The Rose Garden

Toodle-Dos and Free iMac RAM

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:11:19 GMT

Movie night, check. Bike ride, checkity check check check. We did the route in 2 hours of actual biking time (ca 24 miles) -- don't recall how that compares to last time, particularly since I dawdled over gadget and grocery shopping afterwards last time. (The fancy bike odometer gadget is capable of tracking riding time -- and hence average speed -- for only those periods when the wheels are revolving.) It looks like I'm well enough matched with thread_walker to be a good training partner after all.

Of course, "2 hours of actual biking time" doesn't include the 35 minutes between when I left my house and arriving at Orinda BART (must remember that I can leave 10 minutes later than I've been budgeting and still make my train with time to spare). And it doesn't include the hour spent getting from Concord BART back home (including a stop-off at Arizmendi Bakery for late breakfast). And it doesn't include the hour basically crashing and showering and changing. And it doesn't include the hour finally having breakfast and reading things on-line. But, hey, I made lots of progress yesterday on item 3 (slide show for costume lecture) and I've still got 8 or 9 hours of working time in the day. (Well, minus a grocery shopping trip at some point.)

The weekend accomplishments have also included Freecycling some assorted office supplies and electronics (printer ink for printers I no longer own, Palm keyboard for model I no longer own, portable CD player that has long since been replaced by iPods). I have one more item to get rid of which I'll offer here first.

1 GB RAM for Apple iMac G5 (the full part description seems to be "1GB DDR400 PC3200 DIMM"). Not the current silver-tone iMac but the previous white plastic model (if it matters, which I think it does). Brand new, unused, still sealed in packaging. The deal is that the original chip in my machine had to be replaced but I decided to upgrade to 2GB instead (which is a single-unit replacement rather than simple adding a second 1GB chip), but by warranty they still had to give me the replacement for my bad original ... even though I didn't need it. The thing is serving no earthly use sitting on my desk, so if anyone could use it, let me know. It's light enough I'd even be happy to ship it. And, yes, I know I could probably get some cash for it (the box seems to indicate it has a $300 list price) but that would require a great deal more effort on my part ... which means it could be another year before I get to it.

Weekend ToDo

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:51:58 GMT

Here's my to-do list for the weekend:

Item: Create slide-show for Costume Lecture #1 (Surviving Garments as a Costuming Resource -- A Guided Tour)
Item: Evening social event involving movies
Item: Sunday morning bike ride with thread_walker

Should be enough to keep me busy.

Dream Journal: "The Arm is Evil!"

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 04:54:17 GMT

I should have written this up first thing in the morning when it was more detailed. The dream had multiple layers of reality -- the sort where each preceding scenario is revealed to have been "the dream" but the new context is "reality". But really, the core scenario stood nicely by itself and would have made a nice little horror flick.

Basically, there was this severed arm, significantly decomposed. As in, the three main arm bones were all visible, but strung together with tendons and bits of muscle. The hand was whole. And the arm crawled. It chased me around ... and various other details happened that have faded now. And I kept trying to alert people to the danger with the message, "The arm is evil! The arm is evil!" Unclear exactly what the danger was, other than the existential horror of being chased by a rotting severed arm.

Then we back up a layer, and I'm trying hard to remember that I have to journal about the arm, to let people know that it's evil. Or am I supposed to journal about a dream about a decomposed arm chasing me around? No that's the third layer, when I'm aware that the evil arm was a dream, but I'm still trying hard to remember to journal about it. Then we back up a layer where I think that I've journaled about the dream about the arm, but I realize that I only journaled about it in a dream, and I still have to remember to do it for real.

Somebody pinch me so I know I'm not still in the last layer.

It didn't feel like a "meaningful" dream (despite one of my favorite motifs of skeletal bits) -- just a very vivid one. I do wish I'd remembered more of the details, though.

SF Bike Ride Review

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 02:55:02 GMT

Wow! Nice ride! Not as much elevation change as the Bear Creek ride last week, but my worry was that I wouldn't get much in the way of hills at all, given that my plan was to spend a lot of time following the coast. Ha ha. This is San Francisco, after all.

So I BARTed over to the Embarcadero station and had a brief breakfast (courtesey of Acme Bakery & Peets) at the Ferry Building looking out over the Bay. Chatted with a woman with a large backpack heading for Yosemite. Not entirely clear how she's getting from SF to Yosemite, but it looked like she'd have fun doing it.

The first leg was severely urban: along the Embarcadero, dodging around the tourists and taxis interacting with the various tour company parking lots. I actually don't mind the urban bicycle thing too much -- lots of opportunity for power acceleration and watching everything at once. Following the bike map, I turned inland on North Point, but rather than following it all the way down to Fort Mason, I jogged right a couple blocks to hit Fisherman's Wharf -- reminding me what an utter tourist-zoo it is. From there, I pretty much followed the edge of the land past Fort Mason, the Marina, Crissy Field/Presidio, and then up a mild hill to the SF end of the Golden Gate Bridge.

