fauxklore

I'll write about Conpac separately. This entry is about all the other stuff I did while out in Seattle.

As I mentioned in the previous entry, I drove down to Olympia to do the capital volksmarch there. I stayed down that way overnight, the only notable part of which was my difficulty in finding the hotel since their directions omitted a crucial turn. On Wednesday, I drove up to Tacoma and explored the Museum of Glass. The architecture of the museum is interesting. as are the outdoor installations around it. The most famous of those is the Chihuly Bridge of Glass. The bridge connects the museum with downtown Tacoma (which has a few cool old buildings, notably Union Station, and is lined with niches filled with Dale Chilhuly's work.

The exhibits inside the museum were organized into three gallery spaces, plus the hot shop where you can see glass artists at work. Having seen glassblowing many times (and taken a glass blowing class myself), I didn't stay long in the hot shop. Instead I moved on to the galleries, which had three exhibits. The first of those was a mid-career retrospective of Preston Singletary's work, which is focused on translating traditional Tlingit designs into glass. I particularly liked some of the sand carved glass pieces. I also thought that some of his work, e.g. a figure of raven stealing the sun, did a fine job of highlighting glass art as sculpture.

The second exhibit was of pieces from the museum's permanent collection. As one would expect, this covered a wide range, though all of the art is contemporary. The final exhibit was my favorite. The museum has children design creatures (in crayon) and then selects one each month for their in-house artists to make. The designs are, not surprisingly, often colorful and whimsical. They are also particularly challenging for the artists since the children aren't constrained by expectations of what glass is supposed to look like. By the way, the artists make a second copy for the child's family. Aside from this being fun, I think it has interesting things to say about the creative process.

I returned the car and took the (newish) light rail to downtown Seattle for the con, which worked well. There was time on Thursday to do a downtown Seattle volksmarch, which covered most of the obvious things to see in the central part of the city. The route wound through Seattle Center before going to waterfront and I detoured through Olympic Sculpture Park (part of the Seattle Art Museum) along the way. That was somewhat disappointing as I am not particularly fond of modern sculpture. There's the typical Calder stabile and the obligatory odd object by Claes Oldenburg (in this case, a typewriter eraser), but too any of the pieces look like somebody randomly threw large blocks of metal on the ground. I was particularly annoyed by an untitled Roy McMakin piece that consists of a concrete bench next to a "plastic" armchair and a "cardboard" file box (rendered in metal and enamel). I'm not about to start the "what is art?" debate here, but that piece is definitely not my sort of thing.

I was also disappointed in the aquarium. (The walk passed by it, so I stopped in.) The best exhibit is their giant octopus and the outdoor area has things like puffins and otters (both sea otters and river otters). I usually favor the colorful coral reef displays and, of course, seahorses. There were just a few of the latter (and none of my beloved leafy sea dragons) and, while the coral reef tanks were fine, the area was filled with screaming children. I'd probably have liked the whole thing better had I been there when it was less crowded.

From the waterfront, the route continued up to Pioneer Square (with a checkpoint at the Klondike Gold Museum), through the International District, and back to downtown. Overall, it was a good way to fill a few hours and walking made me particularly appreciate the Pacific Northwest weather.

Most of the other things I did were con-related, though I did also fit in an excursion to Archie McPhee. And. after the con, miz_hatbox was kind enough to invite me to hang out with her and her family. I will tell you that should she ever invite you to dinner, you should definitely accept, as she is an excellent cook as well as a fine conversationalist. Our conversation ranged from a parlor game involving bad combinations of conventions (e.g. allergists and cat fanciers) to potential uses of stainless steel wool to the idea of people wasting their talents to, well, pretty much everything. By the way, we had made an excursion to the supermarket and I was able to buy lapsang souchong tea! My colleagues will once again have to endure that fine smell of burning rubber tires in the morning.

