to Denver. Looking forward to seeing friends there; back here late Tuesday.

Today I mostly was away from the computer, which is what I needed.

This afternoon, I went on a mission of rice-mercy, because sushi-making preparations work best if there's actually any short grain rice in the house.

This evening, melted_snowball, metalana, mutual friend Kevin, and I managed to roll three cups of rice worth of sushi in probably about 20 minutes. It was seriously fast. I guess that's what happens if you have four experienced sushi-makers, four rolling mats, and a totally prepared mis en place (thanks to marvelous work by melted_snowball).

We had: squid, salmon, salmon skin, smoked salmon, cream cheese, seasoned carrots, seasoned shitake mushrooms, umeboshi plums, scallion, and I'm forgetting something. And miso soup and my favourite kind of steamed spinach salad (with soy and sesame). And great conversation, plus bonus wagging lap-dog (not applied during dinner).

I fear tomorrow will be long; Quaker Meeting and Business Meeting will include three reports by yours truly, and then our outreach group has a final planning meeting before our first-ever University info event next Thursday. And then I come home and spend time with my sweetie, away from the computer!

For the curious:

Today I learned that if your house has an access-panel in the basement, with a grungy pipe head behind it, that is probably your house's main drain to the city sewer. And if that pipe starts gurgling, that means water is backing up from the street. And if the panel fills with water, that's another sign water is backing up. And if you're lucky, the plumber will get to it before things become really messy.

We were lucky- I called Hammond Plumbing at 11 last night, their rep (who sounded knowledgeable) booked someone for 8:45 this morning, who showed up with a power auger, and two hours later the problem was (temporarily) resolved.

I say temporarily because the problem is likely to recur, though it hadn't happened in the last seven years; his clearing the pipe brought up a lot of tree-root material, and his educated guess is that the pipe has a bad crack in it (we think from the big tree that the city replaced, three summers ago). And foreign material in the pipe will clog it eventually.

This extravaganza cost us $230, though at one point there were also two city sewer employees in our basement, being paid overtime by the city, because it seemed that the blockage might be beyond our property-line and therefore the city's problem. The two city guys took measurements, converted them to metric, reported them back to their supervisor, and eventually the city will probably turn that into a bill for $295 plus tax because in fact the blockages were under the old tree, which is on our property. However, they might not charge us, possibly due to the detail (also reported to headquarters) that the tree causing the blockage had been a city tree.

Whatever.

This wasn't the ickiest thing to happen in our house, but it was icky, at least until I bleach-mopped the basement floor, and it was all over by noon, thankfully.

...meanwhile, melted_snowball was off talking to a sales rep for a condo, which seems a bit funny in the juxtaposition, especially considering d's been saying he wants to move to a loft every time there's a maintenance problem in our house, though this time it was an appointment I had set up yesterday afternoon. The "eco-loft" condos going in on Bridgeport had some new openings we wanted to check out. In the end, they aren't right for us; probably the condos going in at the Barrelyards will be, in a few years.

And then d. made strawberry jam and I ran errands:

- picked up a hold at the library
- bought coffee beans
- bought shoes, shorts, pillows, and pillow-cases at the outlet mall
- got back and crashed.

...and the rest of the afternoon has been lazing about, eating leftovers, giving the dog a long walk, and watching more of Angels in America from HBO. How was your Saturday? :)

It's a white whale in the sky! Where's the petunia?

60 rooms, cruising speed of 280km/h, 3-day circumnavigation of the Earth.

I'm not holding my breath, but I do really want to see this.

Yesterday when I was sorting through papers in a Sudafed haze, I took a few moments to re-read some of the letters I sent when I was in school. The most fun one was a pissed-off letter to Chase Bank on the resolution of a credit-report mistake, but it was also fun to find the letter I sent Cornell's library asking forgiveness concerning fees to replace two books which were stolen from my dad's truck on a trip to NYC (the fines were waived).

dawn_guy pointed me at unclutterer, which has a recent article, What does it mean to ‘honor’ mementos?

