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Now everything is upside down

My fingers are hurting (too much typing). I was dragging my heels through the current job today when I got a phone call from a friend. The princess, who's been planning her wedding since the third grade practically, is planning in earnest now. I get to be a bridesmaid, which means I don't have to worry about (or even be scared of) what to wear, oddly enough, because she has a particular aesthetic sense. For example, she rejected the Willard as a reception venue because the very gorgeous hall was too green.

But anyway, she wanted to know if I'd like to run up to Manhattan with her this weekend. She has an appointment at a chi-chi wedding dress place.

Yes! And we will have tea somewhere. We commiserated at missing the chance to have tea at the Plaza, which is now being turned into condos, but maybe the restaurants will stay open.

I will bring my camera and take pictures of the dresses, if they'll let me. The princess tells me that trying on dresses involves something called "clamping." I'm sure it's not as kinky as it sounds. I told her, "You know, what with my current haircut, at this place they might think we're together." She said, "Oh, you don't look like a boy." That's not exactly what I meant …

Oz is unnerved by all this dress talk. I said, "You don't think I'm going to get bridal-envy, do you?" He said, "No, but it's just so Doris Day creepy!"

Elsewhere

I wrote lots of words about our trip down the peanut highway. Over here.

Up late

Today I went into the donut place, because there's nothing like donuts for a headache, and discovered that the No Smoking sign actually meant that no smoking would be taking place inside. There were even codgers sitting at the counter and they weren't smoking. That's a first for me, although only because I have been sending Oz out for donuts.

I wonder if they're the same codgers, or if the original ones have been replaced with new tobacco-free codgers.

Also today I wore my French soccer jersey out on my walk through the neighborhood and ended up in conversation with a random French teacher. In English, because my French is very bad.

I looked at the pictures I took on Sunday and I should maybe post some of them. The shots taken from the moving car were fairly sharp, considering. The ones I really wish had come out didn't. As we were driving along the Great Dismal Swamp, the rain stopped, the sun burst out briefly, and a pale rainbow formed in the mist rising from the peanut fields. A little too pale to be caught by a CCD, alas. In the images I can barely make out a slightly pinkish yellow area in the mist, and only because I know it's there.

Slug

It's been a busy few days and what with grumpiness, headaches, and having no words to speak of (so to speak), I've written nothing. Now I have lots of words, but not so much time.

Yesterday we drove to North Carolina entirely by accident. We took a road trip down State Route 460, the peanut highway, for some drive-by photography but, oddly enough, no peanuts. I haven't proofed the pictures yet. I expect the ones shot from the car moving at speed will be kind of blurry, but we actually did stop the car and get out in a few places. If we'd stopped at every interesting spot, we'd still be out there.

By the time we got to Suffolk, it wasn't much further to the Great Dismal Swamp. Oz kept saying, "There is no swamp. It's just like what we've been driving through." We stopped at the Suffolk Visitor Center for directions and the girl working there said, "Ha ha. It's over eleven thousand acres of no swamp." "And bears too," I added, pointing to the snarling stuffed bear in the corner. Which I posed with for pictures. That and the giant peanut. I don't think I'll be posting those pictures.

I did finally add some shots of West Hospital to my Disappearing MCV set on Flickr. If you enjoy big, brick, art deco monstrosities—and who doesn't?—take a look.

Awaiting the verdict

I experimented with ricotta cheesecake today. I made up my own recipe, based on a couple real recipes for cheesecake, both ricotta and regular. I won't know for sure about the flavor until tomorrow when it's had a chance to chill overnight. I already had one slice, but the flavors have not yet bloomed, so I am not certain about the flavor.

For an experimental recipe, it worked pretty well. The one problem was that the cheesecake took forever to set. It baked for an hour and fifteen minutes in a 325 °F oven with the pie pan sitting on an insulated cookie sheet (I used an eight inch, store-bought cookie crust in a foil pan). It got browner on top than what I'm used to for cheesecake, and was maybe not quite as set as I would have liked in the center. So, all you bakers, what would you advise? A higher temperature and a shorter baking time? Or would that just compound the problem and leave me with burned edges and a mushy middle? Inquiring minds and all that.

