You’ve never seen chairs like this before.

His sculpture and installations can be found on this page, but currently, the first few links don’t work. The Hiving Quilt is a good start.

Life is a banquet, revisited. Click on the ‘Gathering china on the fells’ link.

Allergy season is upon us, and my neighbor’s pine is overly generous. My car, the driveway, and every inch of the yard is covered with the yellow-green dust. When I walk outside, I’m sure huge clouds of the stuff swirl up, and land on my clothes and hair, and I can’t help but bring it in the house, where I have spasms of sneezing. I know it’s not just the pine, but the masses of flowering plants in the neighborhood.

When snowflakes land on bodies of water, silence is the last thing you should expect.

What’s pink, smells like watermelon, and is found at higher elevations? Probably best not to eat much of it though.

A collaboration between artists, engineers, and technicians.

Last night, we ate at a Japanese restaurant. Two of my dining companions were seized with gastric distress on the way home. There was some question of whether we would make it in time.

I only had time to take a picture of the chicken. Most of the ducks and pizzas are now neatly packaged (bin packing, they call it, being programming types) and are en route to Berkeley.

I am in possession of a goodly amount of duck fat, but not quite enough for confit making. There will be more ducks.

Real phone conversation:

Me: Hello
Pizza Hut: Hello, we’d like to speak to the persons who ordered pizzas this afternoon.
Me: Why is that?
Pizza Hut: We are taking a survey.
Me: They are watching the Oscars, and I would like to be back in there doing the same.
Pizza Hut: Oh, sorry. Bye.
Me: Bye.

I buy ducks at an Asian store, where they are more or less fully equipped. If you don’t care for a face on your food, you wouldn’t like it here.

Another gloomy, windy, cold day, but a good one for cooking enormous amounts of food. Some of it is for watching the Oscars tonight, some the boys will take back to Berkeley, some will be excellent leftovers for the rest of the week.

Why am I roasting two ducks. Because I want to make duck confit for the first time, and I hear that vast quantities of duck fat will be needed.

Ed Harris, in a Nazi uniform, grinning as he sets up the detonation of a line of train cars. A little out of camera range, but slowly moving toward the viewer is me, in some kind of iron cell set deep in the ground. The sides are too high to climb, there is no place to sit, and Ed is almost ready. I have the 60 seconds or so to contemplate my certain fiery death.

This is typical of the sort of dream I have just before waking. But I think this one is heavily influenced by Oscar night.

The artist and the x-ray

Instead of paint, the artist uses gene chips, MRI scans, and butterfly wings.

The Birdman and the Lap Dancer, by Eric Hansen. If there was ever a week when I needed an entertaining read, this was it. And Hansen’s book delivers.

Bioglyphs, a collaboration between artists, bioengineers, and bacteria.

Rhomboids, tetrahedra, dodecahedra, and much more in acrylic.

To the heavily-perfumed woman at Costco tonight, in whose wake we were unfortunate enough to find ourselves: Did the salesperson at that upscale store tell you that floral was feminine and alluring? She lied. Anything to move this stuff. She neglected to mention the cloying, heavy, irritating undertones, didn’t she. Or the frumpy, old-tart overtones? To say nothing of the poor misbegotten creature of Satan whose musk glands were grilled or otherwise maligned in the making of said fluid. I do believe this is the same dizzying scent used by a relative who stayed with us once. The children remember. Even bleach had no power on the towels. I threw them away.

Examples of his landscapes can be seen here.

A birthday celebration will be part of the weekend activities, and baking will be done, although I am considering one of Costco’s cheesecake offerings. They measure about 31 inches across, and if you want a cherry pie filling to top it off, at least 5 cans will be needed. (Honestly, I don’t know how big they are, I’m just guessing.) The usual cake of choice is chocolate, and most of it is sent back with the boys.

The last cake I made was a lemon pound cake, which called for 2 sticks of butter. It was unusually rich and moist, but I was completely unprepared for one son’s comment that it was. . . ‘juicy’.