This is an interesting and relevant question for me. I would like to do something with my crate of letters, cards and other paper mementos. I like the idea of browsing them every once in a while; and a crate is not really the most suitable way to browse them without damaging them. Scrapbooking is a scarily-obsessive hobby, or at least it is rather dominated by people who seems obsessively scary. (Also, would I sort theatre and concert tickets into a binder of their own, or mix them in with other ephemera by date?... Such questions to obsess over! I just don't have time!)

Perhaps there's a digital form of preservation that doesn't feel time-wasting or obsessive. I haven't come to any conclusions here, but I'm curious if this is something you've come to peace with.

melted_snowball is much less sentimental than I am. And I'm sentimental about a wider range of stuff. Neither of us are "right" and I don't think we're incompatibly different about this. But it does seem to come to a head with magazines from *mumble* months ago that I've not gotten around to reading and electronics I might fix.

I just unsubscribed from Linux Journal (for a few reasons- including the fact that they run terrible sexist ads, but also because I haven't really read any of the last six issues). I've tossed the tape-eating VCR that was sitting in the closet. d. was, I think rightfully, a bit miffed that I had kept it around. If you knew his father moved 800 boxes of stuff from Cortland to Long Island, including boxes they hadn't opened in over 20 years, you'd probably see his point. And I do.

And it is quite gratifying to lighten the load, especially if it includes truly accepting my limitations. ("I'll never be good enough at micro-soldering to fix that headphone cable satisfactorily. And that's OK.")

A few years ago I tossed the crushed pair of black crushed velvet high heel pumps that were given to me by my friend Arlene for my first time to see the live stage show of Rocky Horror at Risley Hall at Cornell. Partly I wish I'd kept the shoes, even though they looked awful. Or, maybe that's really a feeling of regret I'd not treated them better.

It is a good life.

Even though today's plans were shot to hell by the "storm of a decade" [1], and we didn't go out for the special brunch, nor was I able to procure the egg pants from K & J,  we still had a good time of it.  I'm thankful for a boyfriend who enjoys cooking his own birthday dinner, and who improvises nicely.

Happy Birthday sweetie. And many more.

[1] I don't know whether it will turn out it was; the strength of the storm seems, er, overblown; I think I only shoveled about 30 cm of snow. But who knows what we'll get tonight?

This week I've bought art, a chair, and framing. And I'm looking forward to how my den's going to look in a few weeks.

catbear is making me a largeish print from a photo he took in Ottawa. I'm so looking forward to seeing it.

I have a large satellite photo of Lake Ontario. I love the photo- the blues and greens, the topography, the clouds. You can see where we live now, where my parents live, and Ithaca, from a 450-mile height. But it's been in an unflattering plastic frame for the last five years, because I was afraid to find out how much it would cost to do properly.

At catbear's suggestion, I'm having it laminated and plaque-mounted here at the University- for only $50. Gee, I should've done this years ago.

Finally, I bought a chair, which will be delivered in January; I've meant to have a second chair in that room for ages, and this one is super-comfy. And gold-coloured. And reclining.

It's... a bit weird to give myself permission to spend my own money. On myself. "Frivolously." But not, because it will bring me joy for a long time.

Why didn't anyone tell me these existed?

Holy moley that looks like fun. Cheaper than parachuting, also.

Seen via brad.

[ETA: the nearest one to here seems to be somewhere unspecified in Michigan, then one in NH. I don't think I'll make a multi-day trip out of it, but if I already happen to be visiting near one of these...]

I couldn't get to sleep last night. My brain kept prodding, coming up with trivia to think about. So today's going to be a meh, low-energy low-brain day. ...Now available with more grumpy.

I'm frustrated about the election yesterday: voter turnout was a record low 52% beating the last record of 54% in 1923. The Liberals won by default. Apathy sucks.

There wasn't nearly enough in-depth media discussion of the referendum question in advance, and consequently MMP Representation failed like a lead balloon. The government's information about it was so basic as to almost be useless, which I think was their intent, so now they can say The People Have Spoken, and They Are Happy. Aren't they happy?