As for the trip home, United failed to upgrade me, but I did have an exit row aisle. When I discovered that the reading light didn't work, the flight attendant refused to give me a skykit (United's compensation mechanism) because the middle seat next to me was empty and had a functioning light. (That it also had a large man sprawling into it was of no interest to the FA. I will check with the Flyertalk crowd before dashng off an email to customer service to ask for compensation.) At any rate, the flight was otherwise as fine as a redeye can be (i.e. barely tolerable). Due to the holiday schedule, I had a long wait at Dulles for the first Washington Flyer bus, which I used to get breakfast. And then I had a 20+ minute wait at West Falls Church for the train. So I was especially exhausted by the time I got home and immediately took a nap.

Now it's time for grocery shopping and unpacking and possibly another nap.

This was an insanely busy week, partly because of all the stuff I'm trying to get done at work before taking a few days off. On the plus side, I finally figured out how to approach a task I've been floundering on for weeks. It was interesting because I had this insight while I was asking somebody else for information that I thought cold be helpful. Nothing he said was actually relevant, but the process of talking it out led me to an "aha!" moment.

While I'm on the subject of work, I learned something cool this week. See, a lot of pure metals form crystalline structures that grow into "whiskers" that can then short out electronics. Tin is the most notorious (and has been a big problem in space systems, having caused the failures of a few commercial spacecraft). But the same thing can happen with several other metals - silver, cadmium, and zinc to name a few. I read an article this week about computer failures caused by zinc whiskers. It turned out that the raised floors in computer rooms were responsible, as the floor tiles had pure zinc coatings on their undersides.

I actually made it to a game night on Monday night. That's too rare an occurrence. I had a good time playing Pandemic (which we actually won - an even rarer occurrence), Guillotine, and Chrononauts. The latter was probably my favorite of the night.

Tuesday was a day for catching up on sleep. It was also farmer's market day. My bounty provided a nice meal in the form of a green salads with balsamic vinaigrette, fried zucchini, a frittata filled with onions, fennel and mushrooms with a bit of shaved parmesan cheese, and black raspberries for dessert.

Wednesday night was Bollywood dance. It was a disappointing class because there was a substitute teacher whose choreography I don't like as much. I was somewhat tired to start with and didn't think I got a great workout.

Thursday night I did household stuff. That included buying some theatre tickets (the Signature subscription, a 6-show pass for the Fringe Festival because I looked at my calendar and gacked, and the Shakespeare in Klingon).

On Friday, I needed to kill some time between work and meeting up with the Flyertalk crowd for drinks, so I went to see Toy Story 3. It was very good, though the 3D was not essential enough to really justify the extra four bucks for it.

As for the weekend, I did a Volksmarch in Towson, Maryland yesterday morning. The walk description had suggested that part of the route was actually on the grounds of the Hampton Historic Site, but the actual walk just skirted the site. It was pretty much all through an upscale - and very hilly - suburban neighborhood. It was a nice enough walk, but the hills were a real killer given the heat and humidity. Still, it counted for the cemetery special program (which was the reason for doing it) and now I've finished that!

Today was far lazier, with errands and the Sunday paper. I still have a bunch of stuff to do in the next day and a half, but it feels reasonably under control.

As for progress on my 2010 goals:

1) As noted above, I finished the Volksmarch cemetery program

2) I'm about 20 pages into The Apocrypha

3) I've been doing a good job of keeping on track with respect to dance classes

4) I have only one more major league ballpark to go to a game at (Minneapolis) and have tickets for that in August

5) The briefcase I had been using had a catastrophic strap failure on the way to work one morning. So I've been experimenting. I'm using a conference briefcase right now. I like the design (and the European Space Agency logo) but it's a little too small, so it won't be a good long term solution.

6) I've either barely started or done nothing about my other goals so far. But the year is not quite halfway over, so plenty of time, plenty of time.

I find this story of U.S. citizen effectively banished from the country to be very disturbing. I understand why the FBI is suspicious of him, but I believe in due process of law. It seems to me that the right thing to do is to allow him to return to the U.S. (in custody if need be, though that still makes me cringe) and handle the legalities here, not in Egypt. (Insert Martin Niemoller quote.)