Sparky watched me mixing up the batter. Considering that he bit me the last time he watched me make a cheesecake, I found this rather unnerving. I put out some extra cat food so he could chew on that instead. He ate it up and kept watching me. I gave him some bits of ricotta which fell on the counter and let him lick the spatula (when I was cleaning up after the pie was in the oven). I gave him a smidge of the finished cheesecake too and it's certainly passed the cat taste test.

He's had some lactose intolerance issues in the past.

I hope this indulgence doesn't come back to haunt me.

Happy accidents

Well, Flickr is down right now, so I can't inflict yet another photo of the 'hood on you tonight. I'll have to write.

A nice thing to happen today: I made another variant of the pasta salad that we basically live on during the summers. I had a few hardboiled eggs, which I had made for another recipe that we're dragging our heels on actually preparing, sitting in the fridge. I chopped them up and threw them in the pasta salad and that magical emulsification thing happened with the egg yolks, the balsamic vinegar, and the olive oil. So delicious we had no leftovers.

A funny thing: I was watching Kyou no ryouri (Today's Cooking) while I was doing my therapy exercises. The ladies were preparing a few tofu dishes. Because tofu is healthy! The "Japanese" word for "healthy" is "herushii" and they kept repeating "herushii" over and over while they prepared deep fried tofu fritters ("Go great with beer!") and scrambled curried tofu. The curried tofu was hilarious. They start out with sautéing a little minced ginger and garlic, then they throw in some minced vegetables and three slices of minced bacon. "Because tofu doesn't have a lot of flavor, so we add the bacon for flavor." Then they mash in the tofu, and add some curry powder. Next comes a quarter cup of Japanese curry roux, which is basically a cake of lard mixed with curry powder. "So it has that nice curry flavor." "And it's so healthy, because it's tofu!" They stir it for awhile, add some more vegetables, and white wine and soy sauce, and then a big pat of butter. "Because tofu doesn't have a lot of flavor. But it's really healthy." Just when I think they're going to tip the skillet over a plate of rice and be done with it, they throw in a quarter pound of diced processed cheese food. "For flavor, because the tofu doesn't have a lot of flavor. Even though it's so healthy." By this time I'm laughing my head off, because, yeah, tofu doesn't have a lot of flavor, but last time I checked processed cheese food didn't either. Tofu has a fair amount of fat, and when you add a cup or so of animal fat to it, you end up with a dish that is not healthy. It looked pretty good though. I can probably whip up a version that is not redolent of heart attack on a plate.

Another thing: I have new sneakers now. Oz forced me to go to a shoe store and torture the staff. The arch supports feel like little fingers poking up at my arches. When I was wearing them around the house, Monte Alban sat in the shoebox and looked extremely cute. Then he rested his neck on the edge of the box and made a little choking noise.

A better thing: I have a new tripod. Oz ordered me one, because the tripods we have are old and flimsy, and he likes shopping. This one is big, not flimsy, and has a quick release ball head. He ordered extra mounting plates too, for his camera. Long exposure photographs, here I come!

A thing to try: On a whim I am working up a recipe for ricotta cheesecake. Did you know that store-bought pie crusts come in more flavors than graham? You can get Oreo and Nilla wafer too. How can one not play with cheesecake variations?

That is enough things for now.

Efficacious

There's nothing like a little physical exertion to clear the brain. Today I was smarter. I ran my errands in the morning when the temperature was but a chilly 89 °F and one of those errands was a trip to the Y for a swim. I feel so much better. That business of exercise working out the toxins isn't half wrong. And when I was leaving the Y, I saw a little old lady attempting to parallel park her Beetle into a huge handicapped space, which she could have headed into. It took her three tries and she backed into the car behind her like five times. I will never park by that space. Ever. The car she banged into looked undamaged, so I didn't get the license number and march her in to the front desk, but I probably should have.

