Fin.

Well...ta-da!

365 days (more or less) of blogging.  It was strange, it was scary, it was wonderful...hopefully you found something to interest you.

Anyway, I kind of lost track of what I was doing this whole blog thing for, and increasingly there have been times when it has been more of a chore than a pleasure, but when I told certain individuals over Christmas that I was shutting down RecAnth, those individuals got a little distraught, so I've agreed to post every so often, maybe once a week, or once a month, or whenever I come across an intriguing fact, or just when I'm feeling inspired.

And in the meantime I am going to come up with some arguably more worthwhile resolutions this time around, although I'm not going to say what they are (at the risk of my abandoning them next week).

So yes, feel free to check back whenever you like, or not, and have a very happy 2011!

Obscure 80s Weekly

It's only fitting...this should do to carry you over into the new year.

Thursday: Thompson Twins - Doctor Doctor

Friday: Kim Wilde - Kids in America

Saturday: Talking Heads - This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)

Sunday: Violent Femmes - Blister in the Sun

Monday: Men at Work - It's a Mistake

Tuesday: Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear the Reaper

Wednesday: Midge Ure - If I Was

Girly Music Science

...Okay possibly not the best title, but check out this article published not too long ago; it's called, "'Posh music should equal posh dress': an investigation into the concert dress and physical appearance of female soloists" and it is about how a number of women put on different outfits and played music and what people thought about it.

And if you don't have access to the original, here's a short review.

Idiom Du Jour

Today we have, "to pull the wool over one's eyes" - what does it mean and where does it come from?

Well the meaning implies fooling, tricking, or hoodwinking...

The origin, as always, is rather more complex, as the assumption is that the wool being referred to is a woolen wig, fashionable for men and women in the 16th and 17th centuries, but less popular in 1839, the year the phrase is first found on paper.

Silks

Washed: aka watered silk or moire, fabric with a wavy appearance caused either by the warp and weft of the weave or by a treating process known as calendaring.

Chiffon: lightweight, sheer, somewhat puckered, stretchy and rough.

Taffeta: a smooth, stiff, crisp woven fabric known for its sheen and its drape.

Noil: aka raw silk, this is the leftover short fibers from after the spinning process.

Toile: painted or patterned cloth.

Crepe de chine: fabric with either an all-silk warp and weft or else with a silk warp and hard-spun worsted weft; yeah I don't know either.

Habutai: light and sheer with a plain weave, like taffeta but more Asian.

Twill: supple drape with a medium or heavy weight and a muted luster.

Organza: thin, sheer, plainly woven, with no sheen; very similar to taffeta.

Dupioni: shimmering, iridescent, woven from coarse silk fibers and often quite stiff, with a good drape and an ability to resist wrinkles but also hold a crease.

Charmeuse: lightweight and satiny, with a reflective front and a dull back due to the uneven weaving method.

Jacquard: intricately woven and variegated, usually quite geometric or with regular organic motifs.

Brocade: heavy, woven on a shuttle-loom, patterned and colored.

Boo.

[Insert Photo of Knitting Here.]

Christmas

Yesterday's midnight mass featured a stanza from a poem by John Donne...here's the thing in its entirety: 

Wilt thou love God, as he thee? Then digest,
My soul, this wholesome meditation, 
How God the Spirit, by angels waited on 
In heaven, doth make his Temple in thy breast. 
The Father having begot a Son most blest, 
And still begetting, (for he ne'er be gone) 
Hath deigned to choose thee by adoption, 
Co-heir t' his glory, and Sabbath' endless rest. 
And as a robbed man, which by search doth find 
His stol'n stuff sold, must lose or buy 't again:
The Son of glory came down, and was slain,
Us whom he'd made, and Satan stol'n, to unbind.
'Twas much that man was made like God before,
But, that God should be made like man, much more.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve Eve

The Goose is Getting Fat

Aaaah..!

For some reason, I thought that coming home for Christmas would mean lots of relaxing...but it turns out that, while I am certainly enjoying myself, I am not finding nearly the time to complete my ever-growing to-do list that I thought I would.

There are, for instance, movie nights and hockey games, baking sessions and ravioli-making extravaganzas, trips to the thrift store and to the eye doctor (okay, to Dad's office)...I wanted to go to an art museum, the flower show, and the theater, we have family coming into town and friends staying at the house, and a number of events to attend or to host...I've got a stack of novels to read and a Christmas gift or two yet to knit and I am simply running out of time!

Several Speaking Portraits

Portrait of an Old Man
Filippino Lippi

Portrait of Anne of Cleves
Hans Holbein the Younger

Buffoon with a Lute
Frans Hals

Portrait of a Man in a Turban (self-portrait?)
Jan Van Eyck

Portrait Of A Woman
Robert Campin

...

I watched Gentlemen Broncos at long last...

...

...wow.  Truly amazing.  Life-changing, even. 

I'm not sure what my favorite bit was.  I'm going to have to think about this one long and hard.

Shelley's Heart

After he drowned in July of 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley was cremated on a beach near the city of Viraggio.  His heart was snatched from the pyre by his friend and fellow Romantic Edward John Trelawney, and was retained by his second wife, Mary Shelley, until her death in 1851.  The heart of Shelley is currently interred with the body of their only surviving child, Sir Percy Florence Shelley.

Another interesting disembodied heart is that of the French Dauphin, son of Marie-Antoinette and King Louis XVI...but that's another story altogether.

Anatomy

Now that I'm on my holiday, it seems to be getting more science-y than ever.  But I have always been interested in human anatomical studies, and so this latest offering by Google is worth a mention, I feel.

Boom.

Unfortunately you will need Google Chrome to play around with it.

Science!

"Conclusion: Our results suggest that feet are impenetrable to the alcohol component of vodka. We therefore conclude that the Danish urban myth of being able to get drunk by submerging feet in alcoholic beverages is just that; a myth. The implications of the study are many though."

...yep, THIS is what science should be like. 

(or this:
)

Acoustic Night

Despite being less than musical (boo) I plucked up the courage to head over to some practically-strangers' house tonight (very nice strangers!) for an evening of guitar playing (plus a smattering of mandolin.  I think.).

It was pretty acoustic and folksy (so Dad wouldn't have appreciated), although there was some Once soundtrack.  And Bon Jovi.  And Flight of the Conchords.

Anyway, there was definitely some Bob Dylan...I (gasp!) managed to get us through half of "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts", and the whole thing was started out with this little ditty:



It was quite fun...but now it is late, and I am behind on packing, for tomorrow I am headed HOME!

Darkness (or lack thereof)

Have I talked about this yet?

I'll go with no...

So it seems there were some meteors whistling around overhead these past few nights - the Geminids - that I was oblivious of...and if you live anywhere near civilization, you probably did too.  I've got a slide show to catch you up on what went down.

And here's some information on an organization that is less subversive than it sounds - the International Dark-Sky Association - whose mission statement is something I can really get behind ("to preserve and protect the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through quality outdoor lighting")...although on the other hand, if it has anything to do with those crappy little LEDs like the one in my bathroom then perhaps not. 

Me, the Migraine, and a Number of Needles

It could just be the acupuncture talking, but it seems to me that ocular migraines - migraines with aura, that is - mark the times in my life that are big transitions.  I've only had two, so it's a small sample size, but they're probably the biggest transitions I've had?  The first was my freshman year of college, first semester, and it was during finals week.  I distinctly remember it being 1am and thinking I was going blind when everything started going fuzzy and spiky and colored, and then black.  And then I puked.  Good times.

Anyway the second migraine with aura I've had was when I moved into this my first apartment.

