My sister invited us to celebrate the Fourth of July with them. Carol made the Barefoot Contessa's Corn Salad and a Raspberry Trifle. I picked up my Mom and some assorted groceries (four bottles of Tonic Water, napkins, two large bags of ice, and a 12pak of Bud Lite. My sister, Kay, and brother-in-law, Barry, cooked babyback ribs, crisping them on th grill, then wrapping each besauced rack in foil and tormenting it in a slow oven for at least two hours for falling-off-the-bone goodness. The Corn Salad was exquisite with fresh basil off the back porch and shoving it just a bit into the baked beans for a combined bite was an unexpected pleasure.
My nephew came over and brought our family's youngest, 8 month old Benjamin, his sister Avery, 3, and big sister Alyssa, 7. Alyssa is really swimming now, able to cross the deep end of the pool to the shallow in one go, Avery demonstrated her fearless ability to jump into waiting arms and really acted like she wants to swim very, very soon. Even Benjamin happily splashed in the shallows and kept trying to escape for watery adventure, restrained only by +everybody+ who wanted to hold the baby. All the children had lots of supervision and accomplices with my niece Bayley and her friend Christina, my sister's friends Jack and Kim and Mary Beth. Even my Mom, 88, swam and played with the children.
Tags: Pork, pool, family, friends, Smirnoff, beans, corn, bikinis, babies, laughter, games, music, and beer.
- Family and Holiday and Friends and Food
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
cliff52- July 5th, 7:52
- Holy Water
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- cliff52
- July 2nd, 8:51
...
And she says take me away
then take me farther
Surround me now
And hold, hold, hold me like holy water
Holy water...
Big and Rich, Holy Water
A priest or minister blesses water and it takes on a spiritual essence, capable of purification and passing on the blessing to any who are touched by it or who drink it. A preacher lays his hand on a person's forehead and they pray together and the hold of evil acts over the person is erased, made never, taken away as far as East if from West. A person, alone, kneels and accepts forgiveness for a wrong they created.
The ability to suspect, to perceive, and to be affected by spirituality is as natural to human beings as feeling the warmth of the sun or the coolness of the wind. It is more than inside you, for then it could be removed, and this cannot - it is of you, and you are of it.
- AM entry
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- cliff52
- July 1st, 7:33
via William Gibson (GreatDismal) on Twitter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWSJ__UmHhc
This is hilarious somehow - you may have to give it a minute.
Sprechen Sie..? My guess is you will find it even funnier.
Two dreams last night. In the first I was on a car trip with others, perhaps family members. Our destination was a traditional / historic Japanese Inn. We parked our car on a hilltop, near the top of a luxurious flowering tree, so thick it's branches formed a near vertical blanket - you throw yourself into the branches and slide down to the bottom to access the entrance to the Inn.
The entrance desk is behind a shallow pool of water. To sign in, you must remove your shoes and wade through the pool. I watched as a robed Japanese gentleman waded through. When I looked down, for some reason, he left his shoes in the bottom of the pool, which turned out to be not so shallow - his pants legs were soaked to the knees.
I reached the reception desk, where a kimono'd Japanese hostess met us, gave everyone a cup of tea, and lead us to the elevator. For some reason, I missed the room designation she told us. Everyone else went up, I stayed at the elevator door, holding my cup of tea.
I then realized I couldn't go up in the elevator, since I didn't know at what floor to get off. I walked over to the office, which was filled with staff and guests. There was a thin, stuffy Englishman, dressed in casual Western dress. I knew at once he was the owner of the Inn. I asked him, "Do you know which room I'm in?"
Rather imperiously, he responded, "The Green." I looked around and saw that the office we were in was painted green. He was referring to the current room that I was in. Everyone in the room found this quite hilarious, at my expense. I felt the edge of anger, even rage, but then the Englishmen suggested, "Why don't you finish your tea."
As I sipped, I realized that he knew that my problem was that I had brought something into the Inn that I should have left outside. I waded calmly back through the pool, went outside, and turned, knowing that now everything would be okay. And, that was just the first dream...Finally:
“... a science (be it a hard science or a soft one) should be able to change the state of things of which it speaks...” – Umberto Eco
- The Visitor
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- cliff52
- June 30th, 12:15
Found this little fellow in the driveway:
Googling "green beetles of Georgia" brought rapid result:
This is a Scarab Beetle: family Scarabaeidae, Superfamily Scarabaeoidea, infraorder Scarabeiformia, suborder Polyphaga.
It is of the "Shining Leaf Chafers" (subfamily Rutelinae), specifically: Popillia japonica - the Japanese Beetle.
So that's why Carol said, "Don't put that on my flowers!"
Hmmm. Now I have to go find him. Just follow the holes in the leaves...