I drove by where they're drilling for the buried train. There is nothing going on and Marshall Street has been reopened because, get this, the mayor's office issued a stop work order. Yes! Somebody else thought it might not be such a smart idea to drain the water out of the tunnel. More impact studies must be done before they can proceed. With any luck, they won't be able to afford it since they only had $15,000 for this feasibility study.

I also drove by a ghost sign which was buried under a layer of green paint today. Another one I always meant to get a proper picture of, but didn't.

Then I came home, removed a layer of chlorine, and goofed off, alternately reading Hornblower and doing a little online shopping. I found a wallet which met my exacting specifications, bought an extra memory card for my camera, that sort of thing. Tomorrow I'm really going to have to pay for all that by knuckling down and getting some work done.

But that will be a snap, now that my head is feeling much clearer and less zombie-like thanks to the lady of leisure treatment.

Cicada

Yes, add me to the chorus of people moaning about the heat. I am shuttered inside my centrally air-conditioned house, peeking out the windows and watching the sun blister the paint on my car. It's supposed to cool off a little on Wednesday.

I'm turning into a pale flabby zombie from lack of exercise. Even as darkness falls, the temperature doesn't and I shrink from going for a walk. (I used to be tough and tromp merrily around, sweating, on summer afternoons, but no more.) The air conditioner in my car ceased working sometime between last fall and this summer and the idea of driving around in an oven is so unappealing that I don't even go (drive) to the Y for a swim. I let my daytime errands pile up and wait for Oz to come home and chauffeur me about in his super-cooled Subaru.

Even though it's nice and cool in the house, I lie around as if it weren't, as if the outside heat were reaching inside, into my brain, and tangling up my neurotransmitters. I do the bare minimum of paying work, then sprawl on the floor at the lowest point in the house and read about Hornblower patrolling the waters off Brest.

I am such a wimp.

Sometimes a chocolate is not chocolate

Pucca Banana Choco Flavor
Crispy and Creamy
With Banana Flavor
Chocolate Sweets

I'm thinking that the people at Meiji have an entirely different concept of chocolate from the rest of us. For a fake banana flavor snack, this is pretty good, but there is no chocolate. Truly, as much as it looks like that cookie shell is all chocolatey goodness, it is not.

Based on past experience, I knew this would likely be the case when I bought these Banana Choco, but it needed to be said.

Oz wouldn't even try them. "Yuck. Fake banana flavor is even worse than fake watermelon flavor."

"I beg to differ. Fake watermelon flavor is way worse." In fact, these have a nice banana flavor and don't give you indigestion, which is the main problem I have with fake banana.

My only real objection to these snacks, apart from the lies, is the unfortunate graphic design of the banana at the top of the box. I am not a girl with naughty bits on the brain and pretty much all the time a banana is just a banana. But this banana? Is not.

And another thing, you'd think that photographing a cookie box would be a snap compared to photographing big buildings and faded signs. You'd be wrong. I had to mess with the tripod, aperture settings, backdrops, slanty floors, and odd lighting. It would have been easier if there were even one place in the house where I had a true horizontal surface to work from, but 130-year-old houses don't have those. I took 24 shots of this silly box. Still that's only a fraction of what the real photographer shot when we had the circuit boards photographed back during my engineering internship, and she had a studio with a fancy lighting system. I'm rather glad I don't. All the flashes during that session about gave me epilepsy.

Hey!

"Hey, honey! I look just like Zidane. Only smaller, female, with more hair, and less likely to headbutt people."

I am on the phone to Oz. Back towards the beginning of the World Cup, he became very taken with the French away jersey and ordered some for us. His arrived right away ("Oh, honey, you look just like Zidane!" "Ha."), but mine was backordered. It arrived today. He selected plain jerseys without a player's name or number. I bet if he'd placed the order after July 9th, he'd have picked Zidane jerseys. He's been playing the Zidane game. He's even still reading soccer gossip. ("Well, you know what Zidane's mom had to say about it?")