The end of a short, but grim (workwise) week. I need a reward, a Friday treat. Let’s see, what am I allowed. Why, I might have two (2) no-sugar popsicles instead of the measly one. What is that, a grand total of 30 calories? Let me loosen my belt first.

Factors against a pluot crop of any size, if any size means more than 2:
squirrels, too many
bees, too few
sunlight, too little

To make room for the Oscar-night food, I am having leftovers for lunch. The healthy part will be the steamed cauliflower. For the rest, I mixed the baked beans with some of the pulled pork, which wasn’t so much pulled as sliced thinly. I am too hungry to get nitpicky. It makes for a filling, if not particularly photogenic, meal. No, there will not be a picture. But if I make the pizza rollups later, there might be.

If only the sun would stay out for more than a few minutes, the flowers would be happier.

Genetically-engineered spider silk.

The beauty of geometric forms.

From RedNova, news that a substance in feverfew kills leukemia stem cells.

Bernd Heinrich’s books are among the best on the subject, which has been in recent news. The Mind of the Raven, Ravens in Winter, and One Man’s Owl are the ones I’ve read.

It’s generally agreed that water has unusual properties. When water is put in a carbon nanotube, it behaves in a surprising manner.

The whistle of supercooled helium.

marmot
duck
hawk
dolphin
swan

Man is not the only living organism that whistles.

From the NPR archives.

Night Ride Across the Caucausus, Loreena McKennitt
Do You Wanna Dance, Bette Midler
Do You Wanna Dance, The Mamas and The Papas
Dante’s Prayer, Loreena McKennitt
Dark-eyed Molly, Eva Cassidy
Pirate Looks at 40, Jack Johnson

Check the photo gallery at the LA Times.

The creative process gets a little more so. From a Wired.com article

A portfolio of her work.

With beef, onions, and cauliflower.

Earworms, that is. Cracklin’ Rosie. My brain rebels at it, but apparently can’t get enough. Duke of Earl. The Name Game.

For several hours now, I’ve been slow-roasting a pork butt. It will ready when the meat shreds with a fork. Doused with homemade barbecue sauce, it will make juicy and tender sandwiches.

I forgot that I can’t have the buns that I bought. Since the only vegetable that goes on barbecued pork sandwiches is coleslaw, I shudder to think how to grasp this mix in my hands.

With the oatmeal at breakfast, the beef rib at lunch, and the pork for dinner, I will have a warm shower for dessert.

But the weekend calls, kids coming home from Berkeley. Oscar night means tv-friendly food. More on this later.

There are leftover ribs and egg rolls, that if heated and eaten here at the keyboard, will make an even worse mess than the earlier oatmeal fiasco. My day job ends, technically speaking, in about seven minutes. I will wait.

The impressively fat buds are much preferred by Argentine ants in their ever-advancing quest for aphid-farming territories.

A mountain lion, I can understand, but a tiger is something else entirely.

In parts of the garden, there is a stirring and a fragrance.

My foray to Clement St. in SF Monday yielded lots at a great price. Excellent in a stirfry, or steamed, served with a dip or leftover sausage gravy.

Mostly a viscous one. Oatmeal and vegetable juice make for a filling breakfast, although one must be free of distractions for this to be a success.

I bought a new bowl, white with sweet peas around the rim. Sadly, I have been varying the proportion of oatmeal to liquid, and not taking into account the smaller size of the bowl. Result: oatmeal overflow in the microwave with large, sticky dollops on my sleeve and the floor. Since there is so little actually left inside the bowl, I make another serving in the old, clean bowl. So here I sit with a very generous amount that probably should count toward my lunch. Forgot about the stuff on the sleeve, therefore getting more oatmeal on my desk.

Mrs. Jones being quite insistent, I turn now to smoothjazz.com. Jazz purists may sneer, but it goes well with my workday, and wipes away annoying remnants of ads and unwanted songs. Uh-oh. Their promotional jingle is a catchy, Brazilian-influenced ditty.

