I write this in the Denver airport; I am flying east, to be there for a week. I hope to see folks.
Also, I finished Dracula last night. Quite good, though the entire role and character of Quincey Morris is underexplored and underexplained. I would love to see some sort of speculative backstory for him, and why he’s so ready to accept the supernatural. Worth also noting, the use of kukris in the book… is just cool.
So, I went to another board game party with coworkers, this time at Aaron’s. It was great fun, there was Settlers, beer, guitar, geeking out. The best bit came, however, at the end: it was THUNDERING by the time we all left, so Theban drove all of us as far as he could manage (except for Vesa, the Finn, who decided this was fine weather to bike home in). This left me at the Boulder Transit Center, a few blocks from my house. I had thought, for some reason, to bring an umbrella, and it was definitely a good idea. This rain is torrential, and I had a bag of games to keep dry! But the weather lifted my spirits like nothing else I could imagine, and I started belting out Bold Riley as I walked. A girl walking a bit ahead of me noticed, turned, smiled, so I commented that “you have no idea how much I’ve missed weather like this.” Her rejoinder: “I’ve been in Cairo for a year. I do!” It was lovely, to sing in the rain, and, I must admit, frolic a bit. Puddles may have been splashed in.
The thunder out here is spectacular. When I was in Hakodate, I saw the most amazing fireworks of my life. Part of that was just that the Japanese know their fireworks, but part of it was that it was a sonic display as much as visual: the sound was designed to have some impressive deep notes and booms, and best of all, echo off of the mountain at the end of the peninsula. Here, the thunder—already impressive—has a whole mountain, and particularly good sounding boards like the Flatirons, to echo off of. You get it all twice, at least.
I just met R.M.W. Dixon! That’s the dude who wrote Ergativity, which I keep in an honored position at my bedside. I kinda can’t deal with the awesome. The worst part? He’s been in Boulder all summer so far and is leaving tomorrow.
I’m not a storyteller, Stella, but I impersonate one and that is almost as good. Storytelling is an intimate art, practiced between people who know each other well, and I’ve known some great ones, a sculptor named Joe O’Connell and my great-uncle Lew Powell and the late Chet Atkins. Chet was a true storyteller. He blanched at the thought of doing it onstage, but when he drove you around in his pickup truck, he’d tell a whole string of stories, some of them ribald, about Nashville stars and he’d imitated their voices beautifully and he embroidered the stories beautifully and, listening to him, I just sat and laughed and wished we’d drive forever.
Garrison Keillor is great.
Of all the people in the lab whose native language is not English, only one* speaks an Indo-European language (German). We have:
From halfway through Dracula: Abraham Van Helsing is the biggest Mary Sue I’ve come across in recent literary memory. Geez. “You forget that I am a lawyer as well as a doctor.” Yes, thank you, I wasn’t certain you were a Mary Sue when you shared a name with the author of the work you’re in, and were the one dude who knew entirely what was going on.
Well, I’ve done it: I’ve brought my concertina to the session. And I could not have picked a better day; small, small, only three others there, and all the nicest of folks. Two I know well, one I’ve just met. And so, I played. Not a tune, but a song, and it was lovely; I played well, with some minor slips, but all-in-all acquitted myself quite well.
Soon, I will get Rocky Road to Dublin down, and have a tune I can contribute.
At the request of Ultranurd, allow me to explain my new shell set up.
I’m sick of bash. The syntax is absurd, and absurd syntax makes me sad. So I’ve just recently set up iPython as my shell. What follows are the relevant config files and some explanation. [Read more →]
I finally finished Silas Marner; pleasantly written, but thin. Not much there there.
I made great spanakopita this weekend, and biked, and hiked, and played frisbee. I was productive, too—I achieved in 2 hours what would have likely taken me a day to a day and a half had I been in the office. This is consistent.
I was sent this link, which made my day.
I played concertina, I sang. I began to learn a new song, Farewell to Nova Scotia.
And yet, I still feel the pull of the East as strong as ever.
In the past two weeks, our lab has gone from 10 to 17 people, including people who are here on a temporary basis, such as summer interns. It’s kinda cool, but mostly a packing problem.
Also, I have recently met someone name Attila.