And then there's the box of human heads that Southwest Airlines found in their cargo hold. They were being shipped to a company that does medical research. It may sound creepy, but according to this article, it's not unusual.

In personal travel news, I have narrowed down my options for going to Mali to four companies. It looks like I can make this happen. For nearer term things, I still have to make hotel reservations for Honolulu (which normal people apparently don't think is "on the way" to Los Angeles from Virginia) and Monaco / Nice (my birthday splurge). Any suggestions are welcome.

Not quite travel related, but I did a minor experiment and did a Volksmarch (a year round event involving the Kennedy Center, Memorial Bridge, Arlington National Cemetery, and Iwo Jima memorial) after work today. I thought it would be cool enough in the late afternoon, but I really should have taken a hat with me. It was a nice route, though, and would be a pretty good one for tourists to check out.

I went up to Boston for my 30th MIT reunion. Because Major League Baseball does not, for some strange reason, consult me about schedules, I actually flew up a day early. Before I left, I made a slide for my office door with pictures of Fenway Park, the Great Dome, and a brass rat, along with the words "Gone on pilgrimage. Back Monday." When I returned, this had been horribly defaced,with the logo of the Source of All Evil in the Universe, a photo of the red brick school up the road and one of a Hahvahd ring. I don't get no respect, I tell you.

Anyway, my flight up on Wednesday night was about an hour and a half late. That meant grabbing dinner at the airport. The only sit-down restaurant at the pier of Terminal A that US Air uses for shuttle flights is Gordon Biersch and it was packed. So the hostess asked me if I minded sharing a table. I didn't and was seated with two other women. We were chatting about why we were traveling - and it turned out that one of them had gone to grad school at MIT. (We had a lot of general interesting conversation, mostly about creativity, by the way.) Afterwards, when I walked over to the gate, I chatted with a Navy captain - who was also wearing a brass rat. She turned out to be class of '84 (i.e. not a reunion year) - and was on her way up for a meeting the next day. And then the guy sitting next to me was also wearing a brass rat. He was class of '92 and returning home from a business trip. Apparently, we are everywhere.

I stayed at the Marriott Copley Place on Wednesday night (thanks to Marriott points). The room was very nice, except for one thing. There was a large window in the bedroom, with a nice view of Boston. In front of the window, there was huge big screen TV on a huge piece of furniture. The problem is that it was challenging to reach across this to close the curtains. It's a weird design flaw that I've never experienced before.

In the morning, I get together with aliceinfinland and ron_newman for a volksmarch in West Roxbury. It was pleasant, though not the most inspiring walking route of all time. I tend to like walks with a lot of historic sites or unusual architecture and this was somewhat more suburban. Still, it was pretty and got us all to a part of Boston we'd never normally go to, which was part of the reason for going. And I do enjoy introducing others to my obsessions.

By the way, the hotel had left me USA Today and I read about Stephanie Meyer's The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella. I have no interest in teen vampire porn, but I do want to object to calling a 192 page long book a novella. That is a perfectly reasonable length for a full length novel. Literary padding is one of the other things that is wrong with the world today.

The Red Sox and the actual reunion will be in subsequent entries, but I need to get moving now.

First, there are a whole bunch of celebrity deaths to note. I have to admit that I never really cared much for Art Linkletter's sort of humor, though I do understand why he was popular. I never understood, however, why Gary Coleman was popular. (I do admit to finding the use the creators of Avenue Q made of him very funny. I also think that makes me a bad person.) There was also a Dominican baseball player (Jose Lima), which I mention largely because I am sort of planning a trip to the Dominican Republic largely so I can go to a ball game there. Finally, today's news brings the death of Dennis Hopper. As further proof that I am a bad person, my immediate mental association with him is this little bit of verse from my youth:

I ride my Harley chopper
Just like Dennis Hopper
I ride my bike alone
and tear up the old folks' home


In more positive news, I saw that Lori Berenson has been paroled. Since all of my co-workers reacted to my mention of this with "who?" I will explain that she is a nice Jewish girl from Long Island who went to MIT, but dropped out to do aid work in Latin America. She got involved (and here is where the story gets blurry) with a Peruvian terrorist group called Tupac Amaru. (The name is that of a leader of an Inca rebellion which fought the Spanish colonial administration, by the way.) Part of the blurriness has to do with who you call terrorists and who you call freedom fighters, but more of it has to do with just what her role with them was. At any rate, she's been in prison since the mid-1990's. She married her lawyer (who was also part of Tupac Amaru) and had a child in prison about a year ago. They're going to make her stay in Peru for the remaining five years of her sentence, but at least she won't be in prison.