Making gravy is not difficult, but when I am distracted by a)hunger, and b)fatigue, and c)the fact that I really can’t have any of the biscuits I made, then I will err. Eyeballing the amount of flour needed is not such a great idea either. As I added the flour to the sausage drippings, then whisked in a cup of whipping cream, the mass that resulted looked more like mashed potatoes (which everyone knows is forbidden on a low-carb diet). The rest of the carton of cream went in, but dilution seemed impossible. However, the ‘gravy’ worked exceedingly well as a dip. The bulk of my supper plate was gravy, flanked by a few nicely browned sausage links, salad on the side. There are no pictures of this gravy because I ate most of it.

Normally, I don’t start the morning with music, but this is getting ridiculous. This song is okay, not something I’d listen to over and over, the culprit being the oldies station I sometimes turn on when work is really intense, and I don’t have time to go through the CDs. What’s worse is when Sly and the Family Stone’s Dance to the Music starts up. So why are we plagued by music we don’t like? (Careful, site contains vicious earworm candidates.)

And don’t even think about jingles. Mattress Discounters, anyone? Copywriters would be thrilled to know that decades later, people would be singing, ‘Tap, Tap Plastics,” as they went about their daily routine. To vary the pain, the cheery singing of a long-defunct radio station’s call letters can pop to the forefront of an earworm attack, resulting in what I would call the ‘deranged and relentless mix’. I really should get an iPod.

Cowboy music, for example, the Marty Stuart soundtrack for All the Pretty Horses. Buttermilk Sky is from a very old western, Canyon Passage.

Brushing my teeth at 6 a.m. the other morning, I Got You, Babe switched on in my head , and I turned on the radio in desperation. All those rainy morning commute reports of overturned vehicles finally wiped the song away. Sonny & Cher songs are particularly tenacious. More on earworms soon.

Making drop biscuits for supper, I innocently picked up the buttermilk carton. Now, hours later, Hoagy Carmichael sings to me from the depths of my childhood, Buttermilk Sky Only the first few words are looping through my head, which makes it all the more irritating. I’m sure I must have asked back then, but no one could tell me just what a buttermilk sky was. Of course, Google knows. Watch a buttermilk/mackerel sky form with the Lawrence Hall of Science camera.

My dad had quite a collection of music when I was growing up - lots of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Mills Brothers, Nat King Cole, and Hoagy.

Another view, this one from Roger Brown

Canna blooms are showstoppers, but the seedpods are eerily reminiscent of baby bird heads.

I understand there is serious talk of an ark. This time, could we reconsider a few things? As in, do we really need to let a termite queen on board?

Last year, I looked up from my desk, and saw a giant pair of talons at the base of the oak tree in the backyard. The rest of its body was obscured by part of the house. Hawks have come by before, but usually at some distance. This one was no more than eight feet away, but the chances of my getting a picture were very small. By the time I had gotten to the back door, it was gone. I had my camera, and opened the door as quietly as possible, when a huge, dark shape glided past (if I had gone two more steps, I would have run into it). I looked up, and there it was, atop the power pole between the redwood tree and the palm.

I really didn’t want to press my luck by getting closer. It watched me for a bit, then flew out of sight high into the front oak trees, where it made a series of abrupt sounds.

When I sent pictures to the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, someone told me it was probably a juvenile red-shouldered hawk.

Keeps the hands free. Works fine in winter, not sure how it would be in summer, but perhaps by then, I won't be limited to sugar-free popsicles as my dessert. I am aware there are other low-carb options, but I am blue (and lime green, cranberry red, and lemon yellow) in the face from eating sugar-free Jello.