Oh right, did I mention that I had FIFTEEN NEEDLES stuck in me earlier this evening?  I was a veritable pincushion.  So a couple colleagues at work who are researching migraine had asked a few weeks ago if I wanted to give a hand with something they were working on, and I said yes, thinking it would be something small and immediate, but it turned out to be sitting in a machine while being zapped with electric current being channeled through some titanium pins firmly lodged in my skin.  Always something new.  Actually, I didn't even know I was getting any acupuncture until earlier this week, and then I didn't realize I was having multiple acupoints done until they were inserting the third needle...

Dramatics aside though, I'm glad I signed up to be their lab rat...I think it's good for researchers to submit themselves to what they intend to submit their subjects to (generally), and this definitely gave me a better idea of what acupuncture is and what sorts of sensations it evokes.  I don't think I would necessarily choose getting poked over taking drugs to fix a headache, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I was anticipating...and I have a thing about needles.  It was strangely calming...possibly because of the rush of endorphins, possibly because, like a moth mounted in a display case, it was painful to try and move.  Either way, it definitely gives me some more motivation for researching how such techniques affect people with chronic pain.  Which, conveniently, is what I'm doing.

There are photos of me as a pincushion but they're on the acupuncturist's phone so you will have to wait for the unnerving of skewered me.

Free Candy

Oh jeez I'm going back to Pittsburgh on Friday evening...and I can't get this song out of my head.

Eat Your Veg

There are a lot of crazy and exciting theories about the course of human evolution...'we started walking on two feet because we were trying to wade around in marshes' and 'we got bigger brains when we moved into cold weather' are classics...

But my new favorite theory is that people really got started on the road to success when they began to cook food over fire.  Not just any food, either...we're talking tubers!  You would think it would be meat, wouldn't you.  Apparently though figuring out how to roast root vegetables allowed early humans access to all sorts of delicious and nutritious things that can't be got at too easily without fire.  And some tongs, presumably.

Not long after evidence starts showing up that people are eating cooked tubers, brains get bigger, populations increase, and women grow to approximately the size of men...this last one is key to changes in human dynamics (they tell me), because in species where females are smaller than males, polygynous is the rule and societies are run by an alpha male.  When females and males are approximately the same size, however, pair bonding is prevalent and a more cooperative social system tends to flourish.

My guess is that the ladies figured out the fire and veg business while the men were off 'hunting' (or whatever they're calling it these days), and then traded their cooking skills for cooperation with the other household duties.  Prometheus and his fennel-stalk...so close and yet so far.

Cold Case

Word on the street has it that Amelia Earhart's last days may finally emerge from the mists of time...the final resting place of this distinguished "aviatrix" who went missing on July 2, 1937 during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe has long been debated, but now new evidence suggests that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made an emergency landing on an uninhabited South Pacific island called Nikumaroro.

What evidence, you ask?  A finger bone...yes, that's all...still, phalanges are quite important things to be finding on uninhabited South Pacific islands, and so scientists, or discoverers, or whoever, are shipping the bone off as we speak to have it tested in some Oklahoma lab.

Anyway, here's a news article.  Keep checking back as the results come in.

And I seriously hope she wasn't eaten alive by giant crabs.

Xmas Festivities

Strangely, I've been invited to not one but two (and a half) Christmas parties this weekend...here are some things I review to get me in the spirit.

(1) A video about Christmas.


(2) A quote I've had for so long that I can no longer identify from whence it came.
Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors d'oeuvres.
Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly – sometimes to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres.
Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with inanimate objects, singing "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," gulping down other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when the little hammers strike.
Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning Christmas tree. The piano is missing.

You want to keep your party somewhere around Level 3, unless you rent your home and own firearms, in which case you can go to Level 4. The best way to get to Level 3 is egg-nog.

So.

We shall see how the weekend progresses...

Hey Check Out This Book

You can look at more of it here.

It is called How To Tell The Birds From The Flowers And Other Wood-cuts.

And here is one page:

The Parrot and the Carrot one may easily confound,

They're very much alike in looks and similar in sound,

We recognize the Parrot by his clear articulation,

For Carrots are unable to engage in conversation.

Monumental

If you seek his monument, look around you.

...That's the inscription (loosely-translated from Latin) found on the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren in St. Paul's Cathedral in London.  As Wren was the architect of this cathedral, it's definitely accurate.  I think it's somewhat poetic, too...I'd like to go out like that (although I mayyy be in the wrong profession).

In addition to St. Paul's, he designed a chapel in Cambridge, the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, the Royal Observatory, and 51 churches in London after the Great Fire of 1666.  He also did some extensive renovations of Hampton Court and Kensington Palace.

Sir Christopher Wren was a real Renaissance man - in addition to these architectural feats, he studied medicine, mechanics, magnetism, astronomy, agriculture, ballistics, and bees (to name a few).

William Tell

Remember William Tell?  Who shot an apple off of his son's head?

What was up with that, anyway?

I checked the Wikipedia page and it appears to be entirely mythological (despite oddly specific dates being given...apparently the apple incident was said to have occurred on 18 November 1307, for instance).  William Tell, the legend goes, was a man from what is today Switzerland who defied a tyrant, was really good at archery, and became a vigilante assassin type.  His son's name was Walter.

For those who study these sorts of things, the story of William Tell has connections with similar Germanic, Danish, and Norse oral traditions (wonderfully, there is another Wikipedia page entitled "Shooting an apple off one's child's head" that will tell you all about it).  I suppose Americans these days aren't too interested in Mr. Tell and Son, but the Germans, French, and Swiss apparently find the story quite gripping...there are a lot of operas, essays, and insurrections held in the name of William Tell from these parts, it would appear.  One American was quite inspired by the Tell saga, though: his name was John Wilkes Booth, and this might explain the lack of popularity that William Tell experiences in my neck of the woods today.

A New Way of Juggling

by Paul Nougé - I cannot find a larger photo online...

Play Games, All Sorts

Here are some old games that children (and adults?) would have played in days of yore.

Prisoner's Base - basically capture the flag, but I don't think any flags are involved.

Jacks - there are some spiky things, made of metal or stone or bone, and a ball, or something, and you have to pick up the spiky things before the ball, or whatever, bounces more than once.  I had a book about it as a kid, so I know how to play very well.

Blindman's Bluff - kind of like Marco-Polo out of water, a version of tag where one person is blindfolded and the others by turns tease and elude him/her until someone is captured.

Buck, Buck - I don't get this one...someone is on someone else's back and is making them guess something, but I don't know what the point is, or how to win, and I seem to recall my grandfather telling me about this game and I think it sounded a lot more violent.

Illustrations of these and others can be found here.  (a.k.a. see if you can figure out what the heck is going on, because I definitely can't.)

Suburbs

...Interesting.

The future of music videos, perhaps?

A Different Type of Expression

If the eyes are the window to the soul, why are all of these facial expressions so defined by the mouth?

pout

sneer yeah okay "getty images" apparently owns every single image of Billy Idol sneering...but it couldn't be anyone else.

moue

simper

grimace

...and why can I not think of any positive facial expressions beyond smile?

Okay how about

beam

Ruzicka

I've found a new illustrator that I quite enjoy...by the name of Ruzicka.  Rudolph Ruzicka.  Coincidence?  You decide.

He worked primarily with woodblock engravings in the early twentieth century and depicted cityscapes and such of Chicago, New York, and Boston.  I suppose this sneaks him in at the end of the Golden Age of Illustration?

Here's one that strikes a chord:

Funny Words

One month left of this...try not to cry...

