Count Down to Pork Floss

6 days from now, give or take some flight time, I will be in the land of pork floss.

Yum.

Mrguy will hold down the fort.

Road Trip

Last week mrguy and I hit the road. 

As we headed down the highway we found ourselves in the middle of a caravan of vintage cars.

Then we hung a left at the farmhouse to buy a small PA for the ladies of Three Letters. Thanks, Craigslist.

 

Then off to spend a lovely afternoon and evening with That Nice Boy.

It had been way too long, but won't be next time :)

A Visit To The Framer

This was a busman's holiday. I took a new print to the conservation framer, along with two other prints by the same artist.

Looking under the hood with my framing sensei is one of my favorite things to do.

She gave me a tour of her new shop and I couldn't resist taking some photos of this artifact from their old spray booth.

They do things differently now that she's the owner.

Fanta Moo Moo White

Akebono's latest commercial is for Fanta's new drink, Moo Moo White.

As far as I can tell, it's a carbonated dairy drink.

Gotta try it.

Once.

Haupudding

Whoa.

That Cafe Hammerslag got all fancy today. They advertised haupia. It really wasn't haupia. It was almond tofu (like an almond bomb) with fruit and chocolate covered orange peel. Something seems to have been lost in translation.

I so badly want a mint right now.

I Know Why

I know why you fell, Russian skater.

You were distracted by shame. The shame that they made you wear a polyester outfit from Medieval Times on the ice.

You, too, Blue Man. You blinded yourself with that shiny spandex.

Mr. Smirnoff, dressed like a brown Reddy Kilowatt, I worried for you but you did o.k.

I see a new trend, though. It was the Americans, I think, who dressed like normal people. If this sport stops channeling Elton John, I'll watch more often.

See what you can do.

Before and After

Lothar Meggendorfer

This week I constructed a humidification chamber in my office. I ran an experiment to see how various art papers responded to humidity. The results were swift and conclusive. Right on!

While I was trying to make a decision about one aspect of the humidifier's construction, I looked on the web for examples and found this adorable video about doing what I was about to do.

On the same page were other links to conservation-related topics. One was a video about repairing a movable book created by Lothar Meggendorfer. His books are complex and beautiful and amusing, with fish jumping out of the water to catch flies and cellists sawing away and alligators snapping their jaws.

The intersection of conservation and these beautiful books was almost too much for me. At various points in this video you get to see under the hood, so to speak, and appreciate how complex the workings of these books are. Check it out.

Want to buy one? The one being repaired in the video can be found for around thirteen hundred bills.

For more Meggendorfers in action, youtube has video presentations of the books Moving Animals, and Always Jolly.

The Bathroom Is Going Down

At last mrguy and I are on the same page at the same time about the bathroom.

Although the charm of its original pink tile was one of the things that drew us to it in the first place, it's now really really beat, just like the kitchen was before we redid it. We took turns hating it and then getting over it. Finally, in the immortal words of mrguy, we both decided the bathroom is going *down*.

We are using the same contractor as we did on the kitchen, and we have the shopping list and his advice for how to move ahead. First step, flooring. The palette for the rest of the room flows from this. But no pressure, people.

Yesterday we commenced to shop. My better half suffers a certain amount of trauma resulting from living with 3 inch square pink Cal-Tile in his bathroom for nine years. Pink's off the list, and so are 3" squares. My initial hope of irregular -shaped green slate or local stone is out. Too dark, too difficult. And I could go either pretty girly (bright palette) or completely hippie (stone, burl, earthy). Mrguy could go with something like this, which just doesn't make enough of a statement for me.

If I were made out of money I'd do the floor in these pebbles, which I think are lovely. Or polished black stones. I am going to find a way to add a small amount of these pebbles to the room, possibly in the soap dish.
I just don't know. Girly? Dudely? But in other news we found our toilet for several hundred cheaper, which helps. A fine toilet that's lower flush and ADA height (sorry shorties!):


The same people had a perfectly nice set of shower fixtures that we could agree on for a good price. Some decisions were made, just not the ones that we set out to decide.

We made a brief detour to the falafel shop behind the dumpster near work for sustenance. Mrguy says it's his new favorite place. My falafel plate was so huge that I ate it for two meals yesterday and one meal today. Yum.

Then we went off over the hill to buy bedding for our new bed.

Thank you Macy's home sale, and to mrguy who wore red for an extra discount.

Now we just need the bed...

People From the Past

I'm home sick again today. My third cold in 8 weeks. My second in January alone. It really bugs me.

Slept in this morning and then read the paper online. Man, that girl in the paper sure looked like an old acquaintance of mine, but she passed away years ago. She died in childbirth.

Turns out that the article was about women who have passed away in childbirth, and my acquaintance's story was told as part of it. She has a foundation in her name now...

Life can be unfair. She was an extraordinary girl. Her smile took up well over a third of her face and she used that smile often. She was goofy and beautiful and funny and smelled like cucumber oil from the Body Shop.

I didn't get to know her well. I hoped that we'd reconnect in the future, and she was the first person I asked about when we had a reunion of the people from the restaurant where I met her. The news was shocking then, and still is shocking now.

I'm going to enjoy this day and all that it brings, even if that's mucous and boredom and feeling slow.

That's what you gotta do.

Away We Go

Last month was the Grand Mamoo's birthday. As is customary, we went to the seashore. For many years this is what Mom and Pop did together for her birthday, and now this is what Mamoo, Big Sis Guy and I do. We had a blast.

First order of business: I woke up at 7:30, in order to be at the ancestral Guy house at the appointed hour of 9am.

I got there and uh...Mom was not finished packing. Two more hours of packing were necessary, actually, but we were all having a good time.

Did I mention that we were just going overnight? This is how much stuff was necessary:

We went out for lunch, and then went to the local history museum. It was filled with taxidermy and dioramas. What's not to like?

We went to see the butterflies, and then toddled off to our hotel.

After a rest, we took a walk by the beach and saw the sunset and the local wildlife (someone was making a house call).

In the morning we hung out in our room for a good long time and ate breakfast and were pummeled at dominoes by Mom. She and Pop had a running game for 50+ years. She still keeps her final score sheet in with the tiles.

We shopped, we ate at a weird fish shack that Mom turned us on to (go Mom!) and came home.

Mom said "I just want you to know that I'm having a *very* good time".

Us too, Mamoo :)