I’m not normally much on the wishlist thing but if anyone out there is overcome with the desire to blow a few thousand bucks on me? Get me this (original). I can’t even begin to express how much I want this object. Wait, that’s a lie. I can easily express how much I want this object: less than five thousand dollars worth of want. I gotta say, this whole “money” concept is a very clever invention.
This is the obligatory “wow, look at all that darned snow” entry. You’ve been warned. My driveway is snowed in so I can’t go anywhere so I have nothing better to do than to take pictures of the white stuff on the ground. I am comforted in the knowledge that various and sundry back in California will go “Wow, it must really suck to live out there.” Ha! I have a fireplace and a roaring fire going. Shows what they know. Stiff upper lip, and all that. Thumbnails follow, they link to bigger pictures, you know the drill.
Well, crap. US Airways lost my reservation. No Dundracon for me. Damn it. I’m really pissed off but I don’t feel like ranting.
I’m sort of having trouble wrapping my mind around this one. I just got my birthday gifts from my Mom. Among them was something I was actually given thirty-three years ago: a pair of gold diaper pins from Tiffany & Co. with my initials monogrammed on them. Inside the little Tiffany box is a note: “For Bryant, with love from Uncle Alex.” That’s apparently Alex Haley; yeah, the one who wrote Roots. (Not actually my uncle.) ...
Warning: this may be disturbing to real cooks. Or not. I really have no idea. My aunt, blessed be her name, gave me a rice cooker for Christmas. It has a no-stick pot so it’s super easy to wash. You don’t have to pay attention to it while you’re cooking something. It rocks. I made rice and put some beans in and it was great. So then I decided to try something else. There’s a rumor floating around out there that you can cook meat in it. Mmm, steamed chicken! So I cut up some chicken and some sausage, and put some olive oil into the bottom of the pot, and turned it on. When the oil heated up, I threw in the chicken and sausage and stir fried it a little till I got bored. Then I dumped in a bunch of rice and some water and a can of black beans and a few random spices that were probably past their expiration date, and closed the lid, and made myself go into the living room to read comics. ...
Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday dear me; happy birthday to me! That is all.
My incredibly cool brother Ben’s design group has just been asked to design an environment for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair. You can see some more of his work here (original); the table won an award for student design distinction from ID Magazine. ID Magazine also recently gave Release1 an award for Best Concepts (original). Ben’s a cool guy.
I am enjoying a little post-festivity relaxation; of late, I’ve desired more alone time, so this is working out very well. Mom’s headed back home to beat the storm, and my brother and his wife are relaxing at their place, two doors down from me. Whoops, he’s come up to borrow DVDs and play some Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Sadly, the game does not provide Christmas music; I was hoping, but then again, it’s not as if I ever told my Playstation what the date is. I am deeply pleased with my gifts this year. My brother got me this coffee table (or at least, that’s what I’m going to use it for); also, a tremendously cool calendar (original). Be sure to look at the detail shots, and note that it has birthdays for all the major figures in the field. I think today of all days, Population: One gets pictures. Follow the link to find my brother and his wife (all together: “Awwwww.”); the Christmas tree; and my mother’s clever Lincoln Log set that comes in a ballpoint pen (my gift, and I am smug). They are clickable, if you want the full monty. Happy holidays.
My grandmother, Zoe Warner Durrell, passed away this morning. I’m going to talk about it a little, because I want to say some things about her and this is a place where I talk about that which is meaningful to me. It was very peaceful. She had just moved into the home of my Aunt Zoe and Uncle Jeff, leaving her assisted living home; everyone was very happy about that. My father had spent Thanksgiving with them all. Everyone in the family had spent some time with her in the last year or so. She’d been ill since last winter. When my father called me this morning, it was not shocking. ...
I want to open a movie theater. That’s not a new thing; I’ve fantasized about it for a while. Not a first run theater, or even a first run art house; I want to open up a quirky little theater that shows second run movies of quality (whether that means Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys or Matrix) and retrospectives of directors and actors I like and so on. There’s no evidence this would make money, mind you. ...