And, of course, when Oz got home, I headbutted him.

Another fun moment today. As we drove past the East End Junior High School (now Franklin Military Academy), I saw someone get out of a car and start taking pictures of the building. Did he decide to come shoot it after seeing the picture I posted a couple days ago? Or did he find it by accident like we did?

Drilling for trains

Jefferson Park, North 20th and East Marshall Streets

This is our drama for the week. It even made NPR! Some individuals decided that it would be cool to dig up the work train, and maybe find some incidental corpses, buried in the collapse of the Church Hill tunnel back in 1925. Here they are, drilling a hole to stick a camera down. According to the newspaper, they've struck water. They say they'll pump the water out and try again with the camera. If it's a lot of water, I don't know. There's always water oozing out the wall sealing the western end of the tunnel. Oozing out the upper part of the seal, I might add. I am not a civil engineer, but I wonder if removing the water will maybe destabilize the tunnel. The water is exerting outward pressure on the walls, the walls press back against it. If you remove the water, will the walls cave in?

The earth around the tunnel is rather unstable, hence the catastrophic cave-in and C&O Railroad giving up on the tunnel. Jefferson Park, which is over the tunnel and the train, is also one of the areas which slumped in Tropical Storm Gaston back in 2004. Even though they say the park will be stabilized as part of the train extraction project, I wonder. Opening up a hole in the hill big enough to get a train out through will probably be dangerous and invite quite a lot of instability. As it is, they've peeled back the turf which holds that part of the hill in place, just in time for the summer erosion season.

Here in the neighborhood, there are a lot of different opinions on whether this is a good idea and what to do with the train. Should it be displayed at the Historical Society? Should they put it in the park? I particularly like the suggestion of a glass-walled building set into the hillside so we can see the train in situ (like an ant farm of a disaster), but that sounds really expensive and impractical, given the propensity of the hillside to collapse.

I think the excavation of the train is a bad idea. First of all, a doomed train buried in the ground beneath our feet is simply more interesting to me than a doomed train at the Historical Society. Of course, if I had a dead relative under the hill with the train I might feel differently about getting the bodies out, but I don't. Second, Marshall Street, and maybe Cedar Street, would probably be closed for however long the project took. A year? That would be really inconvenient. Third, I wonder whether the risks and cost (supposedly the funding will not be coming from the city, so this costs me, personally, nothing) are really worth the benefit, especially since I see no benefit to the neighborhood in having our mystery removed. So that's my opinion.

Also, pretty pictures, since I was wandering around with the camera anyway: the whimsical gate of Tricycle Gardens, a community organic gardening project which is pouring flowers out through its fence. I walked up to 25th and M to shoot the restored Bromo Seltzer walldog, but I think I like this picture from a few weeks ago better. I spoke with the owner (?) of the building. He's putting in a Cuban restaurant. When I stepped inside to look around, they were even playing Buena Vista Social Club on the stereo. The interior looks really nice. I hope the food is good.

Can we help you find anything?

Other than the way out? No.

We went to Circuit City this evening to try and spend a $50 gift card Oz received (this was a corporate gift, not a personal one, so if we sound ungrateful, well, I guess we are, but we really hate Circuit City). "Try" being the operative word because we really couldn't find anything we wanted. I wouldn't mind getting another SD card for my camera, but they cost $15 less elsewhere and why should we give Circuit City extra money that they don't deserve? Oz wouldn't mind getting another mouse/trackball for his collection, but they didn't have any he liked. We looked at some cute Crumpler camera bags, but I think they sacrifice functionality for the cuteness. (To be specific: The capacity is small for the size of the bag, and the extra padding in combination with the design makes the bag too stiff to get the camera in and out easily. I tried.) And through it all, the little sales boys sniffing around for a commission, except when Oz found the shelf of odd things (the vacuum tube radio was almost appealing) for $10.

