Foods

I need to get back in the baking habit; it’s hard when weekends are the only time available for it, and it’s a two-day process.  But beyond that, I want to make pickles, ginger beer, and cheese.  My forays into each have been small. I’m hoping to give some cooking lessons to a few friends …

Minor complaints

I have many ways to switch between active work areas: ctrl-a, n when using screen; ctrl-arrow when using Spaces; cmd-tab when using normal OS X application switching; ctrl-tab when using my Windows VM.  These can get confusing, and I spend a certain amount of time swapping between applications and desktops and virtual terminals fruitlessly. I …

Water, this time with lightning

At the end of the driveway: a field full of fireflies, with lightning flashing over the next ridge.  Finally, the rain that’s been threatening all day arrives, and it pours, and it pours, and it is still pouring.

A good visit

Too much good in today to encapsulate it here, but suffice to say that I feel like life is happening again, things are moving forward, and I saw a fox this evening, thus confirming, by the hand of Nature, that today was, unambiguously, good. Also, does anyone in the Philly area want some kittens, at …

Water

It’s a wonderful thing.  I stood the other night up to my knees in water, with Allie, for a good long while talking as the sun set.  We saw a shiba-inu.  If I ever were to get a dog, that’d be the breed.  Also, Princeton is a pretty great town, and I miss it. Tonight, …

Flying

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, …

Fanboy squee!

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.

How to tell a story

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 …

Languages

Of all the people in the lab whose native language is not English, only one* speaks an Indo-European language (German).  We have: Turkish Finnish Tamil Chinese (I’m not certain what specific languages Xin and Wei speak) * I say this a bit preemptively; I’m not certain what Dhaval’s native language is.  I had assumed it’s …