I am actually quite busy of late with work and appointments and whatnot, and so I am taking the easy route yet again and simply linking to another Wikipedia page on language.  Sorry.  Tomorrow will be better (maybe...I am going to a lecture on writing in c-shell after work so maybe not).

Here you go: Interesting English Words

And to whet your appetite (or attempt to get you to click the link)...

A large number of Modern English words spell the /ɪ/ or /aɪ/ sound with the letter y, such as rhythm, my, by, try, sky, why, wry, fry, gym, hymn, lynx, lynch, myth, pygmy, gypsy, myrrh, nymph, lymph, flyby, and syzygy.

Rhythms is the longest common word containing only y as a vowel. Gypsyfy, gypsyry, symphysy, nymphly, and nymphfly are as long or longer, but are not as common. The word twyndyllyngs, an archaic word for twin, has been cited by Guinness World Records as the longest, though it is not in OED.

Deck the Halls

It's that time of year again...we kicked off Advent this last Sunday, and I hear rumors that LMH has had their XXX-mas bop already.

So to celebrate the season, here's some Sufjan.  Collect all five discs!

Fun with Text and Bellols

Poetry time...but poetry in itself is not enough, not when it comes to the manic Mr. Poe.

So we shall try it with Wordle!

...and how about Flipped!

sllǝq ǝɥʇ ɟo ƃuılʞuıʇ ǝɥʇ puɐ ƃuılƃuıɾ ǝɥʇ ɯoɹɟ
- sllǝq 'sllǝq 'sllǝq
'sllǝq 'sllǝq 'sllǝq 'sllǝq ǝɥʇ ɯoɹɟ
sllǝʍ ʎllɐɔısnɯ os ʇɐɥʇ uoıʇɐlnqɐuuıʇuıʇ ǝɥʇ oʇ
'ǝɯʎɥɹ ɔıunɹ ɟo ʇɹos ɐ uı
'ǝɯıʇ 'ǝɯıʇ 'ǝɯıʇ ƃuıdǝǝʞ
;ʇɥƃılǝp ǝuıllɐʇsʎɹɔ ɐ ɥʇıʍ
ǝlʞuıʍʇ oʇ ɯǝǝs suǝʌɐǝɥ ǝɥʇ llɐ
ǝlʞuıɹdsɹǝʌo ʇɐɥʇ sɹɐʇs ǝɥʇ ǝlıɥʍ
¡ʇɥƃıu ɟo ɹıɐ ʎɔı ǝɥʇ uı
'ǝlʞuıʇ 'ǝlʞuıʇ 'ǝlʞuıʇ ʎǝɥʇ ʍoɥ
¡sllǝʇǝɹoɟ ʎpolǝɯ ɹıǝɥʇ ʇuǝɯıɹɹǝɯ ɟo plɹoʍ ɐ ʇɐɥʍ
¡sllǝq ɹǝʌlıs
- sllǝq ǝɥʇ ɥʇıʍ sǝƃpǝls ǝɥʇ ɹɐǝɥ

Guessed the poem yet?  Oh fine...here's the original in full.

Ohhh Wikipedia, how you never cease to entertain:

"The beard-second is a unit of length inspired by the light-year, but used for extremely short distances such as those in nuclear physics. The beard-second is defined as the length an average beard grows in one second. Kemp Bennet Kolb defines the distance as exactly 100 Ångströms, (i.e. 10 nanometers) while Nordling and Österman's Physics Handbook has it half the size at 5 nanometers. Google Calculator supports the beard-second for unit conversions using the latter conversion factor."

...etc.

Sowwy

Ooh sorry I was mean and Rickrolled you last week...I myself fell prey to that cruel ploy but meant to provide the actual link the day after.  But then I forgot.

Still, better late than never???  Here's the Munsell Hue Test, for real.

By the way, I wasn't lying when I said I have killer color vision.

Touché

"...But if one fears or despises so much the philosophical foundations of a book, and if one demands so insistently the right to understand nothing about them and to say nothing on the subject, why become critic?  To understand, to enlighten, that is your profession, isn't it?  You can of course judge philosophy according to common sense; the trouble is that while 'common sense' and 'feeling' understand nothing about philosophy, philosophy, on the other hand, understands them perfectly.  You don't explain philosophers, but they explain you."

Roland Barthes, Mythologies

The Spread

Thanksgiving's at my flat this year!

Like Sculptcha

Yet another from the Telegraph archives...

This time, a guy who carves obscenely tiny sculptures out of pencil lead.  Okay graphite whatever...the point is, it's still in the pencil.

Idiom Du Jour

It's been a while since I've done one of these...

And today we're talking about clay feet. 

To have feet of clay implies that one has flaws that are not immediately apparent...it typically refers to people who at first seem invincible but who in fact have hidden faults that lead to their own downfall or loss of reputation.

Apparently this idiomatic expression was first used around 1600 or so, but its source is rather older.  Biblical, even - in the book of Daniel (2:31-34), there is a description of a dream had by the Chaldean King Nebuchadnezzar that depicts a large statue with a head of gold, but with feet of iron and baked clay.  These materials cannot withstand a thrown stone, and are crushed into fragments and blown away by the wind.  Sounds obvious enough to me about what all that might imply...although interestingly, the entire statue, gold and all, gets smashed to smithereens.  But perhaps "head of gold" is less poetic.

Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie

by Belle & Sebastian

Dear Sir...

SIR – I swear that if I hear Ride of the Valkyries again on Classic FM, I may not be responsible for my actions.

This and more unpublished letters to the editor of the Telegraph at the link.

HP

I didn't post anything last night because I was out watching the latest Harry Potter film.  I didn't nerd out this year like I did the year before - no midnight showings, no costumes, no themed snacks - but Harry was a part of my childhood experience and so to make up for the lack of nerdiness, I am going to use this opportunity to reflect on the predictions and prophecies of Professor Trelawney.  I know.

Emma Thompson was sadly not in HP.7.1 but that is not going to deter me.

And when I say I am going to reflect, I mean I am going to copy a bunch of reflections I found on the internets when I looked up "Prof. Trelawney true predictions."

Right.  So first there were the two boring - I mean, important - ones...the one in book 3 where she freaks out at the end of Harry's final about Pettigrew and Lord Voldything, and the one discussed in later books but which actually occurred prior to the start of the series about the "Chosen One."  And both of those came true.  Whatever.

I think what is more hilarious is that, although she is clearly presented as a fraud, JK Rowling writes in most of her predictions as coming true.  Perhaps this is a comment on real-life fortune-tellers; perhaps it is just an inside joke.

For instance:

• In her first lesson, she told Neville to take a blue cup after he broke his first one so that her pink cups would remain unsmashed...after he heard this, he broke his cup, took a blue one, and broke that too.
• She told a Gryffindor classmate, Parvati Patil, to beware of red headed men...much later, Harry and Ron (a red-headed "man") took Parvati and her twin to the Yule ball, where they rudely ignored them for the whole night.  Still later, Ron started going out with Parvati's best friend Lavender Brown, who started to ignore Parvati.
• She predicted classes being cancelled due to sickness...which happened.
• She told Lavendar that the thing she was dreading would happen on 16 October...Hermione's skepticism aside, it is true that on that day, Lavender got a note that her pet rabbit had been eaten by a fox.
• She predicted that someone would leave their class forever...later that year, Hermione dropped out.
• One Christmas at Hogwarts, she said that when thirteen dine together, the first to rise will be the first to die.  Harry and Ron got up from the table first together, but Albus Dumbledore was the first among those at the table to die...however, she was unaware that Scabbers, aka Peter Pettigrew, was sitting at the table, and so technically the first person to get up from a table of 13 that night was Dumbledore when he rose to welcome Trelawney.
• Some time after that, thirteen members of the order dined together, and the first to rise was Sirius, who was the first to die from among that setting.
• She told Dolores Umbridge that she saw dark events ahead when Umbridge was first appointed High Inquisitor at Hogwarts...later Umbridge was dragged off and imprisoned by centaurs in the Forbidden Forest.
• In the sixth book, Harry overhears Trelawney shuffling through some Tarot cards and talking to herself, saying first that a troubled dark young man is nearby who dislikes the questioner...that would be Harry...and secondly that she repeatedly draws the Lightning-Struck Tower card, indicating approaching disaster...soon after, Dumbledore was killed at the top of the Astronomy tower.