It used to be the brand-new box of crayons. Now it’s the pack of 12 ultra fine point Sharpie pens. Berry! Aqua! Turquoise! Not only that, but I’m going to have a sugar-free popsicle for dessert. About the color of the orange Sharpie. Can you really eat a popsicle and use a keyboard at the same time? There’s a trick, picture coming.

barbecued chicken
fried chicken
corn on the cob
egg rolls, the crunchy kind
barbecued ribs, especially the beef ones
$6 burger from Carl’s, or any burger if you have to remove the bun

When I see feathers drifting down from the oak trees, I know a hawk is dining. This is not an unusual thing in the daily happenings around here. Today, I went out back to try to get a picture, despite the rain. But the oak trees are overgrown, and I know the hawk is thinking I am being rude again. He spots me (no surprise there), and as I move around, trying to see past the leaves, the squirrels’ nests, and the rain, he makes an annoyed hawk sound. The rain gets more persistent, so I give up. But last year, I managed to get one hawk, though not as sharply as I would have liked. Coming up tomorrow. For now, I am going back to Dave Eggers’ How We are Hungry.

Good for a rainy Saturday night: Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

Rotisserie chickens are sold from this truck at the Sunnyvale Farmers Market, but it’s not always there. Maybe the big chicken is not waterproof, but one would hope so. Today, the vendors were huddled in their rainjackets and hoods, the musician was singing children’s songs, and I came away empty-handed.

Joe: Hey, Don, some guy wants a big chicken on a truck.
Don: He exterminates chickens?
Joe: Jeez. And not just a chicken, a roast chicken.
Don: Two legs.
Joe: Two legs, but still two wings, kinda different. Wants it ‘appetizing’.
Don: Never done appetizing before.
Joe: Here’s a picture. See, they got goosebumpy things on the skin. Can you do it or not?
Don: I dunno, cockroaches never had goosebumps.

One of Barratt’s sculptures, ‘Broken Whole’, is at Pheriche, 15,000 feet up Mount Everest. Engraved on it are the names of 174 climbers who died attempting to climb the mountain. Here’s a BBC interview.

These are great multipliers, as you’ll find if you plant them in a pot, and lift them at the end of the season.

The clivia are getting ready to bloom. More in a few days.

There has been activity here in the last few days, but the porch has suffered from the recent rains. I should clean out the old nests, but perhaps I am too late.

Maybe this one knew that conditions would have been too crowded.

Last spring, there was a surprise in one of the baskets hanging from a garage beam. I thought the birds flying in and out of the cracks above the door were after the many spiders. After a few days, they quit shrieking at me when I went to the mail slot. Later, bits of straw sticking out of the bottom of the basket led to the discovery. At first, it seemed to be the body of a fairly large rodent. Then an eye opened. Then another. Before rushing them back to their site, five pairs of curious eyes were counted. Most can be seen in this picture.

A bird nest made of steel, found in Switzerland. Link

From last year. Several amaryllis bulbs are out on the potting table awaiting some attention - any attention, so they might have a chance to bloom again.

Falling into a work-induced torpor, this calls for livelier sounds. Switching to Sasha & Digweed’s For What We Dream of, Tina Turner’s Simply the Best, Eric Clapton and Tina Turner’s Tearing Us Apart, Ingrid’s You Promised Me, Alisha’s Attic’s Pretender Got My Heart, Santana’s Smooth, and Tom Jones’ What’s New Pussycat.

Her work has been showing at the Hang Gallery in San Francisco.

Since we can expect rain through next Monday, here’s a thought. In a few months, there will be peaches like this at the local farmers markets. Definitely warm and fuzzy.

These appear in the narrow flowerbed by the front door, pushing up through the leggy impatiens. I took this last year. Surely, nothing this fragile can survive the constant, drenching rains we’re having this week.

Quite a challenge. There’s always the Die Another Day soundtrack, which seems appropriate. I need something calming, but edgy. The Cliff Martinez it is, the Solaris soundtrack, and then Eva Cassidy’s American Tune. You can learn more about Eva here

Whale Rider soundtrack
Blackhawk Down soundtrack

Instead of embellishing canned chili, I decided to try it from scratch this evening. Short rib meat, turkey linguica, cannellini beans (those were from a can), tomatoes, onion, lots of cumin, garlic, chili powder. Yes, that is some corn in there. The frozen kind, from Trader Joe’s. Tastes fine, except I didn’t have bell pepper.