Adventures in the Pointless Forest

But, disappointingly, no Jesuits at all.

Steve is taking all of the vitamins:

Jane is just along for the ride on this one.

Meanwhile, the city is currently in the throes of Fiesta/"Old Spanish Days," which manifests ambiently in the form of lots of little girls running around in flamenco dresses, confetti everywhere, and a massive equestrian parade + mariachis.

For the most part the parade participants dress up in spangly sombreros or white-person cowboy gear, but as my local informant said, "as long as you have a horse, anything goes." The most striking example was the matched team of what appeared to be a dozen Revolutionary War cosplayers, complete with Paul Revere manpurses. The donkey-drawn cart full of elderly Shriners was good, too.

(Is there any other kind of Shriner, practically speaking? Yes, the pictures on their website strive mightily to give the impression that their ranks are bursting with plenty of robust young things, but Shriners in the wild tend to look more like they are probably veterans of the Spanish-American War. The fezzes, though?

 

Eternally young.)

And the servings are so small.

I am tired of this sedate and reticent posting schedule. It makes me feel that the posts I do make have to meet some minimum level of wit or significance, and this is not a plausible goal. So, away with wit! Down with significance! Up with frequency! Blather forever!

We are going out of town for part of August, and then people are visiting us, and then other people are visiting us and so on ad infinitum, so there are bound to be gaps in transmission, but let's see what we can do.

Since we last spoke, you and I, I went to Boston and attended a conference. While I was there, I discovered that it is VERY HOT in places where people have been complaining of the GREAT HEAT lately. Shocking but true. I also discovered that it is extremely possible to get brain-meltingly plastered from a mere two drinks in a hotel bar, which is frankly one of the last places I would expect such a thing to happen, but there it is. 

The next day, when all my responsibilities had been discharged, I went out into the GREAT HEAT and had a splendid evening with lovely people. On the way to the lovely people, I had the honor of sharing a subway car with a man who was not pleased that the train was not moving more quickly.

"This is not a professional subway. This is a terrible, amateur subway," he mourned. "A terrible, amateur subway."

As the ride went on, he warmed to his subject. "WAKE UP, PEOPLE!" he boomed. "Wake up from your sheeplike lives! This is NOT RIGHT. This is a terrible! Amateur! Subway!"

I am not sure what he wanted the rest of us to do about it, but point certainly noted. Take some inititiative and learn how to run a major urban public transit network, I guess.

Later someone told me that the T is sometimes delayed because the tracks catch on fire in hot weather. Can this be true? How does this work? Maybe the tracks themselves, being metal, get extraordinarily hot in the anvil of the sun, and then detritus on those tracks catches fire? Although a few smoldering coffee cups does not sound like enough reason to stop an entire subway train. ("That's my point exactly! Wake up, sheeple!") 

See you tomorrow. If you know anything more about this burning track business, I would love to hear about it.

Custom work.

Sure to be the next big thing. Get one now, before they're as ubiquitous as that Elsa Peretti bean pendant.

Recto and verso.

It's wole!

It is my way to develop intense enthusiasms for things that are essentially the opposite of anything that might ever become a trend. These objects of my devotion are too basic, too non-brandable, too deeply un-chic, and too mundane in every way to be the next big thing -- unless you're me.

Let me give you a few examples from my past, to illustrate. Have you heard the good news about

• Prunes?
• Dried beans? (Though, weirdly, these kind of are actually trendy.)
• Fizzy water?
• Epsom salt? (It makes every bath THE BEST)
• Baths in general, for that matter?

These days my little heart is on fire for wool. I love wool. It's a magical wonder fiber. It is!

Everyone already knows about SmartWool socks, ho hum, old news. Here are my far more thrilling wool picks for 2010:

Baby Schadenfreude

Last night I evicted a baby! I am currently luxuriating at the hospital while Steve reads a Donald Westlake novel and the baby in question sleeps peacefully, if temporarily. This is a very nice hospital, it turns out, at least for the purpose we are putting it to. Here are some exciting details:

1. Jane Cassandra.

2. 6 lbs, 5 oz.

3. March 2, 1:21 ack emma. This means her birthday is countdown day (when the date is written American style, anyway): 3/2/10.

4. 4 hours, which I promise never to mention again, because I like continuing to have friends.

5. Snurfly and sweet-smelling.

6. Distrustful baby is distrustful:

7. IT'S MOLE.

And white!

We went to a... thing last night. It was a good time. These guys were there. I like their pictures. This one features an albino dinosaur of sorts.

One of the artists said: "His name is Francis. He's rare."

Pretty things.

A. brought these presents with her from California. They feel good in the hand, as well as being charming to look at. Note the well considered dent under the handle on the mug.

Anteater and wombat.

Pink insides for the wombat, fleeing ant on the outside for the aardvark.

Wombats have thick, leathery rumps. "I live in Australia."

I feel rather bilious today. Maybe it is time to break in the new china with some mild-mannered tea and treats. Steve just put a very sizable hank of crispy seaweed in his mouth at once. This is about three levels too challenging a snack for me right now, but I admit that the effect was impressive.

Winter wonderland.

Yesterday the world filled up with slithery cruel snow that kept covering the car as fast as I could clear it and made the road terrifying. Today the world is full of crusty, dirty, unpicturesque snow that has already covered everything and makes the road bleak. This is not a tremendous improvement, though it does mean that I will be able to fetch the parcel containing my new winter hat from the post office.