I fled while Oz was still looking at the mouses and sat in the car, watching the storm approach and admiring some pictures I took earlier in the evening of a surprise architectural find in the neighborhood (see the large size for more detail).

Oz finally escaped empty-handed and we drove away, passing by all the stores where we'd actually enjoy spending $50.

"Oh, Borders! You just went there today, didn't you? We could always get books."

"There's Bed Bath and Beyond! Right there!"

"Yeah, we could get some new towels. What about chocolate? They could have given you a chocolate gift card."

Just like the other

Today was a day pretty much like yesterday. The quest for shoes continues. Oz's quest for soccer gossip continues. The cats' quest for extra food continues, and is basically successful. Lucky cats. I should send them out for shoes. And candy. My brief quest for candy today was also unsuccessful. I went to the chocolate specialty store and found they'd moved! Without telling me! There was no notice up at the old location, but the paper taped over the windows claimed that a "Tokyo Market" would be coming soon. After I got home I found out where the chocolate store went. It seems that at their new location, they will only carry chocolate and not other kinds of candy. This is really too bad, because they had some non-chocolate things, like very aggressive black licorice, that you couldn't find anywhere else. They are also where I discovered the deliciousness that is pistachio brittle.

Different today: I had a haircut and inadvertently ended up with one of the official lesbian haircuts. It seems to have calmed down a bit since I washed out the product put in by the stylist. (For a while they had "hair engineer" on their business cards, but they aren't doing that anymore. ABET would not have approved.) For a while there, I looked really dykey. I was trying to describe it to Oz. He said, "Oh, so you looked like Sting? Or like that country-western singer?"

"No, not like Sting. You mean k.d. lang? I wouldn't mind looking like k.d. lang. She has good hair."

We ate at the Full Kee and they gave us fresh lychees for an after-dinner treat. A friend of ours who lives in the tropics has a lychee in his backyard. He posted pictures of the ripening fruit online and made me envious. Now the envy is somewhat assuaged. Oz took the seeds and we will try to grow our own lychee, though I don't hold out much hope for success. Lychee propagation is a little more complicated than shoving seeds into dirt.

Quest for shoes

I have one simple and entirely reasonable requirement of sneakers: that they not hurt my feet.

The soles of my old sneakers have split and, since these are the air-filled kind, my sneakers have started wheezing. New sneakers are obviously in order and tonight we went out to get some. This process usually takes five minutes. I go to the store, try on the new version of my old sneakers, and buy them.

So we go to the store. I try on the new version of my old sneakers, and they hurt my feet! For some reason, Reebok moved the arch supports to someplace other than my arches. I tried on lots of sneakers. They all hurt my feet. I finally tried on a pair (that Oz liked because they were the same brand he wears) and they felt okay, but my right foot was hurting from all the bad shoes it had been thrust into. I bought them anyway. When I tried them on again at home, my right foot started hurting again because. These too were the shoes that were hurting my feet. It seems my right foot is wider than my left foot and these shoes weren't quite wide enough for my right foot.

Thus the shoe acquisition ordeal is not yet over. Oz, aka Imelda, likes shopping for shoes. I guess I'm glad one of us does.

Meanwhile, Oz obsesses over soccer.

Not only did he stay up last night to see Zidane's foul of Materazzi again, but he's been googling World Cup news for all the gossip. Oh, that's "sports commentary." He hit YouTube as well, and dug up all kinds of comic digital manipulations of the foul. Maybe he'll post a few links in a comment?

Meanwhile, my cat is drugged.

It's really weird. He's pretty groggy, but I think he's developing a little tolerance. The expression on his face is so … Sometimes he looks like a completely different cat. But not a biting cat.

Meanwhile, we got a photo-printer.

I've only printed out a few shots so far. It's kind of odd to see my photos on paper. I haven't seen a picture not on a computer screen since I last had a roll of film developed in 2000. I have a couple undeveloped rolls sitting on my desk that date back to then.

