Update?
Saturday, 27 August 2016
We made a bread run this morning, and encountered a weekend project underway. This wasn’t pruning or mowing. It involved a “tree.” A techno-fix to a communications tree. That’s one tall crane!
Musings
Post-Ides of Aug
Tuesday, 16 August 2016
Word is GoogleeFiber will be turned on soon—sometime in the next two years, maybe? In the meantime, crews are busy threading fiber beneath intersections, and periodically stopping traffic in the meantime.
The orange ginger blossoms have been joined by white…and the scent is lovely, right up there with gardenias.
Of knurled knobs and ocular health
Tuesday, 26 July 2016
My temporary carefully engineered friends—a knurled knob with a light-up dial…
And here’s an unlit horizontal dial.
Not sure exactly what the second machine is for…it wasn’t used on me, just kept me company in a darkened room.
We also voted! Wooo-hooo, a run-off election!—our opportunity to break four near-ties on a hot July day….
Did you guess I got my eyes dilated in a medical situation? I’m still a bit “big-eyed.”
FanMan II
Monday, 25 July 2016
FanMan struck here, too! Perfect when temps get up to the mid-90s day after day. Yes, we are first-world people and have AC, but humid 96 is…whew. Moving forward with a bit of redecorating…stay tuned for tomorrow….
Cabin upgrade
Thursday, 14 July 2016
#TheGuru transformed himself into #HomeHandiman and installed this ceiling fan on the front porch (that is, the part of the house with windows and facing the lake). I added the low hanging pull-chain. See, I was helpful!
Of course, this was a day that was cool—meaning the heat wasn’t pocketing fiercely under the porch-eaves, making installation easier—and the need for air-movement reduced. Quirk of fate.
It was not only cooler, but we had two modest sessions of rain. This one included enough wind that moisture came in the open panels (too late closing them) and pooled beneath the west windows. Another homeowner problem to be solved? Or just towel and go….
Rarities
Monday, 20 June 2016
These rarities are situational. Temps in the 60s, even the high 60s are unusual these days. Sooooo glad to have it to walk this morning. Temps will rise into the 90s the rest of the week (summer?), so overnight likely won’t get this cool again for a while.
When parsley blooms, this is what it looks like. Pretty, no? Usually it’s picked before this stage, or most of us don’t even bother to grow it, as it bolts so quickly.
Progress is orange
Monday, 16 May 2016
I came around a corner on my neighborhood wander and was eyeball to…whatever with a giant orange roll of tubing. The Guru says this will carry Giggle (not its real name) fiber. Wonder when they’ll turn it on.
What’s next?
Tuesday, 26 April 2016
This is the smallest dishwasher I remember seeing (largest interior dimension maybe 1ft). We did not use it.
I learned another new French word: Bronzage. It does not mean Bronze Age, but bronzed/bronzing, as in changing the color of your skin (as in tanning place).
We took the bus and not the train to the airport, which we had not done before. Thus, we saw neighborhoods we’d only tunneled beneath before. Gambling anyone?
We had a pretty darned good view of Paris as we climbed away from the earth. That’s the Eiffel Tower “above” and back from the oblique white “doughnut” stadium in the right half of the photo. You can see the Seine next to it….
Wonder of wonders, the flight was not full (not at all), and the flight attendants were a bit giddy (or maybe not), offering two bottles of bourbon when I asked for liquor. Why not?
We are home safely and all is well. What’s next, you may ask…laundry, I’d say, being prosaic…but not until tomorrow….
Industrial design + old church
Saturday, 23 April 2016
Meet Marianne. She’s the personification of the Republic of France, and the visual anchor of Paris’s Place de la République. In particular, she represents the dissolution of the monarchy and the installation of the republic. Power to the people (more or less). A female figure representing liberty goes back to the later 1700s, and became a widely used icon with the 1789 storming of the Bastille, a prison and symbol of royal authority in central Paris.
This is not far from the neighborhood of the blown-up nightclub, etc., and it has been and continues to be a place of political statements and demonstrations.
Below Marianne and still above eye level is an oversized lion guarding a ballot-box. More République. Today he had golden tears.
And, on the surface at knee level, many candles and living and plastic/fabric flowers and plants. The topics addressed in word and picture range around the world.
We chose the Musée des Arts et Métiers for today’s brain teaser. It is a museum of industrial design including models of large, complex things (steel furnace), and smaller complicated mechanical items (measuring devices). They sent us to the attic to work our way through the galleries and descend…. Loved the open beams there….
1713 double horizontal sundial.
1825 clock, close-up of upper section.
Bobbins on a mechanical weaving machine.
Detailed diorama of the building of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor.