---

I'm not grumpy about much else, thankfully. Last night when I couldn't sleep I spent a while cozying up with iTunes and now I have a bunch of music I'd heard on Pandora but never bought. So I have a heap of new songs to prop me up today: including some VNV Nation, Apoptygma Berserk, David Bowie, Neuroticfish, and Tiiinnaaa, (What's Love Got to Do with It?)

I was amused to go from browsing David Bowie to Supertramp (The Logical Song) to Scooter (Ramp/Logical Song to (does he take himself as seriously as he appears to in that video?) to realizing Oh, that's what the heck that song's called. I decided Scooter's gone all the way around bad to being good again. I mean: that euro-jock posturing. Those lyrics. Wow. And here I thought there was a trend of club DJs shouting nonsense at their audience and recording it. Turns out it's all one person. Heh.

Also, Apoptygma Berserk has some catchy hooks, but it's awesome for making fun of too.

This felt like a full weekend.

Friday afternoon I took part in a Critical Mass ride (post updated with more detail).




In the evening, melted_snowball and I celebrated our 11th anniversary with dinner at Bhima's, which I had bicycled past a mere 90 minutes earlier. We made an early night of it, due to exhaustion for the both of us.

Saturday morning I ran errands, and I stopped by catbear 's photography open-house.


In the afternoon, I played Arkam Horror with the_infamous_j and two of his friends, Chris, and MJ. The game went faster than we expected- only 4 hours, including explaining the rules to MJ. But he was an extraordinarily fast learner, and he kept us on-track during the game as well. I played the salesman, just because. He wound up collecting some nice toys, but didn't buy either of the Elder Signs we used to win. We did less story-talking during the game than the other time I've played; which was OK, but it sort of made it seem less epic. :) We randomly chose Azethoth again (we even re-drew because both the_infamous_j and I played against him the last time too). But he kept coming up. Meant to be. We lucked out in having monster-surges instead of new gates early on, and a few times, new gates were to appear on already sealed locations. We squeaked to a win in the 12th turn.

We had pizza, then broke out the Singstar 80s edition. melted_snowball and I know all but a few of the songs. And I even hit some of the notes. I still had a lot of fun, even if MJ and Chris were looking a bit leery at the videos. But c'mon- it's our childhood here! :) J was game and played a few songs he'd never heard before. Then a bit of anime video, and home.

Sunday morning was Quaker Meeting (small turnout- four regular attenders and three visiting Bible School students!). We spent a while answering their questions afterward- I think we did well. I'm glad I took a workshop on outreach this summer; the students seemed to be really working to try and fit Quakerism into their own religious models.

Sunday afternoon, melted_snowball and I went to a local-food tasting where we ate foods from 19 of 20 local farms, prepared by local restauranteurs. We ate very well.

A CSA basket.



Arctic char by Peel Street Bistro.

d. and I just went to Scoop DeVille near Rittenhouse Square. I asked for coffee and moose-tracks with mint oreo cookie chunks. They asked if I wanted it blended. I said yes. It is the BBEST.

Oh yeah. We're in Philadelphia.

The flight was 15 minutes too short- the Personal Media System only had 35 minutes to run, and the BBC Planet Earth series runs 48 or so minutes. So I saw 2/3 the Mountains episode. Great stuff, though- I saw mountaintop
brown bears foraging for... moths. Which, we all know, are full of fat. Yum-lish. Also, snow leopards stalking
ibixen (ibixes? ibixae?) and shooting directly DOWN the mountain at them. Wow.

Dinner was a tasty Mexican meal at Tequila's on Locust St. I took a photo, bbbut I'm sure it didn't come out.

My B key is sticking.

I bought catandgirl some tea. And soba noodles. And a cantaloupe.

See?

The original ink copy showed up in the mail yesterday, and it looks identical to the web version, which surprises me, and surprises me that it surprises me. I'm very happy with it!