On a whim, I went ahead and pedaled across the bridge and back. I don't think I'd realized before how serious the tourist-bike-rental business is in SF. About 2/3 of the cyclists crossing the bridge had tell-tale rental agency bags hanging off the handlebars. They tended to ride slowly and somewhat unsteadily in linear clumps. The other 1/3 of the cyclists on the bridge tended to wear team jerseys and ride racing bikes ... with the expected velocity that goes with such. The western bridge walkway is reserved for bicyclists while the eastern one is mixed pedestrians and cycles (but you'd be crazy to try to ride there in the crowds I saw today). So while the cyclists didn't have to dodge pedestrians, you have a situation that's equivalent to a 2-lane country highway with no shoulders, populated by equal parts slow semi trucks and zippy sports cars. I didn't see any actual collisions, but there were some hairy times, especially at the bridge towers where the pathway suddenly makes a series of right angle turns to go around the tower (and you suddenly realize that the cross-winds are quite strong).

Back on the SF side of the bridge there's some mildly hilly bits along the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Seacliff neighborhood (which contains some really serious architechture-porn -- and biking is the right pace for appreciating it properly), and then the most significant hill of my route leading up to the Palace of the Legion of Honor. I took a brief break at the Palace to try out some of the various electrolyte chews I'm testing out. Then down through the golf course, along the edge of the park, past Cliff House, along Ocean Beach, and then pick up Golden Gate Park at the southwest corner.

I'd meant to pick up the designated bike path through the park, but made the mistake of following another bicyclist and ended up in the bridle path instead. (Well, it's a general purpose trail, but unpaved and clearly the trail of choice for riders.) So I got in some "off road" work as well, complete with tree roots and sand traps. In fact, the only time on the entire ride I had to get off and walk was a completely level stretch of loose sand on that trail. I'd thought about doing some loops in the park, but gauged my exertion and decided to go straight through then out the Panhandle. Since I wanted to stop by Union Square to do some shopping, I took the next likely looking road north to Post St. then east on Post past Japantown to the square. From there, down to Market St. and down Market to the Ferry Building again. More shopping and a bite of (late) lunch at the Hog Island Oyster Company followed by a hazel-filled macaroon from Miette.

And so back to BART and home again.

I wanted to do some play-testing with the GPS on bicycle despite not having a mount for it yet. I fired it up over breakfast and set it for "bicycle mode" with an initial destination of the Exploratorium then zipped it into its carrying case and put it in the outside pocket of my backpack. Through experimentation and periodic checking, I determined that it was picking up the signals perfectly well through the case and backpack, but that the voice directions were completely muffled by them. I had, unfortunately, divested my backpack of the various music devices it usually carries, so I wasn't able to try running an earbud out of the case. More experimentation is called for. At some point during the trip, the battery ran down -- not surprising since it's advertised with a 5 hour life and what with the shopping and dining breaks my entire trip lasted from ca. 8:30 (leaving home) to ca. 4:30 (arriving home again). Actual cycling time (courtesy of my new cycle statistics gadget) was 2 hr 50 minutes, total distance was about 28 miles, average speed ca. 10 mph.

So while I didn't work out precise biking times to specific locations, it looks like I can get to almost any location I'd care to go in SF allowing an hour of bicycling time, with plenty time to spare.

Posty Posty Posty (maps)

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:05:11 GMT

One of the weekend's projects has been to pull the several Boxes of Holding from the car and sort through and update what I really need to be carrying around these days. (E.g., the new car no longer requires that I carry a jug of radiator fluid at all times. And it's been a couple of vehicles since I really needed to carry extra oil as a general rule. And I really need to find a safe and eco-friendly way to dispose of a semi-used aerosol can of "super start spray" -- I believe it's basically pure ether -- which I picked up on some trip or other to snowy mountains when I was having trouble with starting. But today is about refurbishing the first aid kit and sorting through maps. The GPS now makes most of my map-hoarding proclivities unnecessary, so here's an inventory of what I'm discarding. (It will become obvious that I almost never throw maps out.)

After making the initial list, I found another entire stack of maps -- ones that had gradually accumulated in a "to be moved to the car" spot but never made it as far as the map bag in the car itself. These items are prefaced by # rather than *.

State and larger-scale maps
* 2002 North American Road Atlas - probably bought simply because my previous NA had disintegrated, since I don't recall a specific trip I'd have needed it for. Will keep, but not in car.
* (copyright 1996) Thomas Bros. California Road Atlas - Fair condition, spiral bound. Not sure why I kept both this and the following edition in the map bag. A testament to my lack of periodic review of the contents of the bag. A work-horse of an atlas, deserving to be retired honorably.
* (copyright 1990) Thomas Bros. California Road Atlas - Poor condition, spiral bound. Same comments apply as the above.
# (copyright 1993) Central & Western United States - Good condition. I believe this was left behind by some overseas visitors who had no further use for it. Toss it.
* 2006 Washington State - Picked up at regional tourism center in Yakima last fall on the road trip so the docent could jot down notes on some good hiking spots. Toss it.
* (undated) Nebraska State Highway Map - Free tourist center map. Undoubtedly dates to some cross-country road trip, possibly Worldcon in Chicago? Doesn't seem beat up enough to be that old, no, maybe the 1996 Welsh Studies conference in Ohio, that sounds right. Toss it.