The Watergate Hotel is being sold. I wonder what kind of bug inspection the buyers will insist on.

The other item from the newspaper I wanted to mention was John Kelly's column about After the Storm. These guys perform at the entrance to the Crystal City metro station frequently and they always lift my mood for my evening commute. At least for a few minutes. Then I have to get into the station and deal with cluless tourists. Which prompts these haiku:

Actually my
time IS more important than
yours is. Damn tourists.

Someday I will crack
and throw a tourist onto
the metro train tracks.

I don't think I ever followed up on it, but Jammin' Java did refund my money for the cancelled Pierre Bensusan show once I called them. The performance venue that I am annoyed at currently is Studio Theatre. I have gone to two shows there over the past couple of years. One of those I was lukewarm towards and the other I completely detested. But what I am annoyed about is that they keep calling me for donations. I have asked them at least four times to remove me from their call list. Short of them premiering, say, a new Sondheim musical, I will not go there ever again.

I went to see A Prairie Home Companion at Wolf Trap last night. Garrison Keillor is very good at what he does and it was very entertaining. The guests were jazz singer Inga Swearingen (who did a lovely rendition of "Lazy Afternoon" from The Golden Apple) and folk singer Tom Rush. In addition to a few of his own songs, Rush sang "Old Blevins" by the Austin Lounge Lizards, which I mention largely so I will have a reminder to get tickets to their show at Wolf Trap next April. He also had a great line about The Old Man of the Mountain - "it is creepy to have outlived a geological feature." All in all, it was an enjoyable evening, despite the couple seated behind me who apparently believed they were in their own living room and could, therefore, continue an argument they have been having for 33 years while people were up there on the stage talking and performing music.

This morning I drove down to Fredericksburg and did the river trail Volksmarch. I had actually intended to go to Richmond, but the traffic was so heavy that I bailed. This was a pleasant walk, especially along the canal trail. I didn't much like the couple of sections along a busy road with no sidewalk, but the historic district is always nice to walk through. And the expected rain held off, so I didn't even have to drive home in a storm.

1) There are some very nice dresses for sale at various stores now. However, they are all sleeveless. I consider this inappropriate for work. And, even if I didn't, it is too bloody cold in my office (and nearly every other office in the known universe) to wear a sleeveless dress without a jacket. None of those nice dresses had matching jackets. Well, actually there was one that did. But it was pink, which is, of course, evil.

2) If I have to prep a senior level person for a meeting (and accompany that person as his tame technogeek), it would be really nice if the meeting agenda mailed out beforehand actually bore some relationship to the real meeting agenda.

3) Road signs in Washington, D.C. suck. I have a lengthy rant on Virginia road signs (the gist of which is that if they accidentally screw up and put up a helpful sign, they plant a tree in front of it so you can't read it), but D.C. signage is even worse. If the arrows along the way are pointing me to 295 north, the actual freeway entrance should not give me a choice between "295 South" and "95" and "East Capital Street." I had to loop back around in a moderately scary neighborhood. (Normally, I'd have gotten on 295 from Pennsylvania Avenue, but that exit from 395 was at a complete standstill, so I thought I was using a clever alternative routing. Of course, if D.C. had actual freeway interchanges, the whole issue would never have arisen.)

4) I believe it is not asking too much for a hotel to publish directions on their web site which don't tell you to turn onto a street that is closed. (This has to do with the "game day" directions from 295 to the Hampton Inn next to Camden Yards, which tell you to turn left onto Washington. There's this little detail of a row of traffic cones blocking the turn, aside from several hundred Baltomorons meandering aimlessly down the middle of all streets, including the ones that are open to traffic. So far as I can tell, there is not actually any legal way to get to the hotel during a game and I resorted to a turn of dubious legality at the other end of Washington.)