The hat has a giant pompom on top, which, in addition to being extremely dignified, should keep me extra warm by trapping the hot air that vents out of the top of my head. Pompoms are very practical in this way.* This is important because none of my coats will button up over old Foot Foot. A coat that did do up might come in handy now that it is really winter. But at this point, so kind-of-close-ish to the end, I am far too stubborn to buy one that will. Pompoms and voluminous scarves will have to fill in the gaps.

The weather is in fact rather frightful. Last night it sounded like a pack of injured wolves were being flung at our windows. They howled (understandably) and slammed into the rattly wooden frames, then someone dragged them off and did it all over again. It was tiring for everyone involved.

So the world outside is hideous. But inside, Steve has made his annual weblog post. Hurrah! It's much cleverer and more interesting than anything you'll find here, which is why it takes him all year to produce one. Plus their rarity makes them collectible. This year it's about dreadful Christmas movies and invasion literature. It all comes together in a lovely way. Go see!

Also I have received my beautiful and useful tea cosy.

Here's a worse photo that shows off its dashing bow more effectively.

Though I believe it was designed for a shorter, rounder teapot, it fits very nicely on our tall, pear-shaped one as well. Shite on the outside, nice hot tea on the inside -- it's a microcosm of reality. How cunning!

*No, they're not.

The holiday spirit.

Christmas this year is sponsored by my new expensive thermometer. We have no tree or fuzzy green stuff or fairy lights or even an advent calendar, but the counter is buried in heaps of sugary treats and baskets of things to package them up in, and it turns out that this alone is enough to lend things a festive holiday air. There are the preserved pears and a bowl of clementines, and then lots and lots of candy.

I love my stupid thermometer. It is digital, easy to read, quick, and accurate over a gloriously wide range of temperatures. It has a handy probe --

(This reminds me of the good times we had when Ford distinguished itself by putting out a compact sports car called the Probe. "I've been rear-ended by a Probe!" we cried. "I wish that Probe would quit riding my ass!")

-- that works at any number of angles, and only needs to be inserted --

("Oh my god, that Probe came out of nowhere and just plowed right into me!")

-- an eighth of an inch into something to register its temperature. I can therefore now tell you with confidence that the air in my kitchen is 66 degrees Fahrenheit. When the water is just right, my bath is 107.5°. The bowl of yogurt I just ate was 37.8°.

Not unrelatedly, it turns out that if you heat a sugary slurry to the exact temperature they tell you to in the recipe, it turns into exactly the kind of candied substance they claim it will, every time. It's magic. I can't stop. I hope the people on my Christmas list enjoy their diabetes.

Ho ho ho.

Look how internet fashionable I am, with my flaky sea salt caramels and my super close up photographs. I also made some marshmallows. They're pretty nifty, but I didn't take any pictures of them because they are not vegetarian and this lapse embarrasses me. Of course, here I am now, announcing my animal byproduct consuming ways to the world, but there are no pictures. That's the important thing.

+

Elsewhere, an NFL place kicker and his evangelical pastor teamed up to produce an astonishingly terrible, magnificently stupid thriller called Monday Night Jihad. It would certainly make a mind-blowing gift for everyone you know. It's even stupider than it sounds. It's so stupid it makes me giddy. If you want to revel in the most American brand of idiocy that money can buy, this is the book for you. And if you also love prose that clunks more clunkingly than a Volkswagen Thing, this is really really the book for you.

Of course, Things are lovable, while this book is a horror. But either way: clank, clunk, clonk.

The government was remaining tight-lipped about the attack on the Mall of America, so the news channels had exhausted their facts on the failed terrorist attempt hours ago. Until new information broke, they were just filling time with stories like the girl with the big hat who worked in the third-floor Hot Dog on a Stick who had confessed to staring in shock as the liquid rolled back and forth in the slushie machines immediately after the explosion.

"yes I said yes I will Yes"

If you want to enjoy this monstrosity without going to the trouble of reading it yourself, or providing any financial reward to the clowns who produced it, you can immerse yourself in its glories via our friend Dan's aptly named Shitty Books tumblr site. Start here.

Happy Chanukah!

Things things things things

The other night we went out to dinner with friends at this extravagantly popular establishment specializing in grilled cheese. Warning: the photo you first see when you click on that link is sadly revolting. The reality is fortunately substantially more appealing, but the picture does give you some idea of the scale of the meal.

As we waited, we wondered how it was possible that they consistently have a wait of at least an hour on weeknights and multiple hours on the weekend. The answer is that it takes a very long time to eat all that damn food, and then when you are done, you do not want to move ever again, so you don't. I think I have finally recovered, though I do retain a certain feeling that I should spend the next month and a half eating nothing but steamed vegetables to redress the imbalance.

The astute reader will have noticed that the next month and a half includes both Thanksgiving and Christmas, so this plan may not come to full fruition.

photo from Beklina

We are trying not to add too many things to the house at the moment, even anticipatory baby things, since it seems inevitable that every room will fill up with more clutter than we ever imagined soon enough. But these "sheepskin" rugs -- actually thick sheared wool on a cotton backing, no sheep-skinning required -- might merit an exception. They are made by Lina Rinnell and sold at Beklina, a pairing also responsible for my very favorite belt, which I fondly look forward to wearing again someday.

And, finally, QUERY: Why is it that the cat always wants to sit on the greatest number of object layers available? If there is a thing on top of a given surface, he can be guaranteed to sit on the thing, not the surface. Note that not only is he sitting on the paper rather than any other bit of the table, he is specifically sitting on the spot where the pieces of paper overlap. Is this strategy adaptive in some way? Do other, non-domesticated cats have the same habit?