Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

company

Sun, 26 Nov 2023 00:08:06 GMT

Our friends Alan and Jeanne are in town over the Thanksgiving weekend, visiting Elly (who lives in Salem). They spent the afternoon here. Alan is one of my oldest friends. We met in roadnotes' living room in 1983, when he lived in Toronto, and he and Jeanne now live in the Bay Area. [cattitude points out that I've known Elly about as long.]

I took a covid test for unrelated reasons yesterday (it was negative) and then I asked cattitude and adrian_turtle how they'd feel about visiting unmasked iff everyone tested negative. They said yes, so I suggested that to Alan, and also noted that I had already tested negative but had tested because I seemed to have a cold. Everyone tested negative, but Elly spent most of the afternoon wearing an N95 because she doesn't want to catch a cold. We also replaced the pre-filter on our living room air filter.

Much conversation, and we finished the apple crisp from yesterday's belated Thanksgiving dinner (Elly took her mask off for this). They left around 6:30, after spending 3.5 hours here. I suggested to Elly that we get together again when we don't have visitors from the other coast, and we hope to do this, either her visiting us, or the three of us taking transit and her picking us up at the commuter rail station. So far this is a hope, not even the glimmering of a plan.

The postponed Thanksgiving dinner, which we had yesteray, was good, especially the duck. I didn't like the rice salad, and Adrian and Cattitude thought it was only OK, but there were plenty of roast roots, so that was all right.

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in-person socializing, with iced chocolate

Fri, 27 May 2022 21:34:29 GMT

cattitude, adrian_turtle, and I visited with nineweaving this afternoon. We sat on a patio drinking Burdick's chocolate (hot for Adrian, iced for the rest of us) and talking. I had a very good time, and Nine and I agreed to do this again soon, or at least not wait a year. I had last seen her in spring 2021, when we were vaccinated and a lot of other people weren't yet.

I suggested getting together a few weeks ago, when Greer decided it wasn't safe enough for her to go to Montreal for Scintillation next month. I already knew that her and my risk tolerances differ slightly—in particular, I'm willing to ride uncrowded buses and trains when the covid numbers are low, and she's not. So, we were in Harvard Square, which is walking distance from her place and near the buses from Arlington and Belmont.

It was a wide-ranging conversation, including eyeglasses and theatre and movies, and visiting very old buildings, and a bit about our respective pandemic precautions.

When we sat down, Nine reached into her bag and gave me the flashlight that I had lent her at a convention in 2019. I'd lent it to her because there was a construction trench near where she was staying, and I carry a flashlight in my daypack just in case I need it, which happens rarely but unpredictably.

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@lydy made me a hat

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 00:09:21 GMT

This afternoon was the gift-opening/reveal for the Scintillation Groundhog Day gift exchange.

lydy made me a wool hat, which is a wonderful shade of purple and big enough for me: most excellent.

Grace (who is not on DW as far as I know) was very pleased with the gift I sent her, three kinds of washi tape. I hadn't really known what washi tape was until she said it was one of the things she would like, but I looked around on Etsy and found some nice designs from a Canadian seller. (The mail, and customs, were iffy enough when I was shopping that I didn't want to send something from the US to Ontario.) I got an automated email a few weeks ago asking me to rate my purchase, which I can now do.

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A fine day out in London

Fri, 20 Sep 2019 21:55:21 GMT

I had lunch today with liv, oursin, and green_knight. We met outside St. Pancras railway station (which is convenient to, among other things, the Northern Line, which is near where my mother lives.

We had a good lunch at a pub near the station, then spent some time in the British Library looking at interesting old books and manuscripts in the Treasury. When I had looked at about as much as I could enjoy--my eyes didn't hurt, but my brain wanted to take a break and maybe look at trees or sky--we went to Ruby Violet for ice cream and more conversation. The cucumber-mint sorbet wasn't quite as good as JP Licks' cucumber ice cream, but had the great advantage of being available today, instead of only in July, and the Belgian ice cream was superior to any other I can remember having.

The conversation ranged widely, and included a bit of politics--probably inevitable, since we weren't actively trying to avoid it--as well as life in general, books and libraries, food, and travel. Eventually liv had to head back to Cambridge, so we all went our separate ways, and I had a quiet dinner at home with my mother.

Yesterday Mom and I went to the London Eye, which is very touristy (of course) but also offers very good views of that part of London, and we had just about perfect weather for it, and for a boat ride on the Thames (we bought a combination ticket). Today's weather was equally delightful (highs in the low 20s [low 70s if you prefer Fahrenheit]). The other main thing I want to do this trip, other than just spend time talking to Mom, is to visit Kew Gardens, but my legs and hips need a day's rest first.

On the train home, I noticed a tote bag with 'Do what you love' printed in large script, and my immediate thought was that that was easier before it turned out that what I need to do is write to strangers and yell at fascists. I very much enjoyed what I did today, but I don't think that's the shape of doing that slogan is about.

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Apples!

Wed, 04 Nov 2015 03:37:21 GMT

When I got back from Boston, I posted about eating and enjoying apples, and how pleased cattitude was when I brought a couple back to Bellevue for him.

The delightful browngirl commented, offering to send me some more apples. My answer was "yes, please," and this afternoon I picked up a package from the building management office. Walking back, I smelled the apples through the cardboard box. So, for an afternoon snack, I ate a Macoun apple, and Cattitude ate what might have been a Brock, and there was much rejoicing. I put the other four apples in the fridge, to keep crisp and because I like chilled apples: it looks as though we have three more Macouns and a Macintosh.