The drought is supposed to have dropped their numbers drastically - good since they eat many things humans find attractive or nourishing.
Edit for addenda:
Our morning bike ride on North Augusta's Greeneway Rails-to-Trails was cut short by an exciting blowout of C's rear tire. The explosion sounded like a shotgun blast. We walked back a half mile to a road access point, then I rode the 3 miles back to the bike-hauling truck. On that ride, I saw one of these on the side of the path:
No camera, dash the luck, so this photograph is from www.snakesandfrogs.com. My observation was of a smaller snake, maybe 3 feet long and a bit thinner than this one. King Snakes are our Friends, as their diet includes snake species people find noxious (they are immune to other snake's venom). I don't kill any snakes, but I certainly urge people to leave these alone.
- Father's Day
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- cliff52
- June 21st, 13:20
My Dad was a wonderful guy. He is who I think of when I think of the concept of 'Father'. Everything he ever told me was true - what he said would work, worked, and what he said would hurt, hurt. He forgave me when I just had to find out for myself, too. You've been gone fourteen years, Daddy, and I think of you every day. Thank you - I couldn't ask for better. If I did anything right as a Dad and a husband, your hand was in it.
We got pictures this last week of our upcoming granddaughter, Mallie Kate Selph. Here are the 25-weeks-old previews:
- (no subject)
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- cliff52
- June 19th, 7:30
Reading incmpriest 's LJ, she mentioned an article (io9) from a Harvard psychiatrist, who explains zombie neurobiology. The article is quite interesting and is sure to start a controversy among zombie fans, some of whom will agree, and others who will beg to differ.
The articles triumphs, if for no other reason, because the author explains why the creatures in 28 Days Later are not zombies.
I found the comments to the article insightful to human psychology. What about zombies fascinates us?
How do the monsters we create define us?
picture from io9.com
- Writers?
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- cliff52
- June 17th, 13:10
Just finished lunch in a crowded fast-food joint. All the special summertime kids things were out and the families were tired of going home for lunch by Wednesday, so the place was packed with Moms, kids, lunchgoers, and mysterious people you see in public. Most inspiring, it struck me as an excellent setting for a story. I wondered, though, how do you capture the details for writing later? I could have scribbled a bunch of notes while I ate if I had a notebook or laptop, but I wondered if I could get some help, here.
- Unemployment reaching for 10%, and all the rules change?
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- cliff52
- June 17th, 5:02
NPR reports that employers embrace new technologies
Job hunting? The rules have changed:
"Paper resume' passe' ... in some circles."
"Not having a profile on LinkdIn ... a major liability."
"Folded paper resume' in an envelope...hard to take seriously."
"Blogs and Facebook pages ... essential for communicating with a potential employer."
Ars Technica reports on gifts for hacker Dads
(this, not personal - I prefer my Amazon wish list)
Slashdot reports Senators reviewing exclusive handset policy of certain wireless carriers
(you can only get an Iphone on AT&T, for instance.)
- Cultural Dictionary
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- cliff52
- June 16th, 17:10
Dan Neil of the LA Times reports on the Second Annual Cramer-Kasselt Cultural Dictionary.
Too much personal time on the computer at work? "Social Notworking."
Steeply devalued retirement account? "201-K."
Find yourself in the kitchen but don't remember why you went in there? A "Kitchenheimer."
Some terms need no explanation: "Twitterrhea"
Defining our times, in language...enjoy!
- NPR comes through again
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- cliff52
- June 14th, 15:46
Predicting the future: Urban Coyotes
So, in the end, it will come down to the coyotes and the cockroaches...
- Saturday evening, Jorge Luis Borges
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- cliff52
- June 13th, 18:37
I wonder what Borges is at, here:
"Hladik was past forty. Apart from a few friends and many routines, the problematic pursuit of literature
constituted the whole of his life; like every writer, he measured other men’s virtues by what they had
accomplished, yet asked that other men measure him by what he planned someday to do."
...from "The Secret Miracle" in Collected Fictions, Translated by Andrew Hurley, Penguin Press, 1999.
- Ellie Gibson of the BBC on the Arduino
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- cliff52
- June 10th, 19:31
- this strangest of theatres
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- cliff52
- June 2nd, 21:28
I watched the second season finale of Breaking Bad (AMC) last night. The show is the story of a really nice guy, faced with unthinkable circumstances and choosing just a tiny bit of evil to find a way out. Inevitably, a tiny lick brings little problems which must be solved with nibbles of the same, then the bites grow larger and larger until his life is consumed and he is faced with the loss of everything he originally tried to save. This is done realistically - it feels as if it could happen to your next door neighbor, or to you. The show entertains as dark comedy.
I don't know if it will re-run this summer, but AMC offers episodes online. I got hooked with the first episode this season, but then, that's just me.