...Ah HarryPotterFandom...how rabid you are.  Fabulous stuff, eh?

Munsell Hue Test

A little something different from that Myers-Briggs thing I keep going back to...

This time, rather than measuring your intelligence or personality, quantify and tabulate your perceptual prowess!

I don't want to make you feel bad by reporting my scores...but let's just say I have the color vision of a hawk.  (Hawks can see in color, right?)

If you're jealous, comfort yourself with the fact that, sans spectacles, everything resolves itself into spectacularly-hued blobs.  And if you do poorly, you can always blame it on your monitor display.

Greenhorn

mid-15c., “young horned animal,” from green in sense of “new, fresh, recent” + horn.  Applied to new soldiers from c.1650; extended to any inexperienced person by 1680s.

Well I am retracting my Christmas list and asking you all to pool together your resources and bid on - and win - this set of ten hilarious aquatint engravings by John Ferneley (1782-1860).  Got it?  Good.

I first saw them in Richmond, at the Virginia Fine Arts Museum, and I can't tell if that museum foolishly decided to sell them, or if there are multiple copies of them floating around, but whatever the story is on their current status, the story of their creation is well worth the 5k.  Not to mention that the artwork and corresponding captions are worth a chuckle (or ten).  Sadly only one photo was available to be purloined on that auction site and I don't think it can be enlarged so the caption can be read.  Any artists out there with access to academic catalogs let me know if better images exist.

So.  Count Sandor's Hunting Exploits in Leicestershire...that's the somewhat facetious name of the 1833 series of 'comic mishaps,' for each depicts the Hungarian nobleman in various stages of disaster, surrounded by - or immersed in, or dragged through - the countryside.  There's more to it than a painter slyly mocking foreign aristocracy attempting an English pursuit, though...in fact, the complete opposite proves to be the case.  I located a book that reveals something of the character of both Ferneley the artist and Sandor the aristocrat here (starting on page 125 and continuing through to 130), and apparently the count commissioned the works for himself, and brought them back to his homeland at the conclusion of his British holiday...the man clearly had a sense of humor, and was more than a little insane.

Count Sandor started his career as a reckless soul when, as a toddler, he allegedly bit a dog that had first bit him; he grew into adulthood refusing equestrian lessons from his tutor and instead declaring that, "the man who has to learn to ride will never be a horseman."  It would seem that these words were the motto by which he lived; between hunting, steeplechase, and curricle racing, the count spent more days of his life with broken bones than without, and only slowed his pace "after he had been flung on his head on an iron railing" and had to spend well over a year in an asylum.  Although he wasn't actually killed by this accident, when he did eventually pass away, his funeral was characteristic of his life - twice the horses leading the hearse bolted and carried his body back to the stables.

Hibernation

While sitting at work, I had a sudden fragmented memory of learning that Medieval life wasn't nearly so bad as everyone makes it out to be...well except for the plagues...and that in fact, all winter long, people would just eat, sleep, and laze about until it came time to get working (planting, invading) once again.

A bit of research led me to QI with Stephen Fry as the source of this information, and some further digging gave me this article, both of which discuss human "hibernation."  True, it doesn't sound as festive as Mr Fry implied - but then, what does? - loads of cattle indoors, corpses in the rafters, and crusts of bread for dinner is hardly the mead-drinking, story-telling, wood-carving free-for-all I was hoping for...but the essentials seem similar, and apparently, plausible.

However, I can't seem to find much about Middle Ages chillaxing that hasn't been written by Graham Robb...and I do see a fair amount that seems to imply people weren't just lying around.  So maybe this is just a crackpot theory.  Still, perhaps we ought to test it out...who wants to hang out for the next five months with me in the North End?  I've got cannoli, films, Bananagrams, and several shelves of books, there's a liquor store just around the corner.

Mitts!

Well I whined about them enough that I figured I probably should have some sort of follow-up.  So...ta-da!  [BONUS: a pasty picture of my pasty forearm!]

Brand newww...except for that time I spilled tea on them, washed them, and accidentally sent them through the dryer.  Still, they're fine.  Not really 'gloves' - you will probably note that I chickened out when it came to fingers and proper thumbs, but in the end I considered this an exercise in cable-knit (of the most rudimentary persuasion) and not an exercise in closing off holes.  Anyway I can now add that to my list of knitting skills (knit! purl! go in circles! drop stitches on purpose!  make extra stitches on purpose! etc!).

Next up on the knitting bee is probably something to teach me how to knit with two colors, so that should be exciting.  Or a nightmare, I have read the instructions for Fair Isle and they look pretty scary.

Speculoos

I stumbled across a mention of speculoos biscuits while trundling around the internet, and it took me back to a distant summer afternoon, reading novels in a French cafe over a double espresso.  Apparently though it's not just me who has such an instantaneous reaction to these little cookies.  And it's not just associative pleasure - these things really are empirically delicious.

Sorry, specu-whats?  Well, "Speculoos are decorative caramelized biscuits and they were traditionally used to celebrate weddings and births, to teach history, and to chronicle war in Europe. Today Speculoos make up 20% of all the cookies eaten in Belgium and are still an important part of their culture."  I don't know about war, but fighting over them sounds sort of reasonable.  They taste like spices and sunshine and probably contain trace amounts of cocaine.  They're made by Biscoff (a company that apparently has formed some sort of heaven-made match with Anna's), and you can get them for free with any cup of coffee in most of Europe...but alas, here in the USA they only show up in unusual places, such as on Delta flights.  A number of food writers have remarked on this, actually, and I've just decided I'm going to quote these seasoned authors (as it were) to close out this entry.  Yes I am that lazy.  Plus I need to figure out where in Boston might stock these gorgeous little wonders.

From a guy called Francis Lam:
"But anyway, yes: the cookie. The great Delta cookie. Once you've had them, felt the slight, sudden shock of joy that comes over you while otherwise sitting stuffed and cramped in an unbearably loud machine in the sky, it is possible to find yourself unable to stop thinking about them, to find them popping up in your mind every once in a while when you are tired or hungry or yearning to breathe free. (In fact, while writing this, I could not resist having some and dipped one, for the hell of it, in nice olive oil. It was just about the best thing I've ever put in my mouth.)"

From a more pretentious guy called John Currence:
"What I love about the Biscoff is purely existential. Airline travel is on the verge of being unbearable these days. I feel like a feedlot steer being shuttled between uncomfortable sets of circumstances. The Biscoff is the consistent and delicious reminder to me that there is still something good about airline travel, as difficult as it may be to identify, wedged into a center seat. I also appreciate, in a world of over-consumption, that I am limited to those two miniature planks of loveliness. I could eat my weight in them and woe be to my waistline if I were to unleash a box of them and an ice cold glass of whole milk on my gluttonous urges. I have found myself after a trip with the 1-800 number for the Biscoff maker in my hand on an empty wrapper, with the offer of regular consumption, but have always let it go, so as not to spoil that moment on each flight when I want to scream and am saved by those two wonderful cookies."