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American Museum of Natural History

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:42:47 GMT

Yesterday I went to the American Museum of Natural History with gothgeekgirl (who isn't really on LJ these days), her husband Reed (WINOLJ), and cattitude. This was a last-minute outing: Gothgeekgirl called Saturday evening and asked if we wanted to go the museum Sunday afternoon, and we said yes, and arranged to meet her in mid-afternoon outside the Planetarium entrance.

They were running a bit late, so we sat on a bench and watched hawks circling overhead. Then we spent a couple of hours at the museum. We started with aimless wandering, of the "okay, we're on this floor, there are Asian mammals over there." But I wanted to look at soothing rocks, so we went through the Human Evolution exhibit (which is very good and pretty up-to-date) into the Hall of Rocks and Minerals, which is still the 1970s structure I remember fondly from my teens, complete with low carpeted walls you can sit on.

When your familiar old exhibit hall includes a huge amethyst geode of the sort that I can say "Look" and point at from 50 feet away, and has petrified logs out where anyone can touch as well as look at them, it doesn't really need updating, except maybe for the periodic table displays in a few of the educational exhibits. (I lent Reed a lens cleaning cloth I happened to have in my bag, so he could wipe the fingerprints off the shiny cross-section of a petrified log before photographing it.) The hall is an excellent mix of "ooooh, shiny!" and science; we didn't look at it yesterday, but I recommend the case of fluorescent minerals. That's in a room to one side of the large central hall, next to the one with a gem cave and the cases with a variety of large, pretty, and expensive precious gems. A decade or so ago I was glad of the chance to take my mother's husband in there and say "Here's the Star of India."

At the moment, the "recent acquisitions" case at the entrance to the room includes some very nice opals, including three opalized fossil clams.

We ducked out of that hall a little sooner in time for a quick stop in the gift shop before the museum closed. Then Gothgeekgirl and I fortified ourselves with caffeine, after which the four of us took another hour and a half for an early dinner and more conversation.

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Quietly social

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 23:21:28 GMT

We just had a pleasant afternoon with roadnotes, talking and drinking tea. Conversation ranging from the here and now, to 30 years back: hair, people we know, plans large and small, who we want to be connecting with, culling belongings, the drawbacks of Facebook and the ways that websites' use of the word "friend" may have people saying "s/he's my friend" when acquaintance might be a better word for "I know her, and we hung out a bit ten years ago." Roadnotes is sorting through/culling stuff a lot more seriously than Cattitude and I are, but I've been using her posts as inspiration, in a mild way: a book or two here, an old Worldcon program book there, some worn-out clothes or things that just don't suit me. I sent her home with a green suede jacket, which had never fit me right (the sleeves are too long) and looks good on her. It had been sitting in a drawer for a couple of years; I'm glad it fits her.

A quiet day was what I needed: I'm still not de-stressed from the last few weeks of extra stuff at work, and my shoulder is being a nuisance. Not a sharp pain, but steady, and bad for my mood and patience. Roadnotes and cattitude are both easy for me to be with; being out somewhere might have been more difficult.

ETA: I have asked Cattitude to remind me, if necessary, that this evening is not the time to do any sorting or decluttering, even if I'm inspired by our conversation, because it would be bad for my shoulder.

Also, we talked about the idea of good enough decisions: reminding ourselves (as I seem to need to, these last several months) that even if some other choice might be/have been better, this one is also good enough. Sometimes you've eliminated the bad answers, and it's not a big deal if you pick the second- or third-best. So I try not to second-guess myself. It's working, sometimes.

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dim sum and walking

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 21:26:52 GMT

I'm just back from a very pleasant few hours with cattitude, womzilla, roadnotes, and beetiger. Dim sum and walking through Chinatown and north as far as Eighth Street afterwards, and plenty of cheerful conversation. Jing Fong (20 Elizabeth Street) was good, as usual; I even got water chestnut cakes, which I usually don't, because few other people like or want to try them. We started with sticky rice in lotus leaf, and then ranged through an assortment of dumplings, roast pork, and the like, meaning to end with clams in black bean sauce, some greens, and a scallop dish (the woman whose cart the scallops were on intercepted Roadnotes as we walked back to the table with the clams and the greens), and then at the last minute two things we'd been hoping for, roast duck and egg custard tarts, turned up, so we got them despite being rather full. The custard tart eaters told me they were a superior example; had I been less full, I might have tried a bite, but I was making room for duck instead.

We walked through Chinatown a bit, and after a few tries found some plausible baby bok choy and Spanish clementines, then headed north on the grounds that Canal Street is Too Crowded, and Roadnotes wanted to stop in the Village and Beetiger was eventually headed for Chelsea. Along the way, I mentioned that we were near a good cheesecake shop, and that interested Womzilla, so everyone but Cattitude and I wound up with mini cheesecakes. (He works two blocks away, so we can have them anytime we're in the mood, and he was already carrying the citrus.)

I got near the limit of available energy, and my ankle was a little sore by Houston Street, but not bad enough to stop me; I am drinking tea and reading, and am not planning on heading out again today. I had gym gear with me, but it was a nice day, and walking with friends on a nice day, by January standards at least, was much more appealing than going to the gym alone. Walking is also exercise.

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