5) I also believe that hotel front desk personnel should be able to give basic directions to major roads. I think there was a more direct way to the Baltimore Beltway (695) this morning than by going back south on 295, but gave up when the desk clerk had apparently never heard of that road by either name. (She kept asking if I had an address I was going to. I'm not convinced that an address four counties away would really have helped.)

6) I was in Baltimore in the first place because it occurred to me on Thursday that it was not actually impossible for me to see my Red Sox play the Orioles this weekend. I have mixed feelings about John Lackey. His pitching was just okay, but he made some nice fielding plays. Both J. D. Drew and Dustin Pedroia had good offensive outings, but Youk and Papi both did nothing. It was an exciting game, even if the Sox did lose (in the bottom of the 10th). If I have to deal with traffic and the hotel directions fiasco, the Sox should really reward me by winning, shouldn't they?

7) The reason I stayed overnight in Baltimore was that I was doing a volksmarch in Manchester, Maryland today and it was just more restful not to spend an hour or more driving home and then an hour and a half back north. I was right about that. The walk was very pretty, but it was more difficult than I expected, with a lot of steep natural surface trails. Hiking boots (instead of sneakers) and/or a walking stick would have been good. It was also a bit tricky to follow the route (marked with ribbons on trees in the woods) at some points.

I went to see Little Shop of Horrors at Ford's Theatre yesterday afternoon. That's sort of a surprising venue for it, but the rationale is apparently that both musicals and science fiction are largely American cultural phenomena. I'm happy to see an historic site being used for something fun.

When you see a show you know well, the tendency is to focus on the performances. Jenna Coker-Jones struck just the right note as Audrey and had great chemistry with Christopher Kale Jones as Seymour. (Which is a good thing as they're married to each other.) I should also single out Elliot Dash as the voice of Audrey II. The only performer I thought was a bit weak was Evan Casey, who didn't seem quite menacing enough as Orin, though he did a good job of playing several minor characters. All in all, it was a fun afternoon and worth braving the tourist herds in the city for.

I got a late start on the day today but still managed to get over to Laurel to do a Volksmarch. I wanted to get a cemetery stroll credit so chose the optional 5K trail that went through Ivy Hill Cemetery, before going down to the Patuxent River and part of the historic district. But I didn't feel like doing a full 15K, so skipped the main route and did another of the optional 5K trails. That one went through the Laurel Lakes community and was pretty much bland suburbia. All in all, the path along the river was the nicest part of the walk.

I've been busy with things that are mostly not worth writing about (e.g. work) which is why I haven't been writing. But I do have a few things to mention.

Louis Auchincloss had the misfortune to die last week, just a day or so before a better known author. I only read one book of his (Diary of a Yuppie) and thought it reasonably entertaining. As for J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye is a book I've read at least a dozen times. The only book I've read more often is Alice in Wonderland. But it's been quite some time since I read Catcher in the Rye and I'm somewhat hesitant to reread it now, out of the fear that it might not be as good as I remember it being. (This goes back to Dorothy L. Sayers, about half of whose novels I found disappointing to reread. I am pleased to say, however, that my recent rereading of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels has been most satisfactory.)

I got away for the weekend and flew down to Florida, where I did a volksmarch associated with the Dade City Kumquat Festival. The weather was threatening, but I finished the 10K walk well before the rain came. The route was a pleasant mix of suburban residential areas, the heart of the festival, historic districts, and a rail trail. After finishing, I walked back over to the festival and browsed craft stalls, ate lunch (including trying some kumquat pie) and looked at the quilt show. When the rain hit, I went to watch the dance groups perform at the Armory for a while, but this wasn't very satisfying as the lack of a raised stage meant that visibility was poor. The rain was annoying, but a lot better than the snow they got at home.