Smaller regional maps (California unless otherwise noted)
* 1995 (copyright says 1976, which provides evidence that the copyright dates have nothing to do with when the map was printed and/or bought) San Mateo County & the Peninsula - Fair condition, no idea why I bought it. Toss.
* 1991 Thomas Bros. Alameda and Contra Costa Counties Street Guide - Fair condition, spiral bound. Another solid workhorse of a map. In theory, it should have made any other Alameda/CC map unnecessary. Retire honorably.
* 1986 El Dorado & Placer Counties - Fair condition, no idea why - probably SCA event. Toss it.
* (copyright 1983) Nevada & Sierra Counties - Fair condition. I think I bought this that time I was stuck in Grass Valley with a broken down car after an SCA event and wanted to be able to wander around town without getting lost. Toss it.
* (undated) Bakersfield & Kern County - I have no idea why I got this map. Toss it.
* (undated) San Gabriel Valley - Fair condition. No idea why I got it. Toss it.
# (undated) Southwest Michigan - Moderate condition. Purchased the first time I went to Kalamazoo for the Medieval Studies Conference (or at least the first time I did the fly-to-Chicago-and-rent-a-car method, which may have been my second trip). The theory was that I'd toss it in my bag each future time I made the same trip. I don't think I every managed to remember it. Toss it.

City and similar-scale maps
California
East Bay
# 2006 Berkeley Biking & Walking Map - Excellent condition. The price sticker says "Solano Cyclery" and I don't recall shopping there in the last couple years, so I think this was a freebie for Bike-to-Work day. Keep it, especially for bike trip ideas.
# (copyright 1988) "The Most Useful Map of Berkeley" (yes, that's the title) - Fair condition. In addition to the basic street map, there are extensive annotations for unidirectional streets, traffic-calming barriers, highlighted "best through routes", neighborhood names, and a brief list of local attractions. If I were running an information desk, it would be quite useful. Toss it.
* (copyright 1976, prob. more rec.) Fremont/Hayward/Livermore - Fair condition, no idea why I have it. Toss.
* (undated) Oakland - Poor condition, not sure why I have it but it's stamped "Virginia Hills Exxon, Martinez" so I may have been searching for some place specific and happened not to have my Thomas Bros. on me. Toss.
San Francisco & Peninsula
# 1997 BART & Bus map for SF & East Bay - Fair condition and badly outdated, but I should get an up-to-date copy just to have around for reference (especially for visitors). Hmm, ok, I also have a 2003 copy of the same publication. Still not up-to-date enough for a transit guide.
# (copyright 1996) Fastmap: San Francisco - Moderate condition, laminated. Compact map of the entire city with a detail map of downtown and a freeway map of the entire Bay Area on the back. Probably worth keeping just for its at-a-glance convenience and durability.
* 1992 San Francisco street and transit - Poor condition, badly out of date on transit info. Toss.
* 1988 San Francisco convention & visitors bureau guide - Probably picked up for some visiting tourist. Toss.
* 1972 (copyright date, but probably more recent) San Francisco & Northern Peninsula - Poor condition, horribly obsolete. Toss.
South Bay
* 1997 San Jose - Laminated, large format, good condition (because of the lamination). This was a semi-gag present after a dinner expedition in San Jose nucleated around some out-of-town-visiting members of the alt.shoe.lesbians usenet group where I swore that I knew how to find my way around town because I'd actually lived in San Jose for a couple years (a decade before) and then managed to get us completely lost. No functional reason for keeping it and only mild sentimental association. Toss it.
* (undated) San Jose & South Bay Cities - Fair condition, may date to the early '80s when I lived there. Toss.
Other California
# (copyright 1999) Davis & Woodland - Moderate condition, with annotations. There must be a story here: the outside of the map has my dad's name on it and there are routes highlighted to a couple of Davis residences. Probably a relic of some Quaker business trip. Toss.
* (undated) Los Angeles and Hollywood - Poor condition, I think I got it for some LA convention. Toss.
* (copyright 1976, probably more recent) Central Los Angeles - Fair condition but unlikely to be useful. Toss.
* (copyright 1977, prob. more rec.) Lake Tahoe - Probably picked up for some SCA event, fair condition. Toss.
* (copyright 1979, prob. more rec.) Sacramento - May date to when I lived in Davis, poor condition. Toss.
Non-California
* (copyright 1985) Downtown Washington, DC - Poor condition, picked up on one of my Darkovercon trips when I took a couple extra days and did some touristing. Toss.
* 1998 New York (NY) transit map - Free transit map. Fair condition. I'm fairly certain I picked this up when I was there for the Queer Middle Ages conference in 1998. Toss.
* 1997 Manhattan (NY) Bus Map - Free transit map, see previous. Toss.
* (undated) New York City 5 Maps in 1! - Fair condition, probably same as previous. Toss.
* (undated) Pittsburgh PA - Fair condition. I think this may actually date to some road trip that included a stop in Pittsburgh. Can't quite figure out what it might be. Toss it.
* (copyright 1996) AVIS Rent-a-car Welcomes You to Cleveland and Vicinity - Standard "how to get to and from the rental car drop-off" map. Obviously must date to some trip in or after 1996 when I flew to Cleveland and rented a car. Huh. It wasn't the 2002 OVFF trip because that was to Columbus and I didn't rent a car. Curious; very curious. Toss it.
# (copyright 2005) Greater Boston - Good condition. I bought this a couple years ago when I expanded my usual Thanksgiving-at-Darkovercon trip to include a train loop up to Maine the previous weekend. Since you have to change between the South and North stations in Boston, and I decided I had sufficient time and inclination to walk the connection, my usual navigational paranoia led me to buy a map. But I have no near-future trips to Boston planned, so there's really no point in hanging on to it despite it being nearly-new. Reluctantly toss it.