A guy called David Lebovitz now tells me there's a spreadable version:
"Still, I gotta give it to those French tastemakers: the Speculoos à Tartiner was amazing. Imagine in not-too-sweet gingersnap, spicy and bold, that you can smear over a piece of baguette. Or lick right off the spoon. Move over Nutella. (Unless there’s a chocolate version. Then we’ll talk.)"

Hoard

Excuse me while I go grab my metal detector...

(Oh, and which way to the nearest field?)

A Poem by A.A. Milne

Christopher Robin
Had wheezles
And sneezles,
They bundled him
Into
His bed.
They gave him what goes
With a cold in the nose,
And some more for a cold
In the head.
They wondered
If wheezles
Could turn
Into measles,
If sneezles
Would turn
Into mumps;
They examined his chest
For a rash,
And the rest
Of his body for swellings and lumps.
They sent for some doctors
In sneezles
And wheezles
To tell them what ought
To be done.
All sorts and conditions
Of famous physicians
Came hurrying round
At a run.
They all made a note
Of the state of his throat,
They asked if he suffered from thirst;
They asked if the sneezles
Came after the wheezles,
Or if the first sneezle
Came first.
They said, "If you teazle
A sneezle
Or wheezle,
A measle
May easily grow.
But humour or pleazle
The wheezle
Or sneezle,
The measle
Will certainly go."
They expounded the reazles
For sneezles
And wheezles,
The manner of measles
When new.
They said "If he freezles
In draughts and in breezles,
Then PHTHEEZLES
May even ensue."

Christopher Robin
Got up in the morning,
The sneezles had vanished away.
And the look in his eye
Seemed to say to the sky,
"Now, how to amuse them to-day?"

Science Films (Really!)

It started out with sitting down to go through The Life Aquatic a few evenings ago, and then somehow I ended up watching all of David Attenborough's The Life of...series(es...Birds, Mammals, etc.).  Plus, to make matters worse, I got forwarded an interesting video link at work of an MIT seminar I had missed...how the brain thinks about the mind, takes me right back to 11th grade with Mr Robertson...and somehow that led to *science films* (cue spooky music).

But honestly, these things really seem worth watching...and also seem to be "science films" (as we know them from biology class at least...so don't let that scare you off, my non-science-nerds) in only the most liberal of definitions.  But grrrrr apparently they aren't public domain and I would have to go to NYC...a month ago...to have seen any of them.  WHY...well anyway, here is the site, and if you care to spend some time investigating it and end up finding an actual video, please inform moi.  I am particularly looking for this year's winners (the people have spoken and I believe in the people): so that's "Marius Borodine," "Skhizein," and "An Eyeful of Sound" (synesthesia yayyy!)...but "Cold and Dry" might be worthwhile as well. Anyway.

Clicky

So here is a nifty thing for those of you who are lazy, or environmentally-conscious...but still want to be thought of as polite, or creative...it is called Paperless Post and if enough of you sign up by following that link, I might just get enough "well-done-you-recommended-someone" credit to become inspired to have a Christmas party.  First, to make some friends...

Oh and if that doesn't spike your interest, here's a little article about how the physicists (or something) have figured out how cats drink.

Gar-what?

Garum: fermented fish sauce.

Yep, my three favorite things all rolled up into one...oh wait.

This entry kind of goes along with that Legionnaire Salad a few entries down...but I'm going to file it under history rather than recipes, because I highly doubt that any of you are going to give the old garum fish sauce a try over the weekend.  For one thing, although apparently the flavor of the finished sauce was mild, the production process reeked to high heaven.  And that's saying something, in a culture like Rome's.

Oh, did I not mention that this is an ancient Roman predilection?  Well, technically it's Greek - but the Romans stole it from the Greeks like they did just about everything else, and so we're calling it Roman like we do the rest of it.

So basically (and I know I said I wasn't providing a recipe, but here I go anyway) to make garum, you take the innards of all your fish and eels and what-have-you, toss them in a barrel (or amphora), sprinkle on some salt, and add some weight to the top.  Then (apparently) this sits in the sun for a while (a long while) while everything goes to mush.  Yummy.  But we're not finished...the mixture has to be strained, so that you end up with a sort sludge called allec that's good for feeding the plebeians, and a thick and pungent liquid, garum of course, that is more expensive than caviar and that you can add to basically whatever dish you're cooking.  The beauty of a sauce...

If you don't feel like cooking, you can always just take your garum and water it down with water...or wine...or honey...or whatever you have at hand, really, and that will be a delicious snack for you, plus a treatment for both constipation and diarrhea, and as an added bonus it will get rid of your freckles.

Quiet Ambrose

Let's hear it for Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who could to read silently to himself. 

From Augustine's Confessions: "When he read, his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still. Anyone could approach him freely and guests were not commonly announced, so that often, when we came to visit him, we found him reading like this in silence, for he never read aloud."

An Average Day In The Lab

...and honestly, I am only exaggerating the teensiest bit here.

Awkward

Click here for awkward family photos and an interview with some grandparents.

Fall Back

Yes yes yes...don't forget about the end of Daylight Savings this evening - at 2am the clocks go back an hour which means SLEEP.  And then church.

So I typed "fall back" into YouTube, thinking I might get some home video bloopers or a nerdy kid in his bedroom ranting about sleeping in and missing classes.  Instead I got a lot of music videos.  Apparently falling backwards is a popular theme for songwriters.  The vast majority appeared to be rap/hip hop/whatever the kids are calling it these days, and I was concerned about profanity and awkward blogness...this one, however, is in a class all its own.  I don't understand the genre...but there you go.  It works.

Legionnaire Salad

(I've modified a classic Ruzich salad from the famous volume Stuff We Eat (ed. A. Ruzich)...but it is as-yet untested...we'll see how it goes over this evening at the potluck.)

1 head Boston Lettuce
1 Fennel Bulb
3 Clementines, peeled and in segments (or canned clementines if you have an aversion to peeling oranges, chewing pips, and that funny white stringy stuff...)
½ cup Candied Almond Slivers (to make these, combine 2 cups almonds, ½ cup sugar, and 1 beaten egg white; spread on wax paper and cook in oven at 300 degrees for about 30 minutes, tossing occasionally)

Halve the fennel bulb, reserving top fronds.  Cut half into wedges, place on a baking sheet covered in foil, drizzle with olive oil and roast for 20-30 minutes at 400 degrees or until caramelized, flipping once.  Take the other half, add leafy fronds to lettuce bed, thinly slice remaining half-bulb, and sprinkle with almonds and orange segments. 

Dressing:
¼ cup Olive Oil
1 tbsp Sugar
2 tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
¼ tsp Salt
¼ tsp Almond Extract

Combine and serve.

Argot (and so on)

Wowww okay so I have been meaning to write this post since January 16th...or maybe even since Summer '08.  Trouble is, I've had the note on my desktop so long that I kind of forget what I meant to write about.  Still, when has that ever stopped me..?

So actually, back in the summer of 2008, when I was living in Aix-en-Provence, I had a number of interesting conversations with French people about their language.  And yes, these conversations were held in French.  (I touched on this, actually, in one of those old entries.) That period in my life will never cease to astonish me.

Everyone knows that the language one learns in a classroom doesn't have much in common with the language one will be butchering on the street when one visits the country where said language is spoken.  This runs deeper, though, than never having the opportunity to use the phrase, "my pink pencil case was under the boiler last Thursday"; it's more than commonly-used vocabulary and not being taught the swear-words (nom d'un nom d'un nom d'un nom!), because there are whole language systems that they'll never teach in school.