We descended a final staircase, very fancy, marble, wide, and highly decorated. Above us, curators have installed Clément Ader’s Avion/Éole III (1897), with the form modeled on a bat, with feather-shaped propellors. It crashed on its first attempt at flight, and was restored in the 1980s. It does look rather like a modular bat.
Through a hallway of transportation (this is a Peugeot), we headed for the Chapel of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, a part of what once was the second-most important priory in France, and now within the museum complex. Most of the complex was removed during the Revolution.
The “front” of the church is empty, very interesting, with a pendulum slowly moving, showing the earth’s revolutions.
The bulk of the church-space has exhibits, which include a small engineering wonder—stairs and glass exhibit-floors extending four stories (or so) up. While I had some trepidation about the height, I was glad to get so close to the stained glass panels.
This museum—industrial design from start to finish….
Siren-sister
Tuesday, 19 April 2016
The Severn Bridge we took into Wales opened in 1966. I bet traffic patterns changed immensely, even with the substantial toll. In 1996, the Second Severn Crossing opened; set a bit downstream, it especially carries vehicles flowing to/from southwest Wales, including Cardiff and Swansea. The powers-that-be had the two combined into a single concession to share toll collection and debt repayment. So, we entered Wales on the old bridge (not that old), and left on the new bridge. Bye-bye Wales, we are London-bound with two Roman stops en route.
Discovered in 1818, this modest Roman villa commanded the upper area of a smallish drainage, and was built into a hill. Construction began in the AD 250s, and the place was abandoned in the early 400s, when the Roman military pulled out of Britannia. The mosaics are under the roof. The place was ours to visit, quiet except for distant pheasant squawks and generic country sounds.
Chedworth Roman Villa, on the other hand, was bustling with docents and vendors, school groups, walkers, and generic tourists. The complex grew over about the same period as the previous villa, and also was set into a hill’s upper slope. This complex became much larger, and much more architecturally elaborate. It ultimately had two bath areas, for example. In this view of the metal maquette, uphill is to the lower right, with the lower, larger courtyard planted into a garden that opens to the upper left (actually east) and views of the valley.
This was among the earliest mosaic floors at Chedworth, along a passageway in the upper “horizontal” bank of rooms that faced the valley (late AD 200s). The earliest construction was up here, three separate buildings that eventually became a single “range” of attached rooms.
In the early 300s, this elaborate dining room was added, with considerable wealth invested in the floor. This was a typical choice of elite homeowners, as the dining room was the principal location for entertaining (plus the decorative gardens).
Love the mushroom pillars of the hypocaust floor…. It seems to me that more rooms than in a Rome-area Roman villa had heated floors, I’m assuming because they had the water/firewood to make the heat, and because it was colder than Rome here, and this was how elites made living in the colonies more like life at the imperial center, and thus more Roman.
Just one detail from the museum, from the display of impressions in roof tiles. The tiles were made locally, but probably not on the villa property. These are ox-hoof impressions. Other displayed examples were dog, cat, human fingers….
Within ten miles of Chedworth are eleven villas, including Great Whitcombe that we visited earlier today. Chedworth is between two roads that radiate in a northerly direction from Cirencester. We misheard our navigation-voice say that place as Siren-sister (hence today’s title); it’s pretty close. While that sounds like the Roman name, it isn’t; the Roman name was Corinium Dobunnorum. During the time of the villas, Corinium also had many domestic complexes with elaborate mosaic floors and other markers of wealth. Money could be made here, both through agricultural pursuits and through regional and long-distance trade. Anyway, this modern road follows Fosse Way, the Roman route to the NNE out of Corinium. The complete Fosse Way went NNE from Exeter to Lincoln (today’s names).
En route around Heathrow’s runways to the car rental return, we again noticed these little human transporters on a rail. I only got this one crappy picture, at a distance. These self-driving units are called pods, and the service is aimed at business travelers, linking a special parking lot with Terminal 5. It opened in 2011.
Our London home is an Ikea special. The folding chairs are actually from Ikea. If you have long arms, you can almost make coffee from the bed. We have a window with a park view and wifi; life is good.
We took off for the Thames and points en route. We thought we might take the train back, but hoofed it the whole evening. Here’s a fountain in a nearby park (not our window-park). We saw several groups sitting on the grass enjoying an early meal/snack.
We saw the Thames in the last of the day’s light. And heard Big Ben chime at 8pm.
Turning north, we entered Trafalgar Square. Fountains. Spires. Blocky buildings. Man-on-horse statues.
And…Admiral Nelson towering over a red glowing Roman arch. Art. The Guardian says it’s a Carrara marble replica of Palmyra’s Arch of Triumph, recently destroyed by Daesh/Isis. It is here for three days and gorgeously lit.