More reruns

A. D. Williams Memorial Clinic and Laboratories
North 12th and East Marshall Streets

This is really a rerun, I covered this particular doorway before. I just like how this new shot came out. Also, the art deco transom shows up much better. This time I had a wider angle lens and got a shot of the building it's attached to. The Williams Clinic is another building slated to be razed. They do salvage things like the sandstone carvings and the deco metal. They even salvage a lot of the brick, which sounds like more work than it's worth, but since bricks are no longer made in the same size they were a long time ago, there's a market for old bricks among restoration builders.

Oz is sort of watching the Japanese rebroadcast of the World Cup final for the great moments in Italian malingering. "Oh, that guy was clearly offside!" He will probably go to bed before the famous foul. I offered to tape it, but I'm sure we can find it on YouTube if we really want to see it again.

And speaking of soccer, a Japanese news broadcast today featured a Japanese sportswriter live (sort of) from the Berlin press room. He delivered an analysis of the Japanese team and how they need to improve. He had visual aids too, these hand drawn, magic marker graphs on letter paper which he held up to the camera. "So you see, the Japanese team falls here on the scale of running ability and technical skill. The good runners don't have the technical skills and the skilled players aren't good runners. Japan needs to work on improving the technical skill of the runners, and on getting the technical players to run better … "

I think the Japanese team needs to work on coordination. Whenever a player got the ball, there was no other player in place for him to pass to. Well, there were plenty of Brazilian players in place to pass to, but that's not quite what they're going for.

I'm starting to sound like a sports fan. I think the World Cup ended just in time.

There's no headbutting in soccer!

Even the French announcers agree. "Inexcusable! Impardonnable!" And out went Zidane.

Anyway, Les Bleus had to play in white today. The announcers grumbled about having to say Allez, les blancs!. Otherwise, today's commentary was really fannish. They yelled "Woo!" and "Ai-yi-yi!" and "Oy-yoy-yoy!" and "Oh-la-la!" They admired the pretty French girls at the stadium. They mercilessly noted each and every foul committed by the Italian players. On occasion, they broke into spontaneous song.

I still haven't figured that out.

Then, during lulls in the action, they read their fan mail. It seems I'm not the only one watching the games in French purely for the wacky commentary. One viewer in Charleston (in French, that's pronounced Shar-les-tohn) even wrote in to tell them how much she liked the Oh-la-la's.

And now it's all over for another four years. Oz is saying, "You know, we could follow soccer when it's not the World Cup."

Playing to kiss your sister

What will we do with ourselves when the World Cup is over and we're not watching soccer every other day or so?

Oh, the Nagoya Basho starts today. I guess we'll watch sumo.

Today's French soccer commentary, on the Germany vs. Portugal match for third place, was again about soccer. I almost thought these announcers were going to come through with the sports commentary that has nothing to do with sports. At the beginning of the match, one of the guys was expounding on his theory of soccer performance, "It's all about the hair!" (I'm not making this up.) Then something interesting happened on the field and they started talking about the match instead. During a lull in the action, the announcers began to talk about tomorrow's match, that being the only one that matters, and what color jerseys would the French team get to wear. (Again, not making this up.)

Both France and Italy have blue home jerseys, and obviously one of the teams will have to wear an away jersey. Although having all the players out there in blue would add a certain element of chaos to the play … and the refereeing.

The French announcers often refer to the French team as Les Bleus (The Blues). Unsurprisingly, they came down strongly in favor of having the French team wear their blue jerseys. "It's only right that The Blues should wear blue!"

Will the French turn out in blue? We'll find out tomorrow at 2:00.

Also, the Germany vs. Portugal match was really good. Germany won, scoring some lovely goals.

