Musings

Actually, too much happened today, so here’s a second post….

We had our final inspection, and passed.* Took something like three minutes. I guess he determined that we now had a roof and lacked a tree inside the house. Maybe it was more complicated than that, though….

It’s also my former favorite holiday. Not so much, now, and I’m not totally sure why. Maybe because so many kids are out there for the candy and their costumes are sometimes…absent. Of course, some years we get a couple of very cute, very little kids, very excited and apparently also thinking it’s an odd thing to be sent to the door of a stranger’s house while wearing a non-normal outfit, and being urged to say totally strange things and wait for candy.

Liminal. Welcome to the wider world, kidlets….

* This means we no longer have paperwork posted by our front door. Yippee! Thanks, Dick! BTW, the tree fell 11 May, the permit was issued 27 June, and now, on the eve of November, the house almost fixed—the contractor part; we still need “window treatments,” etc.

Posted at 5:46 PM | Comments Off on Halloween is liminal

Here’s the premise: your furniture has to match the music you play in that room. If you doubt your ability to make a good match, you can hire a personal music stylist create a playlist that does it for you….

This was my Grandmother’s sofa (but not her living room). She stretched out on it every afternoon after lunch and read Agatha Christie novels and the like, often with a blanket over her knees.

Her music choices (as I recall): classical, including lots of operas.

Now, our furniture/music. I can’t say whether they match or not. Probably not so much—heavily 70s music, but not entirely, and early 20th-C style furniture in the fancier living room, and undistinguished late 20th-C style well-used stuff in the family room….

Posted at 5:13 PM | 3 Comments »

Quicken and iPhoto serve as a diary of sorts of our days, along with this blog. I see that two years ago I was freshly arrived in NM, trying to adjust to the elevation, and exploring the Gila Cliff dwellings.

It is totally unplanned that tonight’s menu includes brussels sprouts (those cute Brassica buds!), fresh not frozen, just as it did that day…. Thanks, Kel!

Posted at 2:07 PM | 1 Comment »

All this rebuilding since the tree fell has meant an unanticipated learning curve (not a bad thing).

Today, the Glass Shower Door Guys came to adjust the door, which is a big sheet of glass with hinges (and almost invisible plastic? flanges on the bottom and sides to seal against adjacent surfaces when the door is shut) that closes against a fixed pane to make a glass wall. I took advantage of their expertise and found out how they did that. Simple. On the inside of the hinge are screw heads that take a hex/Allen wrench, and they loosened them just a bit, then forced the door to shift slightly to reposition, and retightened them. Yes, it took two people—one on the wrench and one on the door….

I also asked about the “care and feeding” of the glass, and they suggested coating the inside with a repellent product for windshields (e.g., Rain-X), to help keep soap scum, etc., at bay.

Something else for the hardware store list…. And don’t get me started on the ugly and disfunctional soap dishes out there. We may end up using a (plastic to avoid breakage) rectangular sushi soy sauce dish….

Now, to track down the Tile Guy and ask if it’d also work on tile, since, after all, high-fired tile is glazed, and the glaze, once fired, is essentially glass.

Posted at 4:28 PM | Comments Off on Cleaning tip

Glyph from stone set in wall of closed patio next to the tower, Palenque, Chiapas.

I love it when archaeologists get creative in inserting the past into the present.

David Stuart, a well-known Maya epigrapher, has composed “Obama” in glyphs (it’s “o-ba-ma-a”*), and you can buy t-shirts, cloth bags, or ball caps imprinted with it….

* Oh, you’re asking about the duplicate “a”? That’s explained here. Those crazy Mayas!

Posted at 5:27 PM | Comments Off on Past meets present

Back on this day in 2004,* I was wandering the ATL Bot Garden admiring the Chihuly exhibit. I was spellbound. In many cases, I found the glass pieces integrated into the vegetation with extreme cleverness, so that I had to look carefully to determine what was glass and what was living.

Your turn!

* I visit the past because I have spent today unsettled by the windy conditions. Give me another year, and maybe I’ll be inured to blustery weather.

Posted at 5:49 PM | 2 Comments »

Gorgeous new-crop cranberry beans from the Hunter-Gatherer and the Puppeteer….

…at least in a lackadaisical way….

Accomplishments: did a load of wash (and it’s also mostly folded and put away), bought simple hardware-store-style towel rack for the inside of the bathroom cabinet door to hang a cloth to dry marble around sink (it’s more sensitive than laminate, we’re told), sorted through miscellaneous boxes that had accumulated beneath the eaves and were revealed in May by the fallen tree and subsequently stashed for going through “later” (which turned out to be today), found and purchased a digital lamp timer for bedroom to replace the old mechanical version that has taken to “grumbling” in a noticeable and annoying way (and even got it properly set—I think), made a quick stop at TJ’s to stock up on odds and ends (our pantry’s still rather empty since our return), and got more moved in to the remade sections of our home….

In sum, it’s a decent start on chores for the week. Also, leftovers for dinner (that bean soup), so that’s easy. BTW, the last Mad Men of the season is tonight, but I usually don’t make it, so we watch it later.

Posted at 5:42 PM | Comments Off on Chore day

A clover blossom pretty much always makes me smile!

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Bloomy pick-me-up

Four years ago this day, I first visited the Leake site, in northwest Georgia. Well, it wasn’t really my first visit (that’s another story), but my first visit after DOT got the new ROW staked out. Now a photo from this location would be in the middle of more lanes and more traffic. Oh, fun!

Posted at 7:11 PM | Comments Off on 4 yrs ago

Sometimes what’s ordinary in your home landscape sounds rather odd to those passing through*…. I’m not singling out West Virginia here; after all, my home state has both a Hell (with a Baptist church I once watched a wedding party emerge from) and a Paradise (I once ate a fish sandwich there)….

* A quick google-check shows I’m not the only person to note the Big Ugly name…. Here’s a map of one stretch of the river used in Lenore McComas Coberly’s novel, Sarah’s Girls: A Chronicle of Big Ugly Creek (2007)….

Posted at 5:47 PM | 4 Comments »