A Sunday Bike Ride

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:40:18 GMT

So although thread_walker has higher priorities (which I wholeheartedly support) than another jaunt along Bear Creek Road tomorrow, I've decided I want to put in a couple hours of moderately strenuous bike riding tomorrow morning (if for nothing else, to work off some of yesterday's excellent BBQ). I'm thinking of BARTing over to SF and checking out how much time/effort it takes to bike to various museum and park locations (e.g., Presidio, Golden Gate Park) that I sometimes visit and where I generally haven't biked because I'd never checked out the logistics in advance. Hmm, this may require the picking up of a good route guide. I wouldn't be averse to adventurous-minded company on the ride. I'm not aiming for speed (since this will be largely urban) or massive hill-work (although one never knows), but definitely something more than a leisurely Sunday stroll. Tentatively I'm thinking of starting at the Embarcadero and working roughly counterclockwise around the city with the end-point determined by whim (and BART proximity). Anyone interested?

BBQ review

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:16:48 GMT

My 4th of July BBQ & games was a fun little party (and, as usual in my social circles, ended up with twice as much food as half the number of people could eat). We ended up with 8 people (although one retreated to his sick-bed with a cold), ran through Settlers of Cataan, a roll-the-alphabet-dice-and-form-words game whose name escapes me, and a couple rounds of Trans America, interspersed with grilling, ice cream, and a walk out to the Emeryville Marina to see fireworks.

Grill review: I need to work on pacing for my grilling (particularly if it's to be a primary social activity rather than a get-the-food-on-the-table activity). The corn took longer than I expected, and the grilled veggies needed to be being plated as they came off rather than being stacked in the warmer. The meat (of many varieties -- everybody brought enough to share) generally worked out well. I'm starting to get the hang of the temperature variation on various parts of the grill surface, and how to alternate open-hood and closed-hood temperature manipulation. Since I have a stack of ungrilled leftover ingredients, I figure I'll do some more practicing this weekend.

Fireworks review: The fog was fickle. We walked out along the south side of Powell St and could see both the Jack London Square show (except for the lowest stuff which was hidden by intervening buildings and port equipment) and an assortment of probably unauthorized items from the West Oakland trajectory. As we got out past the fire station (where a couple of enterprising fire crew were hawking refreshments in support of the Special Olympics) we could see occasional cloud-glows from the San Francisco show, but it was clear that there wasn't any point in trying to position ourselves for a better western view. So we crossed over to the boat harbor by Trader Vics, then wandered slightly south to avoid the actual harbor view to take in the Berkeley show. Alas, there was a fairly solid fog river flowing in right over the Berkeley Marina, so we saw the lower half of about the first half of the show, and then the fog thickened and all we were getting was cloud-glow. We actually got a much better view of something roughly up Richmond way. I don't know if it was in Richmond proper (I wondered if they might be doing a show at the racetrack in Albany, but it could have been all the way out to the Hercules/Pinole area. And, of course, there were a lot of random (if less ambitious) unauthorized items sprinkled across the horizon. So it was a good evening for getting a sense of the scope of Bay Area firesworks in all their forms, but not as good for seeing a single show in all its glory. I keep thinking that some year I should bike off to the Berkeley Marina proper to see that one up close. (You do not attempt to drive around the waterfront to try to view the shows. In fact they usually barricade most of the relevant streets just to forestall the issue.)

A Random Recipe: Strawbarb

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:07:32 GMT

I love rhubarb. I dislike adding large quantities of sugar to perfectly good fruit. Hence, my delight at discovering that roughly equal quantities of rhubarb and strawberries result in a perfectly edible compote. Here's a slightly more elaborate version.

Slice 4-6 stalks of rhubarb into 1/4-1/2 inch pieces.
Take a pint of the ripest strawberries you can get your hands on, remove the stems, and slice.
Put these in a saucepan with a small amount of liquid (e.g., apple juice), maybe half a cup or so.
Simmer over a very low heat until mushy.
Add a small handful** of chopped dates, another of raisins, and half a small handful of diced candied orange peel.
Also add a bunch*** of "pumpkin pie spice" (or other favorite sweet-spice mixture).
Continue simmering until mushier.

May be served hot or cold. Hot, it is set off very nicely by a dollop of vanilla ice cream above and some sort of sweet baked good fresh out of the oven underneath.

**Handfuls may vary according to taste. I think my latest batch use approximately 1/3 c as the handful equivalent.
***A bunch means "more than you think it should be, but not so much it's inedible". I think it was at least one teaspoonful.

Two Random Items

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 06:04:36 GMT

I neglected to mention that on Saturday's outing, I was able to confirm that the hands-free-phone function on my new GPS does, in fact, work as advertised on incoming calls. The sound quality is not ideal, but then, I often have problems with phone sound quality, no matter what sort of line and device I'm using. (One of the things that led me to ask for a hearing test at my recent 50-year-tune-up appointment. Alas, my language-interpretation problems are not blamable on any hearing impairments. I'm at the same place I was back in grade school: "I can hear you perfectly; I just have to ask you to repeat it several times before I can figure out what the words are.")