French slang - and I'm discussing French because it is the language I am most familiar with (aside, obviously, from English) - comes in a myriad of flavors.  There's Verlan and Louchébem, languages that use a traditional French technique of syllabic inversion, working sort of like Pig Latins (but rather more complex).  These also have elements of secret coded rhyming slangs like Cockney, it seems.

Anyway, an example of Verlan that has made it into mainstream, in order to make this less confusing.  Keep in mind that Louchébem has completely different rules.  But okay: we start with arabe, Arab (the nationality)...this is inverted to form the Verlan equivalent beur (you have to remember that, in French, phonemes and graphemes play fast and loose).  This in turn has become further inverted now that the original slang meaning is common knowledge, so that the new term rebeu has been born.  Interestingly, it would seem that the semantic meaning also shifts with each transformation...while the first word refers to someone from northern Africa, the second appears to mean anyone of Arabic descent, and I haven't had this confirmed by any native speaker, but might the third version be the next generation?

Also interestingly - and I was told this by a French native speaker, although I'm not sure I believe it (not to mention that I am recalling it correctly) - apparently there are no racial slurs in these street slangs, just racist constructions and contexts. 

Right.  seven paragraphs in and I still haven't mentioned my title.  Technically everything I've discussed up to now has been Argot, a word that, translated from French to English, itself means slang.  The wonderful thing about French Argot is how dynamic it is (as seen above), how adaptive and how democratic.  Like I said, you can't learn it in a classroom, and dictionaries really don't do it justice.  However, if you're interested despite my warnings, there's a dictionary here of basic slang vocabulary, and there are also a surprisingly large number of scholarly articles online if you're feeling rather more highbrow. 

Rate's Commonplace Book (And Other Things You Should Read, Despite Their Length)

Okay...I am sorry I am continuing to slack here...but I'm knitting a pair of mittens and anyway I have a scratch on my palm that makes typing uncomfortable.  (I got it collecting bricks...long story.)

Anyway, this one is interesting - I couldn't say it better myself.  Tomorrow or thereabouts I will pick back up with the posts actually written by me.  Rather than reblogging.

Mmkay here you go!

Linky!

Woo Woo Woo

I miss Flight of the Conchords...my evening activity has typically been to eat dinner and watch a movie or television program, so it saddens me that there will be no season three.

There will be this, however:

Jane Austen was Awesome

Apparently there has been some news of late that Jane Austen was not as cool as everyone thinks she was today because her editor edited her work a lot. 

Well first of all I would like to point to "Stephenie" Meyer and her atrocities, which no amount of editing could ever fix, as much as they must have tried.  And tried, and tried.

And secondly, this.

Trick or Treat

Well I've found a church that goes out to a pub after the sermon...so it looks like that's the one I'll be sticking with.  Just kidding.  But it has a nice group and is primarily young, and is fairly small which is nice for us socially awkward people.  I'm going to check out Park Street another time, but there you go.

Also...why is all of my food rotting and why does Comcast and Nstar and whatever else keep sending me bills and why am I constantly having to pay taxes?  What is this nonsense?  I'm spending too much money as it is!  Actually, taxes may be the single factor that causes me to become a raging Republican.  Being an adult is lame.

And in other news, this blog is going back to scheduled programming tomorrow, as tonight concludes the month of October.  I've got some real treats in store for you all...oh wait...

Halloween Eve

I got to go out last night to a little costume party, dressed as a Domino, which was quite fun (and the apple cider was delicious!), so I'm backdating once again. 

In other news, I've finished decorating the apartment, and I've baked some bread, and I'm knitting a scarf.  Domestic!  Autumn is really settling in and, as the month comes to a close, so am I.

Office Antics

So I'm coming up on a month at work and while generally I'm settling in, some things just haven't changed much from day one.  I'm still sitting in the hallway (although I now have a small convex mirror that reflects any people trying to sneak up behind me)...I am still learning linux (although i've moved onto data analysis and bash script writing...yeah I don't know, either) and my computer is still only half-working.  Barbarosa (sorry, I left out a syllable in that earlier entry) isn't set up yet.  in an effort to get the old seadog up and running, I sent an email to the help desk to ask them about my windows platform.  This is the email I got in return.

>> Here's a good way to verify that Windows is working:
>>
>> 1. Power the computer on.
>>
>> Any problems let us know. Thanks.
>>
>> --Sam

Do I spot a little attitude?  Hilarious as this is...the computer still isn't fixed.  And it's not the only instance of intractability I've run up against, unfortunately.  For instance, I need to access the e-journal subscriptions if I'm going to be writing papers, but I can't get access to the subscriptions unless I have a library PIN, and I can't get a library PIN without a Harvard ID, and I can't get a Harvard ID without a PhD or MD.  Ironically, I'm working at this job, analyzing data and writing papers, to accomplish a long-term goal of a doctorate...oh hey ever read that book Catch-22?

Anyway, the people I deal with on a day-to-day basis are quite cool so I'm not trying to say I hate my job by any stretch...but there you go.

Woo!

Brianna is here!  We saw Drea!  Indian food for dinner!

More of the Same

Just a continuation of past events today...I got some more exciting packages in the mail (this time, the housewarming gifts from my lovely grandparents - plants and stuff!)...and before that, it was programming and reading and going to a lecture on acupuncture.

Tomorrow though..!  I am going out to dinner with Drea after work, and if that wasn't exciting enough I am bringing along with me a little surprise.  And by little surprise I mean a 6-foot, blonde, Canadian surprise.  Oh...so I haven't told Drea yet that I'm bringing Bri along...and I guess I'm not going to now.  Anyway, true to form, Bri will be my first out-of-town visitor to the Northernmost Ruzich Outpost.  Just like old times (at U of Richmond, complete with term finals and ducks) but better!  Definitely less finals...possibly more ducks.

Mail!

How exciting!  I got home all in a huff after running around to ten different places, dumping a gigantic load of cash off for no good reason ("rent", I think it's called), and trying to get some extra keys cut before all the shops closed, and was muttering over the pile of mail my downstairs neighbor insists on leaving to rot on the doorstep, when I opened the door and walked smack into a box!  And not just any box...this box was nearly as tall as I am, and was wrapped all around with some really menacing-looking tape.  Best of all: this box was addressed to moi!

"Who is mailing me dead bodies?" I wondered.  "Halloween isn't until this Sunday..." But the box was much too light to be holding anything of that (unnatural) nature, so I dragged it up the stairs - carefully - and parked it inside the hallway while I ran to get some scissors.

A nasty gouge to the palm and an entire garbage back of packing peanuts later, I had unearthed two mummified, bubble-wrapped picture frames.  I hate packing peanuts.  There's absolutely got to be another way.

A half hour of clean-up after thattt and the pictures were unveiled!  Or rather, I should say prints - because they are these fantastic beyond fantastic prints of a London map I cut out of a touring atlas from the turn of the previous century.  I know, defacing a book, but now they will be appreciated.  And Dad told me to do it.  Slash did it for me.  And the rest of the atlas is fine.  Thanks Dad!

These are much better in person, too.  ...Now to hang them...

Oh and umm also I got my first letter today, from Mom.  Mom: your smaller offering is no less worthy - news from home is always welcome, and Dad neglected to include a note in his.  So thanks!

False Alarm

Well, I thought there would be subject testing today but it turns out I got up late and went into work around 11 for nothing...oops...I will have to make it up by being extra-efficient and employeelicious for the next week.  And maybe come in early next Monday as well.  Or not...I'm not totally sure I was even missed?