Tracking packages is addictive.

The (ebayed, seriously discounted) SoundStation speakerphone I ordered for the Quaker Meeting is on a truck in Sacramento. ETA 5 days.

The (pleasantly affordable) 160gb disk upgrade for my laptop is in Vancouver. ETA also 5 days. 7 days from now, I should have 90gb free and a 100gb external drive in a tiny case.

*refresh* *refresh* *pout*

Now if only I had a tracking number for my briefcase. I haven't seen it since Sunday, and it's not in any of its usual storage-places. Anybody seen it?

Can we switch Christmas to July, or perhaps abolish it altogether?

I much prefer giving gifts on the occasion of finding something someone would like, and giving it then. All throughout the year. Having a gift mean you were actually thinking of them, not the date.

Rather than this Mutual Assured Distributation, this "sir, we detect incoming presents." "Arm the credit-cards! Head for the malls!"

Today d. and I walked uptown with roverthedog to see what was open on Boxing Day. Answer: only Starbucks. No Boxing Day sales for us; which is really OK for me.

Lunch today was the yummy crab-cakes d. made for dinner on Christmas Eve; dinner was a stir-fry based on the duck he made for Christmas dinner. Oh, and breakfast was the blueberry muffins he made on Friday. Damn, but I'm a lucky guy...

Today was a gym day for me, and I expect tomorrow morning will be, also. I enjoy the exercise, and I like the idea of seeing what happens after a few months of gym. Maybe, by spring, I'll weigh less instead of 5 pounds more?

In January, I'm going to start taking advantage of a University perk and try 6 weeks of a (semi-)personal trainer; in the Lab/Gym just down the hall from my office in Health Sciences.

Tomorrow, we're off for a few days in an Inn down in Cambridge; we'll be away until Thursday evening. On Saturday, we have lee_ellen as a house-guest through Monday morning. Yay!

Two things I'd like to locate:

• A bike odometer with a thousands digit. This evening I was briefly confused as to how many thousands of miles my bike had gone (the answer is two, though it might change to three this fall).
  
  
• An adapter that adds bluetooth capability to my ergonomic keyboard and mouse, so I can use them with my laptop without wires. I'm sure this exists, but google keeps offering me USB adapters to add bluetooth capability to a computer, not the other way around. Death to wires! [Edit: this page makes the logical argument that such a beast might be tough, because it requires power to the keyboard and/or mouse, which isn't designed to have any power-saving features. Hm. Still hoping for it.]
  

If Home Hardware made a commercial out of my recent trip, they wouldn't be unhappy, I think.

5:05: we realize we need a few things from the hardware store, including, if they have it, a wood citrus-reamer to replace the one that's gone AWOL.

5:15: I call, they're open to 5:30.

5:20: I get there (Park Street store, for locals). I walk to the shower faucets aisle. An employee asks if I need help. I tell her what I need. She takes me to the next aisle and hands me both items I asked for.

5:22: I go over to the housewares section, look around a bit for the citrus reamer, don't see it. An employee asks if I need help. She shows me the most likely aisle, making chit-chat. She helps me look and we find a glass reamer, which isn't what Dan asked for, so I'm not buying it. Oh well, long shot anyway. A bit more chit-chat, as we both head back to the front.

5:25, I'm just about to pay for my stuff, and the same employee comes up and says "Is this what you were looking for?" Sure enough, a wood citrus-reamer, just like the one we lost.

5:32, I'm home again, with: 40kg water-softener salt, batteries, a faucet shut-off valve, pipe tape, and a citrus reamer. Mission accomplished.

The thing I like most about this particular Home Hardware is the size of the store, even though they just doubled in size and added tons of housewares. It's human-scale, not warehouse sized like Home Despot. Also the employees are quite helpful, especially if you hit a non-busy time.

Dan is convinced I'm having an affair with one or more of the Home Hardware employees, since I go there not-infrequently. But I don't, really. Once a month tops. Well, maybe twice a month. Tops. Really.