And I'd like to remind readers that I'm holding a 4th of July games-and-BBQ party at my place (on, duh, the 4th), starting noonish and culminating in walking over to the Emeryville marina to see how many fireworks displays we can spot. The downstairs tenant has a couple of German friends in town who are delighted to partake in our quaint local cultural celebrations, so I have a core group no matter who else shows up.

Mmmmm tired

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 02:31:59 GMT

So what do I do with an "unscheduled" weekend? Let's see. Saturday: slept in until 10am or so, then cooked a nice complex breakfast. (Reason #37 I want a girlfriend: so I can have someone else enjoy my weekend breakfast cooking, too.) Mid-afternoon, off to go furniture window-shopping in consignment stores with scotica, culminating in her buying a nice oak "lawyer's bookcase" that she'd had her eye on for some weeks. (Since I had the Element there, she actually had a way of getting it home.) Then off to a new (to us) sushi place in Palo Alto: Fuki Sushi. Really excellent food. We sat at the bar and stuck to nigiri, asking the chef to give us whatever he thought was good. (We had to persuade him that we really did mean "whatever".)

Sunday, it was up at workday hours to take the bike on BART to Orinda where I met up with thread_walker and a couple other friends of hers to take Bear Creek Road up around Briones Park, ending up in Concord. Gorgeous ride! Two significant hills and several milder ones. Great scenery. Road-kill count included a couple of long-dead deer and a much fresher turkey vulture, plus many assorted squirrels and a large lizard. I ended up very tired but not even close to exhausted. Sometime around when we were coming into Concord my cell phone rang so after I peeled off to do some shopping at Fry's (printer ink and looking for a bicycle mount for the GPS with no success) I returned the call and it turned out to be cryptocosm following up on my idea of commissioning him to build the camping-gear/sleeping platform for the back of the Element. Since he was calling from Sacramento, I figured I'd be home by the time he got there, but what with Fry's, taking the time to have breakfast (ok, I guess it was lunch by then), then getting off BART at Rockridge to do the grocery shopping on my way home, he actually got to my place before me.

So we have a design for my platform and the various lumber and hardware acquired. My job is to try to locate a neighbor with a table saw to make cutting the plywood topper a bit easier, then he'll come over some day in the near future to do the construction. I'll post pictures when it's finished -- that'll be easier than trying to describe the thing. The basic idea is to have a removeable framework that supports a sleeping platform, with space for gear storage underneath. The innovation is that the platform will compress sideways when not being slept on to allow a little less than half the rear of the vehicle to be open when desired. (For, e.g., convenience when dressing, and for the ability to transport, e.g., my bicycle inside the vehicle.)

And now I get to collapse and vegetate for the rest of the evening.

Gratuitous Gadget Post

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 06:13:53 GMT

I could swear I already made this post, but I think I must have been working on it when the DSL went out Wednesday evening. I got two fun new transportation-related gadgets this week. My bicycle now has a speedometer thingie (also does odometer, trip odometer, average trip speed, max trip speed, and clock). Unlike the bike speedometer gadgets of my youth, this one doesn't rely on mechanically using the wheel to drive a mechanism (thus making you work harder), but instead has a small magnet fastened to one spoke with a sensor on the fork nearby to time revolutions.

And the new car now has a GPS (Garmin's Nüvi 760). I'm still mostly playing around with it on known routes (to evaluate how smart it is). In theory, I can also use it when walking or biking (although I don't have a bike mount for it yet). It does have a few quirks. It gets a bit discombobulated if you turn it on in a different location than it was when you turned it off. (Has to re-acquire the satellite fix.) Although it's perfectly happy to do Bluetooth pairing with my Treo, it has not yet managed to actually respond appropriately to an incoming phone call. And in theory it will transmit the audio directions to my radio, but this hasn't actually worked yet (possibly because it isn't happy about the station I picked). On the other hand, I'm utterly delighted to know that it will provide me with driving directions in several dozen different languages, including in some cases multiple dialect and gender options. So if I should need to know how to get somewhere in Estonian or in Serbian, I'm good to go. (No Welsh, alas.)

The Three Things Meme

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:47:33 GMT

It's only fun if I can come up with three really oddball things -- and no fair coming up with things that involve Medieval Welsh.

Rules: Post 3 things you've done that you believe nobody else on your F-list has done.
Indulge in remorse if someone calls you out on a listed item.

1. I had the cops called on me for participating in a dog-fight ... as one of the dogs. (There is someone who could call me out on this one, but I don't believe she's on LJ, and I know she isn't on my F-list.)

2. I turned in a homework assignment written on a clay tablet in cuneiform. (It was an assignment for Hittite, so it wasn't an entirely random act.)

3. I made a bobbin-lace doily from linen thread that started out as flax seeds in my garden.

nah, not oddball enough; let's try again

3.1 I smuggled an ice-chest full of pelican skulls into the U.S. from Mexico with the collusion of a border guard.

Oh the horror!

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:06:36 GMT

One forgets. So quickly one forgets the gnawing, ichor-dripping, Lovecraftian horror that is dial-up on the internet. Ah, but hope gleams brightly. After nearly 24 hours of no DSL, no sooner had I dredged up the phone-line splitter, the extra long cord, and the dial-up utility -- no sooner had I suffered through the downloading of a hundred e-mails at near-manuscript speed -- than Earthlink relented and released the DSL from its prison.