Like weasels

I finished up my translation job for the week early today, so I had the afternoon off. Since Oz was off too, we had the afternoon to goof off together. We went shopping. We managed to not buy anything (except for a hugely expensive desk chair which I need because of my poor, aching back) till we got to the big electronics store, where we found the photograph printer we wanted. While wandering around, Oz found 1 GB USB drives for only US$30 and it seemed silly not to get some. Never mind that we already have plenty of memory in that form.

We consumed like weasels. Things didn't get out of hand, although Oz did get fussy about a USB cable, because it wasn't pretty enough.

Me: "Oh, come on. It's shiny!"

Him: "But it's ugly. I don't like it."

Me: "You think this is Japan? You think you can get a pink one with cute mousies on it?"

Him: "What about these gray ones? They have a … geeky tag."

Me: "Ooh, and gold-plated. But look at all the returned ones. Everyone who buys that brand brings it back."

If only I could get him so excited about plumbing fixtures.

Ah, well.

Reruns

We're watching the Japanese rebroadcast of France vs. Portugal, which we saw live on French TV.

Because it's on.

Besides, I missed the first half the first time around.

I have to say, France's strong showing this World Cup as been great for France, but hasn't done much for the entertainment value of the French commentary. The announcers are taking this entirely too seriously. Instead of snotty remarks about players' hairstyles and gossip, we're getting actual sports commentary. Even when France isn't playing, they're talking about which team will win, and whether they'll be up against France next.

Also, this makes for less of the "Oh-la-la!"

In cat news, Sparky is still taking the pills okay and is really mellow. Today when Oz sat down beside him on the couch, he didn't hiss and run away. (My cats only like me. They run away from everyone else.) Oz said, "Maybe you need to cut back his dose?"

In house news, my gutters are still leaking. Oz is doing nice things to the garden. Plumbing problems developed on the day before the holiday as they always do. And I have to figure out how to start getting the bathrooms redone.

Could life get more exciting?

(Yes, any day now …)

Eagles in the architecture

The Church Hill Bank, North 25th and East Broad Streets

Everyone's posting pictures of flags today, so I had to be different. I started looking around at all the patriotic signals in the architecture around us. I wandered through Church Hill on foot yesterday, and then had Oz chauffeur me today for an eagle tour of downtown Richmond. ("Hey, there's an eagle! Stop! No, you went past it." "I had to find parking!" "That was totally parking back there!") Click the picture for more sandstone fun.

By dint of working my butt off last week and yesterday, I was able to take today off. All the way off. No work at all. So we slept in, watched the Clash of the Axis Powers (Italy vs. Germany in the World Cup semifinals), baked bread, etc. I made pasta salad with basil and parsley from the garden and then quizzed Oz about the bug stuff he'd put out all over the backyard yesterday.

"You know, I rinsed the hell out of those herbs, but did you read the warning label on that poison?"

"Yes. It said it was okay for fruits and vegetables. Sheesh."

This evening, since the soccer match ran into overtime and we wanted to eat right away, we went to the Full Kee for dinner because they're always open. We finally gave in to the staff's insistence and tried the deep-fried spicy soft shell crab. It was fantastic, although Oz did point out that even deep-fried spicy tennis shoes would probably taste good, but this really was good. I've had a deep distrust of soft shell crab ever since a soft shell crab sandwich in Annapolis which included the guts. I like my crabs cleaned, thank you.

In feral cat news, I successfully pilled Sparky the biting cat with his anti-anxiety meds. After my first unsuccessful attempt, I worked on my technique and on training the cat to deal with having his mouth pried open. For the last few weeks I've been going through the process without a pill. Scoop up kitty, pry his mouth open, tell him what a good boy he is (e.g., lie), and give him a treat. It helps to do this at a time of day when he's relaxed and sleepy. Today I did the same thing, only I dropped a pill into the back of his throat. He swallowed it right up and scarfed down his treats.

This afternoon I told Oz, "It says it takes three weeks before the medicine starts working."

He looked at Sparky sprawled groggily on the red leather chair. "Three weeks, my butt. Look at that cat. He's totally zonked."