Anyway, the good news is that instead of learning about magnets after 5pm, I got to come home and make a gigantic batch of pasta sauce that I can freeze and eat over the next month...or two...or ten.  Hurrah!

Pestilence

...Bleh so I was sick on Sunday and did a whole lot of nothing, and then went to bed early, without even posting...so I'm backdating this to midnight.  'Tomorrow' (today) is a late day at the lab which I am hopeful will teach me some new stuff about working with nuclear magnetic resonance.  Woo!

The Russian Life

Tonight, coming home on the T, a large and suspicious-looking man turned to me and asked, "Are you Russian?  I have a friend whose face is like yours."  To which I tersely replied, "No," and got off the train at the next stop.

But what he didn't know is that I have been channeling my inner Russian all day.  And that's because I've been being *social* - my inner Russian is a high-fashion, carmine-lipped force of nature who has a mesmerizing power over crowds, strangers, and close acquaintances, may occasionally offend but never alienates, is equipped with an uncanny ability to jump into the most esoteric of conversations with utmost ease, and will make a flawless entrance and an even better exit.  As an added bonus, the inner Russian may be just barely 5'2", but even the most hardened of criminals would think twice about following her down a dark alley, unless it was to offer her a light.

Yep, I loathe cocktail parties.  I hate that out-of-body experience I get where I can see myself surrounded by small groups of chatting people doing their best to ignore me.  I end up feeling very self-conscious about the things my ankles are doing, and my elbows.  I have no idea how to hold a full glass and a plate of hors d'oeuvres and actually eat the things that are on the plate without spilling the glass down my front.  I have a history of nervously chugging whatever is in the glass and then feeling more aware than ever about my wobbly ankles. 

And okay that may be a bit melodramatic.  But I signed up for two such events today and survived them both - passed both, even, with if not flying than certainly swiftly jogging colors - so I feel licensed to exaggerate the scene so as to make my victory all the more victorious.  Anyway, it's my blog.  And a Molotov cocktail for anyone who disagrees!

[Incidentally, I had a good time - both at the house party with Ang, people from work, and from Harvard and MIT, as well as at the girl's night in with Drea, people from church, and from BU and Berklee.  No new Facebook friends yet...but give me time.]

Push to the Weekend

Gah, SLEEPY.  And I keep dreaming in Linux command terminal...truly the stuff of nightmares.

Today after work though I decided to get some fresh air - and some groceries - and so took the bus to Whole Foods (verdict: milk is slightly more expensive than at Going Bananas and slightly less expensive than at White Hen).  No, taking the bus is not my idea of brisk exercise (yet): I left the grocery store and headed west rather than east, walking around the parks, down into the center of town, through the financial district, and, after about four miles, back to the North End.  I even got home in time to snag the last loaf of whole wheat bread from Parziale's.  I was hoping, in the course of my expedition, to get some photos of the fall foliage, but to be honest, I don't understand what everyone is raving about...the woods behind the YMCA back home are much more impressive.  Perhaps when everyone gushes over Boston's autumnal splendor, they really are talking about Massachussetts' (and correspondingly, Pittsburgh isn't thattt great in October - Pennsylvania is).  

I did, however, find some really nice front doors on my walk.  On Beacon Street, the block bordering Public Garden, to be precise.  If you're feeling particularly nosy (or idle), check them all out by using Google street view...and while you're at it, see if you can spot the freaky disappearing bicycle rickshaw man.

Anyway.  Tomorrow I'm going to *socialize* so that should add some further variety to the ol' blog.  Brace thyselves...

Bicycle Redux

In an effort to be more exciting, I took my bicycle out of the basement...yes, that's right, strictly for the purpose of having a blog-worthy experience.  New levels of eh, eh?

Anyway, I am including a PHOTO of said bicycle to further spruce things up:

My fan base (Mom.  ...Alyssa?) might be having a sense of deja vu, because I did something quite similar almost exactly two years ago.  Man, my bike might have gotten classier (despite a lack of basket), but my skill and dedication as an amateur author has most definitely suffered.  Also...I read through that entry and its sequel, written a day later - because I wasn't feeling melancholy enough, right? - and wowww how long ago was that?  And how strange - the person whose lecture I walked into late due to the brakes that wouldn't die turned out to be the very same person who rejected me from graduate school!  Karma's a bia...also, I feel much more harmonious with the universe.  It's like everything makes sense.  Or wait.

ANYWHO back to the present.  Aren't bicycles the best?  They're so beautiful!  And simultaneously so utilitarian!  There's almost nothing in them that doesn't have a function...

This little Peugeot, though, is a particularly sexy little machine.  Yeah look at those fenders....and I tricked her out with flashy lights and a bell.  Did I mention the step-through?  Because as a ladies' bike, there's gotta be a step-through.  The vintage gear shifts, the white vinyl seat and matching rubber handle grips, the 1980s dayglow decal?  Perfection.  I got her from my mom, so you know it's the real deal...the restoration costs were a bit steep, but worth! it!

Boston drivers being what they are, I'm a little concerned about taking the Peugeot out and about before I know my way around the city (not to mention I like the way my face is arranged currently).  Still, tooling around the North End's back alleys and one-way streets isn't too strenuous, so I struggled out of the tiny basement door, helmet in hand (yeah, next time I'll put it on beforehand so I don't brain myself on the lintel and nearly crash back down the cement stairs under 25 pounds of pointy metal tubing), and found my way to the post office and the hardware store.  That place, incidentally, has everything. 

Maybe I'll stop back tomorrow to find a nice wire basket?

A Day in the Life

UM.  So the problem with having a regular schedule consisting of a nine-to-five job is that things are pretty repetitive.  And the teensiest boring.  And unbloggable - not in an interesting way.

But I'm going to do it anyway.

Today, in a nutshell, was: wake up, shower, dress, breakfast, drop egg carton onto tile floor (bah), read journal articles, go to work, sit in hallway at desk, pull hair out over fMRI analysis software, lunch (chicken picata yummm!), more scalp-shredding - like that New Yorker article, did you read it? eww - until chat with Polly and co., peace out via bus, post office, emails and general computer putzing, dinner, Doctor Who, nostalgic tea and inCREDIBLE cream puff, shower (wait...I just realized I showered twice today...well that would explain the damp towel), reading about Boudicca, and (I'm projecting here) bed by midnight.

Huzzah.

But heyyy I've got another ten days of real-life entries to get down, sooo I'll try to start being more interesting.  Or I'll start making stuff up.

Gigantic Nerds

...Well it's the third week of work and I have just made a pretty intense discovery.

That's right, today I've come to the realization that I am working with the geeks of the world.  Although - to be honest - it's been coming on for some time, and I should probably have figured it out sooner.  They're neuroscientists, physicists, and 'analysts'.  But what really brought it all home for me is, while I was going through the computer networks on Linux, all the directories were named (as it turns out) after Transformers.  The robot/aliens who turn into cars.  And stuff.  I don't really follow, but this is what I am gathering from Wikipedia...if anyone has more information, please let me know.  Anway, my own personal Linux platform is called Soundwave, after a talking robot who apparently turns into a cassette tape.  And is evil.  ...I know.

That's not all, because it would seem that my Windows platform is named Barbossa.  I'm not really sure why, but I guess someone else in the lab is into...swashbuckling?  Whereas all the Linux machines are Tranformers, all the PCs get to be pirates.

In my former lab, the Macs were all named after trees.  I was often on Birch, I believe.  And I feel like at this point I ought to make some sweeping statement about what this all means...but honestly, I just can't even begin.