I took advantage of being in the general vicinity to do another volksmarch on Sunday morning. This one was in the town of San Antonio and covered that town (not much of a place) and the adjoining village of St. Leo, which has an abbey and university that made for a quiet and peaceful stroll.

By the way, I got upgraded on both flights. I normally wouldn't have bothered on 2 hour or so flights, but I'm trying to use up my e500s before United's unlimited domestic upgrades kick in. And I got to use the new Aerotrain at Dulles to go from terminal C to the main terminal on my return. (My flight down to Tampa was out of terminal D, so still used a moon buggy.)

Those 2 walks plus the one I did in Manassas a couple of weeks ago put me 3 walks closer to finishing the Cemetery Stroll program. I also did well on one of my other annual goals by going to 3 Bollywood dance classes and one zumba class in January. So at least I've made some progress on my physical goals, even if I've done damn little on my other goals for the year.

I have a format that works, so I'm going to keep to it. This is long enough that I'm putting it behind a cut on LJ. ( Click here to read more. )

I've spent the past few days up in Hartford, Connecticut for Stitches East. I'd been to Hartford before, but long long ago, so I allowed myself some time for playing tourist. Taking just one class per day was actually a pretty smart move, as there is only so much I can absorb at a time. I'll write a second entry discussing Stitches and focus on the tourism part here.

I spent Thursday morning doing a Volksmarch. The walk went through Bushnell park, around downtown (past the Ancient Burying Ground and Center Church), over the Connecticut River to East Hartford, and around the State Capitol. The latter is the only Victorian Gothic state house in the country, so is interesting in that respect. I thought I was going to be doing a 10 km walk, but I apparently took the wrong set of instructions inadvertently and ended up doing only 5 km. It was still a good tour of the city. I should also mention that being a compulsive reader of historic signs paid off with the tidbit that the first pay phone in the U.S. was installed at the corner of Main Street and Central Row.

I walked over to the Mark Twain House on Friday afternoon (about a mile west of the Homewood Suites). This was, apparently, his favorite home and he wrote many of his most famous books in the billiards room on the third floor. The house tour is a bit pricy but was reasonably entertaining and the visitor center has fairly good exhibits on Twain's life. I can't say I learned anything much new, but that is largely because I'd been to the Mark Twain Shrine in Florida, Missouri (his birthplace) as well as to Hannibal a few years ago.

Finally, I went to the Wadsworth Atheneum on Saturday afternoon. This is the oldest public art museum in the U.S. and is worth a couple of hours. I was rather disappointed in their special exhibit on lace. One of their major collections is of paintings by the Hudson River School, which are not really to my taste. But they do have a good selection of American paintings and I particularly liked works by George Morinko, Giorgio Chirico, Max Ernst, and Peter Blum. I should also note that they have a large number of pieces by Alexander Calder, though the more notable Calder work in Hartford is his Stegasaurus next door.

On the final travel related note, the fire alarm went off at the hotel about 9 o'clock on Thursday night. It's a pain in the neck when that happens, but I always do follow the instructions to evacuate since dying in a hotel fire is really low on my list of things to do. It turned out that a water main on the 6th floor had broken and the low water pressure was detected by the sprinkler system, triggering the alarm. We were allowed back into the lobby after about 45 mintues or so, but it was a while longer before we could go back to our rooms. The hotel staff served drinks (beer, wine, water, soft drinks) while we were waiting. I was on the 5th floor and, when I got back up there, I saw that the ceiling in the vending room had collapsed and the carpet in that hallway was soaked. That made me glad for the labyrinthine design of the hotel, which put my room a ways from there.

Also, speaking of annoying things, I got an emailed fraud alert regarding a credit card. When I called, it turned out really to be fraudulent this time. (The previous time that had happened - just a few weeks ago - was for a plane ticket I'd tried to buy on-line.) At least from Hartford, I could call them easily. I'm concerned about something like this happening when I'm in Peru and might not be easily able to deal with it. (You can deal with the security department on-line, but I'm not comfortable doing that from an internet cafe or hotel.) Modern life is a bit complex at times.