This would be a good thing. He hasn't been in the best mood lately. He's been collecting nicknames like "Grouchy-pants" and, when he's nasty (generally towards the other cat), "Fat Bastard." Even as a kitten he was naughty, but not too. Oz called him "The Knave of Twilight" because he never was quite bad enough to rate "Prince of Darkness."

Now I'm listening to the booming of fireworks in the distance. Later this evening, people here in the neighborhood will pull out their automatic weapons and fire into the sky. The usual, on the Fourth of July.

An ongoing project

Nursing Education Building and structures to the east
East Broad and College Streets

I think I have the details I wanted of the Nursing Education Building, but there is more to document. Several other buildings on that block, though not the ones in this picture, are going to be demolished soon. Now that I know that the demolition is really going to happen, I won't laze around in denial. I've already got a lot of pictures of West Hospital and the Williams Clinic, but I could get better ones. The Williams Clinic, for example, needs to be shot on a cloudy day, or at least in different light than what I've had before now. And I need to haul a tripod along next time to capture some nifty things in shadow, like art deco transoms.

Here's the Disappearing MCV set. It's only got eight photos so far, but there will be more.

It's nice to have a photographic purpose other than being the four leaf clover fairy. I found another one this evening and I offered it to the guy who walked by with a couple dogs while I was trying to photograph it. The dogs tried to kiss the camera when I bent down to show him where the clover was. I suppose it looks pretty odd to be photographing the sidewalk with a zoom lens.

But lucky.

Emergency documentation

East Broad and College Streets
West Hospital and the vanishing Nursing Education Building

The demolition has begun! One of the other local picture-taking people posted a shot of the Nursing Education Building with huge holes in it. I'd hoped that some alternative would be found, but it seems not. There's nothing like the sight of a charming Italianate building (it really doesn't look art deco at all) with chunks ripped out to galvanize my lazy butt to get out in the midsummer heat and take some pictures. I had taken several pictures back in February, 2005, but none of the sandstone block over the entryway, which is what's missing from the shot I saw online. Also gone: tiling from the façade, including all of the six pointed star medallions, half the Corinthian capitals from the engaged columns, the cornerstone, the strip of garden across the front, and one of the Ambulance Entrance lamp stones.

We went out this morning when it was only 89 °F and again this evening, once it cooled down to 92 °F. I'm still sorting through the pictures, but I think I have some fairly good shots of the building in its setting and of the details. I wish I'd known that the demolition was going ahead. If I had, I'd have got some shots before they started knocking holes in it. As it is, I figured we had to get out today because all the tiling might be gone tomorrow. They haven't started with West Hospital, the building to the left of the Nursing Education Building, and its other neighbors just yet. I still have time to get backhoe-free pictures of them.

And today we watched soccer

Portugal vs. England (Portugal, by playing dirty) in the morning and Brazil vs. France (France, by playing amazingly well) in the afternoon. That pretty much took the whole day. Last night Oz had pull an all-nighter for work, so today he had to fight to stay awake. He did okay till after the last match.

That was pretty much our whole day.

This evening I went out for a walk (alone) with my camera and my new monopod. I was playing with my big zoom lens. I've found that when you're all zoomed in, any little wobble—like from your heart beating—blurs your picture, and the monopod helps with that. It sure did this evening. All the monopod pictures are nice and clear, but the pictures I took without it are pathetic. Too bad. This little squirrel in the park was posing so nicely. I shot some pictures of her without bothering to set the camera on the monopod and now I have five blurry squirrel pictures.

I'm having better luck, in terms of clarity anyway, with my optical illusion pictures. When you walk through Libby Hill Park towards the river, Rockett's Landing hoves (hives? heaves?) into view beneath the spreading branches of an oak tree. The water tower and the brick warehouses look to be within arm's reach, but they retreat when you pass the oak tree. In pictures taken from both vantage points, the Rockett's Landing buildings are the same size. Huh. I'll have to run them by Oz when he regains consciousness.