Because my new grill needs exercise

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:40:35 GMT

I know most people already have plans of some sort for 4th of July, but I'm going to have an "Open Grill and Games" party (sort of like an open house, but revolving around the grill) at my place on the 4th. Basic concept: show up with a chunk of protein to throw on the grill, a side dish to share, and an interest in some sort of board/card/whatever game to play (bring your own or see what I can lay hands on). And when it gets near dark, those interested can walk over to the Emeryville marina (ca. 1 mile) and -- fog permitting -- see anywhere between one and four fireworks displays at various points of the compass. Starting time will be nebulously noonish with the grilling starting whenever we get critical mass.

If you're interested, drop me a note (e-mail or via the LJ message link) so I can make sure you have directions. Otherwise this is rather low key: if people show up, they show up; if they don't, they don't. This invitation is explicitly extended to anyone reading it, whether or not you're on my LJ "friends" list. But if I can't figure out who you are, you'll need to tell me before I give you my address.

That "Classic Dames" quiz

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:22:55 GMT

Well it was annoying to translate all the questions about my "leading man", but at least they answer came out right:

Your result for The Classic Dames Test...

Katharine Hepburn

You are the fabulously quirky and independent woman of character. You go your own way, follow your own drummer, take your own lead. You stand head and shoulders next to your partner, but you are perfectly willing and able to stand alone. Others might be more classically beautiful or conventionally woman-like, but you possess a more fundamental common sense and off-kilter charm, making interesting men fall at your feet. You can pick them up or leave them there as you see fit. You share the screen with the likes of Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant, thinking men who like strong women.

Take The Classic Dames Test at HelloQuizzy

And now I'm unscheduled for a while

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:48:34 GMT

June Crown this weekend was the last in a very long series of fixed weekend commitments. Now I can crash and relax for a while. Somehow even when you're scheduling individual events on the basis of "would I enjoy doing this?" they all end up ganging up on you in a lump. It was hot. It was fun. I mostly hung out and schmoozed, with a session working the heraldic consultation table, plus being in the procession for a laurel ceremony. But mostly hopping from shade to shade, sticking feet in cold water whenever possible (primarily callistotoni's Goddess Party) and chatting. My good deed for the weekend was introducing a couple of musicians who needed to know each other. thread_walker invited me to join her household's potluck dinner Saturday which was a nice change from my usual routine. But by the time dinner was over and the temperature had finally fallen to around comfortable (at maybe 10 pm) I had barely enough oomph left to get to ldyanna's vigil then melted into bed.

I have another data-point on Viridium's (the new car) mileage to add to the ca. 20 mpg city-driving from my first fill-up. I gave layla_lilah a ride to Crown to split costs so it made sense to fill up on returning in order to have number. So I have a couple hundred mile trip, essentially all highway driving, kept at 55 mph for experimental purposes (except for the bit going through Davis where a series of other-vehicle mishaps resulted in a crawl), with an overall average mpg of 28 -- a little better than the official rating of 25mpg highway. Purely in the interests of scientific experiment I figure I should do a similar trip at the posted speed limit (i.e., 65 mph) and see how it compares.

Resolutions failed

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:30:25 GMT

In theory, I was planning to get to sleep (or at least to bed) on schedule -- or even early -- all week to help shake off the last bits of the cold. I failed utterly on the "on schedule" bit but do seem to have managed to shake the cough. But Sunday night I was up late catching up with e-mail and newsgroups; Monday, as previosuly mentioned, I met up with ursule for dinner; Tuesday ... I forget what came up; Wednesday I got sucked into trying to debug some minor little issues on the desktop that may be related to Leopard (e.g., podcasts won't download, conduit file for new Palm program won't install). I picked up a cool little car log program for the PDA: tracks gas purchases, service, etc., tracks trips, calculates mileage. I've been thinking for some time that I wanted to convert to an electronic car log, and the only way it would be convenient would be on the PDA, but it turned out I can't do it in DataViz's Documents-to-go using an Excel file. This is because you have to synchronize all your Docs-to-go files in the same direction and most of the files are ones I keep actively on the computer and only transfer to the PDA for reference (e.g., my book catalog). But the car log has to synchronize in the other direction. So it made more sense to get a dedicated application. (And it can export into a spreadsheet file, so if I want to do anything fancier with the data, that's possible.) Well, you can see where Wednesday evening went. And tonight there were various preparations for Crown Tourney this weekend, including getting the clothes packed and cooking up my contribution to a dinner potluck. (Decided to do a more elaborate version of 2-15thc-cookbooks' "Joutes", which is basically "assorted spring greens cooked in broth with a little bacon for flavor".) But on the up side, I've been getting some yard work in this week (mostly finishing up the re-setting of the brick walkways). Still, I really must slack off a bunch at let the body catch up next week.