ANYWAY, the nice guy has a young drug-addicted partner paralleling his mentor's descent into darkness. This episode showed a familiar picture on the wall of the young man's girlfriend's apartment. I recognized it from this post I made last year: http://cliff52.livejournal.com/88156.html Erudite readers will recognize Elizabeth Bishop, to whom NPR introduced me (last year).
ALSO, am I the LAST person to find Google Blog Search? Once I recognized Ms. Bishop, I needed the find the old entry. GBS worked and of course you can search anyone's or everyone's blogs, too. :^)
Lots of Elizabeth Bishop info at Modern American Poetry, Univ. of Illinois..
- Eccentricity, Saturday Morning
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- cliff52
- May 30th, 9:22
from QOTD:Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd. - Edith Sitwell
from Wired, via Slashdot:
Homebuilt CPU using wirewrap by video game designer Steve Chamberlain, who posted progress on the build in his blog:
Via Hackaday: Do you have a 40W CO2 laser? Learn to build a CandyFAB 6000 and melt sugar in a computery kind of way over at EvilMadScientist labs.
- Definition, Meaning and Eclectic Existentialism
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- cliff52
- May 23rd, 7:33
What is the difference between terror and horror, as in, why is there a genre called horror, but not one called terror? What nuance do we miss when we interchange the terms carelessly?
Daily Wonder: Limor Fried (ladyada) reminds us in her blog, Adafruit, that we ignore The New York Times at our peril, with a link to a delightful article on the joy of working with your hands as well as with your mind:
The Case for Working With Your Hands by Mathew B. Crawford, Ph.D.
- Blogger, Beware
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- cliff52
- May 21st, 8:50
M.P. McQueen in the Wall Street Journal:
'What You Write Can Get You Sued"
nline.wsj.com/article/SB124287328648142113.html
- Michael Montes, again
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- cliff52
- May 16th, 8:33
Michael Montes song from a Canon TV ad. I buried this in an earlier post, but I'm posting it again because it is a happy song, and I made it through a difficult week.
This music makes me happy because someone invented the piano, working out all those string lengths until the sounds they make are pleasing to the human ear. It's not the only scale possible, but it is one that works.
This makes me happy because there are human beings that can take such a tool and prepare sequences and durations of notes that evoke emotions in other human beings. These emotions are poignant because the feelings they cause are familiar to the listener. Communication, without which, loneliness ensues.
Advertisers utilize this communication so that you'll associate pleasant feelings with their products. I don't care - I'm just happy the music exists.
The video presents the song slowly as a tutorial so you can learn the finger movements. This is another type of communication that includes recognition that others might enjoy performing the song. The video then presents the music at a tempo approximating the composer's intention.
Delightful.
- First Autonomous Robot Passes Security, Boards Plane
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- cliff52
- May 16th, 8:16
Her name is LARA, and she got a window seat. She only got 5th place at the Robofest competition, though.
getrobo.typepad.com/getrobo/2009/05/first-autonomous-nonhuman-boards-airplane-ge ts-window-seat.html
LARA has skeletal, muscular, and nervous systems, and is autonomous in that she responds to gestures and verbal commands, rather than to a remote control.
Thanks to Hackaday.
- What's That Song, etc
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- cliff52
- May 9th, 20:40
1. The piano number in the Canon ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pk0R8OWg
0k video tutors the finger movements necessary in the song by Michael Montes.
2. "Books that make you dumb" connects SAT score with favorite books listed on Facebook. From the deparment of unlikely correlations: http://booksthatmakeyoudumb.virgil.gr/ .
3. I did pick up on Paul Coelho's The Alchemist on that list. Mr. Coelho says it was inspired by Borges' 'A Tale of Two Dreamers' found in his collection of stories "The Complete History of Infamy", of which Borges later commented "...under all the thunder and lightning there is nothing." We'll just have to see.
I really enjoy Borges. I think he found the magic key to everything and wrote his works in the ensuing sense of cosmic amusement.
I may be the only human connected with my journal that likes hacking, in the sense of re-purposing objects from that intended by their creators and manufacturers. I've written about Limor Fried (ladyada) before, electrical engineer and entrepreneur. Ladyada recently blogged about an entry from FatMan and Circuit Girl 's video blog making a wristwatch from an old flippy-number alarm clock.
"Circuit Girl" is Jeri Ellsworth , a self-taught VLSI (very-large-scale-integration) electronics designer who created the chip at the center of 2004's Christmas gift sensation, the joystick that contained a number of early-80's video games.
Flip-clock alarm clocks can be found either in someone's garbage can, or at a suburban yard sale for $2.00, or you can buy them on eBay for $2-$300 !!!! They're now collectible.
- Unbroken Wings
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- cliff52
- May 6th, 16:17
T.S. Eliot - Ash WednesdayI
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
( Read more... )