Miss MEG

Pretty long day today...after five, while everyone else was packing up to go home, I traipsed over to the MEG lab and got to hang out with gigantic magnets.  It was at once incredibly cool - rooms shielded from the Earth, humming computers, pointy pointy needles - and also eerily similar to last year - waveforms, NuPrep gel, and unforseen subject-related problems that cut recording time short.  Truly haunting.

Church

Day two of church shopping!  And this time...it was Church of the Cross (conveniently, where Drea goes).  Less weirdness than at Park St, but I haven't settled down yet...we shall see where I end up.

These Boots Are Made For Walking

I spent most of the day trekking around the city (in boots, no less) - the weather was sunny, if rather windy, and I wanted to get out and explore things further afield.  I still haven't crossed the river but I did make it to Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Beacon Hill, the Back Bay, and back through Boston Common to Haymarket, where I picked up a number of nice veggies for a gorgeous cottage pie. 

Dinner and a movie and it looks like another relatively quiet weekend for me (but I have tea and chocolate, so I won't complain too loudly).

Ether Day

Today is Ether Day at Mass Gen - sounds fun, yes?

Well it commemorates the landmark event that occurred on Oct. 16, 1846 (yes, tomorrow is the 16th, but tomorrow is also a Saturday).  On that date, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. William T. G. Morton became the first to use ethyl ether to anæsthetize a patient.  Go science!

Bizarre Novelties

Three items of moment for this Thursday (my second in Boston!):

1) In between killing a small forest while printing out relevant journal articles about chronic pain and acupuncture (not to mention this fascinatingly grisly number by the New Yorker...read it, I dare you), I had my first MGH/Martinos Center MRI!  Yes, it could be argued that it's mildly masochistic of me to voluntarily lie perfectly still within the bore of a giant magnet for several hours while idly imagining large, pointed, and heavy metallic missiles whizzing towards my helpless skull.  Safety training really drove home the magnetic aspect of MRI by unleashing scissors and fire extinguishers on a watermelon located within the field...pun intended.  Right, but on the other hand, I think it's a good idea for researchers to submit themselves to what they plan on submitting their subjects to, plus I made some pseudo-friends!  The researchers were really friendly and made a start at showing me the ropes.  Plusss, MRI studies pay well.  Just sayin'.

2) After work, I went on a pilgrimage to Whole Foods (...) to look for live potted herbs.  I struck out, although they did say they were getting them in this weekend.  Also they had nice Chinese lantern flowers and dried lavender.  Exciting stuff, but that's not the point.  What is the (hugely awkward) point is that I ran into an ex-realtor, Paul, who showed us about fifteen properties and who I ended up dissing when I got the place I'm currently staying at.  ...HI PAUL!!! was my reaction, after quite literally attempting to running away.  Fun times.  He recommended I look for plants down the road.  And it looks like I'll be on the hunt for alternative grocery stores, ones that aren't so expensive and populated by ghosts of properties past.

3) I got back to the apartment and for a minute or so thought the locks had been changed, but it turns out that someone had been in and out of the place and had locked the doors weirdly.  I am thinking it was probably the dishwasher repairman, because now my dishwasher works (YAY).  I'm not 100% sure about that, actually, given that it makes a noise somewhere between tsunami and trash compacter...but the dishes don't appear broken, and there's no water on the floor...and the burning smell is gone...what else could one ask for?

Baked Goods

Mike's Pastry: 300 Hanover Street

Modern Pastry: 257 Hanover Street

Maria's Pastry: 46 Cross St Boston

So far I'm voting for Modern on the basis of cannoli and chocolates (not to mention that it's slightly more trendy and less touristed...oh hi there did I mention I'm slightly pretentious?), but I haven't fully explored Maria's - although the atmosphere isn't as...atmospheric - and I diddd just have an incredible cream puff from Mike's that makes me think this battle of the bakeries is far from over.

Scintillating

Fairly average day...le job is almost (but not quite) falling into a rhythm, the old apartment is pretty much status quo - I am still hunting for a nice flower or shrub or bunch of twigs to put in a pot next to the kitchen table - and I cooked some meat for the first time (!).  It was some sausage.  Excitement abounds.

First Week

I've been here on my own for one week now, well done me...

Living in the North End is not living in Italy.  But it is - in some ways - rather like living in Italy.  I would imagine.

There is a man who lives down the street who, every Sunday, takes a plastic lawn chair and sits on the corner and listens to Frank Sinatra while watching the world go by.  There are Catholic churches and shops that sell handmade leather shoes, and thinly sliced meats, and cafes where you can buy a latte in the morning and an espresso after noon.  Laundry hangs across the back streets (although why, when it rains every other day, I'm not quite sure).  I went into the local supermarket and asked where I could buy a mezzaluna and a passatutto, and not only did the checkout girl know what I was talking about, she knew where to direct me.  Turns out the hardware store across the street had what I was looking for, in addition to terracotta flower pots and potholders with little Italian flags on them. 

And while you're just as likely to hear a tourist group speaking English - or French, or Japanese - as you are Italian...and while it looks like it's going to rain six out of the next seven days (and not rise above 65 degrees even once)...while it seems like it's primarily the over-fifties that are immersed in the recreation of Old Country lifestyle...well, va bene - I am crossing back over the Atlantic by degrees.

10.10.10!

Not much else to add, though - today's date is almost certainly the most interesting aspect of the day.

Got up, ate an egg (protein!), chilled out, went to church, chilled out some more.  Might read later.  Needless to say, the big party town Boston allegedly is hasn't made much of an impact as of yet.

Tomorrow's going to be pretty big though; despite it being Columbus Day, I'm going into work...at 4:30pm...to administer MEG!  So stay tuned...

Saturday with John, Paul, George and Ringo

Shortly upon moving in, I located Boston's classic rock radio station (the oldest in the country, apparently!  Celebrating their 25th birthday!  Although...25 years ago, wasn't classic rock just called...rock?  Maybe not, maybe not.); I've been enjoying listening to Led Zepplin and the Rolling Stones in the shower ever since. 

However, something special's going on at 100.7 WZLX today, because it's the 70th anniversary of John Lennon's birth.  They're celebrating by playing the Beatles A to Z this weekend, which makes me very happy - the Beatles were my first favorite band, you know.  If you're not in Boston but want to tune in as well this weekend, check out their website, there's a place where you can stream live!

I'm hating to tear myself away from "Lovely Rita," but I've been meaning to go explore the local shops (hardware and grocery, not shoe and jewelry)...hopefully I'll be back before the O's!

The Job Thus Far

I definitely should have taken some kind of computer programming course at some point in my education...

because you know Linux?  Me either, really.  I think I am figuring it out, but I'm continually having flashbacks of trying to master this game in during middle school Earth Science classes.  (Hey, just because I turned out to be a neurobiologist doesn't mean I care about plate tectonics.  Much.)  That game, incidentally, is worth playing if you are familiar with Douglas Adams / a giant nerd.

Sunshine!

Today's been the first sunny day in a bit, and although it was somewhat blustery, overall I am feeling positive.  Firstly, I'm learning how to work in Linux, which is always an adventure...I've also figured out the shuttle system to and from work, and I've located the Whole Foods so that if the little groceries nearer to where I live are out of lemons or closed on Sundays, I'll have a backup plan.  And if I sliced my finger while preparing dinner, well at least the new knives are sharp; likewise I'm going to look with positive anticipation on the passive-aggressive battle of the front door locks that's brewing with Ms. Downstairs and her two yappy dogs.  Oh yes.  Bring it!  I've got my stomping boots on, and her ceiling is my hardwood floor.