One of those glorious summer days

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:41:07 GMT

It's bright and sunny, and the air out at the Berkeley marina smells of warm pine needles and salt water. And I'm sitting beside the bay taking in the view and thinking, "If I had met the woman of my dreams by now, we could get married today. We could do all those silly sentimental things that straight people take utterly for granted and the State of California would treat us exactly the same as everyone else. And wouldn't it be wonderful to get married on a glorious summer day like today?" Ok, so I haven't yet met the reciprocally-considered woman of my dreams yet, but back when I first came to the conclusion I was gay, there were a number of things I figured I just had to give up in order to be true to myself. But today, and for some as-yet-unknown number of days (potentially stretching into indefiniteness), there is one fewer thing.

As for the weekend, as cryptocosm notes, his Pelican ceremony came off smoothly and enjoyably, if not necessarily entirely without glitch. The A&S event was, as usual, supremely enjoyable and a model for what more events could be like. One of those crystalline perfect moments came towards the end of dinner at the tavern when we were nibbling on the remnants of the roast pig, and the area was lit by the soft glow of oil lamps, and the conversation hushed to a mere whisper to hear Moshe play the viol and sing a plaintive song in Spanish (which I'm guessing was one of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, but that's just playing the probabilities rather than certain knowledge). Then later there was an entire table full of Latin drinking songs. And -- not discounting the work and planning that went into making those moments possible -- it was all natural and spontaneous. And I'm just grinning to myself thinking, It can be like this! It can, and don't anybody convince you differently.

I met up with ursule yesterday evening for dinner at the Pomegranite (a sort of Mediterranean/Persian place). She's in town for a couple weeks for a math conference and I made a valiant effort to grasp the basics of the research she was explaining. (I think I got the functional equivalent of someone telling me, "So you do stuff with prepositions, huh? And in Welsh ... that's a foreign language, right?")

The new Element packed like a dream for A&S. I loaded it up more or less the same way I'd been loading the old wagon, but coming back I tried some other configurations and came up with something even more efficient. There's loads of unused space (although using it would start cutting into visibility). I've now been daydreaming designs for a removeable platform thingie to go in the back that could have a foam mattress on top (where platform and mattress fold to one side during the day) and gear stored underneath with a kitchen box/stove platform that pulls out past the tailgate for cooking, and ... and ... and .... Why, I could end up with a micro-RV equivalent! And then I could drive off into the redwoods for a weekend in luxury. And I find myself humming, When I was a kid, back when gas was much cheaper, and summers were deeper and wider and slow ....

Being Prepared

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:13:01 GMT

I'm feeling pretty much prepared for A&S this weekend (or, more particularly, for cryptocosm's pelican). Relevant information and objects are in hand. Sewing project is complete (as of lunch break today). I haven't put my class kits together yet, but it's trivial enough I can do it on site. I haven't packed, but since I'm taking Friday off, this is not an issue. What with one thing and another, I don't have to worry about any meals at the event except for Saturday lunch. The new car is off getting its options installed, including the roof rack, which will mean I don't have to figure out what to do with the tent ridgepole. This means I actually had to "commute" this morning, getting up early enough to drop the car in El Cerrito when the service department opened at 7am, then walking across the street to BART and picking up the company shuttle van at the Ashby station. Yeah, cue the tiny violins. Mind you, it's a good thing I'm this ahead of the game since tonight is the first performance in the Cal Shakespeare series (for which I've again joined thread_walker and assorted cohorts in getting season tickets). And I can see the light at the end of the long series of over-scheduled weekends.

Mystery Produce Review: Ramps

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:30:43 GMT

I went with a dish inspired by the recipe that hudebnik offered. Wash and trim about a dozen ramps (comes out to about a quarter cup in the end), slice the thick part into coins and the green part into manageable pieces, but keep the two separate. Mince a thick slice of bacon and heat it very gently in a skillet, then add a little water (maybe a quarter cup). Add the sliced ramp bulbs and cook over a very low heat (covered) until tender. In the mean time, cook about 100 g pasta in rapidly boiling, salted water. When the ramp bulbs are tender, add the greens. Instead of the pepper, I added some grated fresh galingale (kept in the freezer from a previous mystery produce adventure). Continue simmering until tender. Drain the pasta then add to the ramps and toss (still heating) until the liquid is gone. Serve with grated hard cheese.

The ramps have a very delicate, but clearly oniony, flavor. The dish was good, but not quite good enough to merit the "exotic produce" price on the ramps. If I were really into them, I'd try growing my own.

5 Random Things (if I can count)

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:59:01 GMT

1. Funniest thing said by the Honda Finance Guy: "We had to run your credit score even though you're writing a check. Nice credit score. Would you like to buy a helicopter? With credit like that, I could get you a helicopter."

2. This season's colors evidently do not include any nice, pure, heraldic greens. My plans to do a current sewing project in wool have faltered on the rock of a complete absence of good greens. I shall have to fall back on the silk, instead.

3. I have tv reception again, courtesy of a cheap Radio Shack set-top antenna. I may need something a smidge stronger to pick up the San Jose PBS station that runs all the good imported sf and mysteries, but I may just have to play with placement.

4. This week's mystery produce is ramps, a type of wild onion. (When I picked it up, I thought it was equivalent to the rampion of Rapunzel fame, but I find I am badly mistaken. At any rate, it will be fun to experiment with. Anybody have any favorite recipes? I'll probably be cooking it tomorrow evening.

5. The raspberries are ripe! I picked the first of the season this afternoon. Also all six cherries with which my tree has graced me this year. The cherries wanted to be a pie, so there's a tart baking upstairs at the moment. The berries are sitting here drowning in light cream.

No need to comment

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 04:14:03 GMT

I bought a car

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 05:43:11 GMT

This evening I spent a rather delightful couple of hours with an assortment of Car Sales Guys, reading over all sorts of documents and making marks of various sorts on them. Tomorrow evening I take delivery on a "Kiwi Metallic" (i.e., green) Honda Element. (Yes, the sales contract includes a rider saying it's contingent on my inspection and acceptance of the vehicle.) I got it for a couple thousand less than what I'd set mentally as my limit (which in turn was about a thou and a half less than what I would have spent on a Prius). The salesman did make a half-hearted attempt to start me off with a vastly inflated asking price, but when i whipped out my printouts of online price research he grinned and said he'd had to go through the motions. They even gave me a couple hundred trade-in for the Ford. So technically when I go to the Mists Games Tourney tomorrow I'm driving a "loaner" from the dealer that just happens to be the car I traded in to them. This is assuming that I don't wake up feeling awful tomorrow. I've managed to accumulate a fair amount of sleep deprivation this week and am currently fighting a tickle in my throat that could go either way.

Being an Element, I'm thinking the car will need a name that follows the proper nomenclature format. Being green, I"m thinking tentatively about "Viridium".

Cabless at last

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 06:28:55 GMT

So you know how back on March 17 I cancelled my cable TV service? They finally -- after almost three months -- disconnected me. (I've been getting it "free" for the last couple months.) Since my current tv set didn't come with an antenna, I now have to actually acquire one, which may be amusing since I suspect most electronics shops assume that everyone has either cable or satellite service. The most efficient thing will probably be to get something I can mount up on the roof and run a line down along the same path the cable service wires run. Hmm. It occurs to me that with a little ingenuity, I might be able to use the existing wire, if it's possible to splice the right sort of connector onto the end lying across the roof. I shall need to look into this.

Honda Shopping

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 05:11:24 GMT

So I tested out three models: the Fit, the CR-V, and the Element -- those seeming to have the best likelihood of fulfilling my space requirements without getting into serious monster vehicle territory. And this time, I actually did bring the harp along for test-packing. (In addition to needing a vehicle that can manage it, it served as a useful measuring stick for the camping gear. The harp stands about 5 ft at longest dimension and the longest camping gear that I pack runs about 6 ft, so I could estimate the rest.)

As cellio noted, the Fit is a close cousin of a Tardis. Despite a very petite exterior, with the rear seats flattened out, the harp was quite comfortable even directly behind the driver's seat in normal position. Unfortunately, very little additional cargo length could be squeezed out on the passenger side by pushing the front seat forward. That means that all the poles and bed-lumber would need to be strapped to a roof rack (rather than just the tent ridge-pole). And overall things would be as tight as they were in the Camry, which I'd put up with as a temporary condition. Still, a very neat little vehicle.

The CR-V, surprisingly, was a complete non-starter on cargo space. In terms of space, it's sort of an anti-Prius: looks enormous on the outside but the interior is designed to minimize cargo space. The second row of seats "tumbles" forward, thereby taking up about a foot of the otherwise available interior length behind the front seats. It was too short even to fit the harp in, much less any of the longer camping gear.

The Element. Ah, the Element! Here is a tourney car indeed! The simple version of converting the rear seats for maximum cargo area is to fold them up against the sides. The more drastic version involves removing them entirely, which is a relatively simple operation. (And since they remove independently, storing them in my camping gear cabinets would be easy.) Amusingly, the salesman didn't know they removed entirely -- I had to convince him of it and point out the mechanism. With the rear seats out of the way, the harp fits behind the driver's seat with about half a foot to spare. And with the front passenger seat pushed all the way forward (and therefore not able to serve for an actual passenger -- at least one with legs) I can get a full 6 ft of available length. The cargo area is very boxy in shape (which is efficient) and since the vehicle is intended for "sport" purposes, the flooring is uncarpeted (which makes loading and unloading easier).

Having done the cargo evaluation (and put the harp back in my own vehicle), I did a test-drive in the Element. I'm not exactly the worlds most picky driver. It handled very naturally. Everything worked the way it was supposed to. The driver's seat was quite comfortable. Everything was vastly adjustable.

On the down side? The Element is, technically, an SUV. It gets rather good mileage for that category, but overall about 7 mpg less than the Fit (and than the hypothetical official mileage of my current car). On the other hand, given that I don't do any regular commuting (and given that my normal driving habits seem to squeeze out about 5 mpg more than the "official" rate) I think it's something I can live with. The vehicle doesn't come with available built-in GPS, so if I want that, I'll need to get a portable unit -- which all in all isn't the worst of options. It also doesn't come with available hands-free phone set-up. On the other hand, my phone habits aren't such that this would be a hardship, even given the new CA law requiring it. I can always just pull over and call back. On the up side, unlike the Toyota "bundled option packages", Honda believes in an a la carte option menu, so I can add on the handful of things I like without having to take things I have no interest in.

I told the salesman off the top that I'd promised myself I'd sleep on it before committing to a purchase. I have an appointment to go back tomorrow after work and -- short of anything drastic happening to change my mind (which would include their failure to track down either of the colors I'm interested in) -- plan to come home with a new Element.