A lovely vacation
I've been too busy having a wonderful time to write about it until now.
First, I went home to San Francisco for a week. I spent time with my parents, which is always lovely (apart from the inevitable Incident - one per trip, like clockwork, but we're getting better at handling them). We went to good Asian restaurants, met with friends, saw lots of movies, and attended the new Cirque du Soleil show, Corteo. Live CdS is always a treat - this is my fifth.
The highlight of Corteo was the part where the dwarf lady acrobat (who, with her partner, appeared in many scenes) was carried out suspended from six 4' helium balloons, giving her a net weight of probably 3-5 pounds, or about 1/10 g. After balancing her on his finger and letting her walk from hand to hand across his shoulders, the head clown lofted her over the audience for a game of, you know, that thing you do with a balloon. Only, with a person. Don't try this at home - you don't have super-strong balloons and a precision-engineered gimballed harness, and your kids don't have Dex 18.
On the screen, we saw The Chronicles of Narnia, Good Night and Good Luck, and King Kong. Omitting full reviews in the interests of brevity, I will say that I heartily recommend all three.
Then, back east, to Swarthmore, for para-Hogmanay (FTWDK, "Hogmanay" is Scots for "New Year's Eve", there is a Scottish folkdance event at Swarthmore on the occasion, many SWILfolk come to dance, and many other SWILfolk who don't dance Scottish (such as myself) come to hang out with them.) Of the many people there, it was particularly good to see fiddledragon, crystalpyramid, eclectic_boy, wayman, uncleamos, reldnahkram, sinsofthedove, and metaplasmus.
Lots of gaming happened. During Hogmanay, several rounds of Vespucci (like Botticelli, but with places - my idea, as of some time ago) were played. Vespucci works well, but seems to be more vulnerable to specialized knowledge (or the lack thereof) than its parent. I also learned a new train game, Age of Steam, with uncleamos, think_too_much, reldnahkram, and tirerim. This is a great game which has everything I really like about 1830 and none of what I really don't like about 1830 (and little enough of what I'm indifferent about to be a very different game from 1830).
While others were playing Civ in prisminawindow's (formerly my) apartment, fiddledragon provided auxmem for musing on Age of Eats (working title), a civ-like game with a focus on the development of cuisine. More on this in a later post.
A roundsing happened. Transcendent beauty drove away the cold, and I played Annie Patterson's recording of my setting of Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Creation of Eä". It's a lovely recording - Annie escapes the usual monotony of one-singer overdubbed rounds by making excellent use of her dynamic range, producing a sound which ebbs and flows and pulses. Also, Annie has the exact same voice as Tracy Grammer, especially on fast, dark country ballads (which "Creation" isn't, but several of the other songs on her CD are).
There is one wrong (but compatible) note, which I know is going to haunt me forever, in that someday someone who doesn't know who I am will try to teach it to me at some folk music event, and they'll think the first interval is a minor third instead of a perfect fifth. Hey, this means I've arrived - I've been folk-processed! I just didn't think I would be able to point to the moment at which it happened.
Then back to Waltham in a rented minivan with fiddledragon and crystalpyramid. We were late getting on the road because we stopped at Trader Joe's for provisions, and at the Bryn Mawr College bookstore for CD-Rs. Why did you stop for CD-Rs? Because, having two iBooks, but no way of recharging them en route - or of passing their sound output to the minivan's speakers - burning playlists onto CDs was in fact the single most reasonable way of keeping us in music on the long trip.
The trip was lovely - every time I have a long road to travel, may it be with dear friends such as you.
But why a minivan? So I could go to IKEA the next morning and buy a loft bed and two bookshelves. fiddledragon and crystalpyramid crashed at my place and helped me assemble them. My mother warned me about the vertical clearance under a loft bed, but this space is perfectly comfortable - it's the clearance above the bed that's a bit cramped. I may have to invest in glow-in-the-dark stars as a precautionary measure. But, my books are on shelves, and a single gooseneck lamp serves as my above-the-desk and beside-the-bed light, which makes me feel wonderfully clever.
Then in to Cambridge with fiddledragon to visit rushthatspeaks, gaudior, and company (whom I have much in common with and must get to know better), and then to spend all afternoon and evening at the Museum of Science. Mobius model train tracks! Dinosaurs depicted with feathers! Hatching chickens! (Same thing?) And, of course, the company of a true and dear friend.
So, it's been quite a couple of weeks :-).
First, I went home to San Francisco for a week. I spent time with my parents, which is always lovely (apart from the inevitable Incident - one per trip, like clockwork, but we're getting better at handling them). We went to good Asian restaurants, met with friends, saw lots of movies, and attended the new Cirque du Soleil show, Corteo. Live CdS is always a treat - this is my fifth.
The highlight of Corteo was the part where the dwarf lady acrobat (who, with her partner, appeared in many scenes) was carried out suspended from six 4' helium balloons, giving her a net weight of probably 3-5 pounds, or about 1/10 g. After balancing her on his finger and letting her walk from hand to hand across his shoulders, the head clown lofted her over the audience for a game of, you know, that thing you do with a balloon. Only, with a person. Don't try this at home - you don't have super-strong balloons and a precision-engineered gimballed harness, and your kids don't have Dex 18.
On the screen, we saw The Chronicles of Narnia, Good Night and Good Luck, and King Kong. Omitting full reviews in the interests of brevity, I will say that I heartily recommend all three.
Then, back east, to Swarthmore, for para-Hogmanay (FTWDK, "Hogmanay" is Scots for "New Year's Eve", there is a Scottish folkdance event at Swarthmore on the occasion, many SWILfolk come to dance, and many other SWILfolk who don't dance Scottish (such as myself) come to hang out with them.) Of the many people there, it was particularly good to see fiddledragon, crystalpyramid, eclectic_boy, wayman, uncleamos, reldnahkram, sinsofthedove, and metaplasmus.
Lots of gaming happened. During Hogmanay, several rounds of Vespucci (like Botticelli, but with places - my idea, as of some time ago) were played. Vespucci works well, but seems to be more vulnerable to specialized knowledge (or the lack thereof) than its parent. I also learned a new train game, Age of Steam, with uncleamos, think_too_much, reldnahkram, and tirerim. This is a great game which has everything I really like about 1830 and none of what I really don't like about 1830 (and little enough of what I'm indifferent about to be a very different game from 1830).
While others were playing Civ in prisminawindow's (formerly my) apartment, fiddledragon provided auxmem for musing on Age of Eats (working title), a civ-like game with a focus on the development of cuisine. More on this in a later post.
A roundsing happened. Transcendent beauty drove away the cold, and I played Annie Patterson's recording of my setting of Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Creation of Eä". It's a lovely recording - Annie escapes the usual monotony of one-singer overdubbed rounds by making excellent use of her dynamic range, producing a sound which ebbs and flows and pulses. Also, Annie has the exact same voice as Tracy Grammer, especially on fast, dark country ballads (which "Creation" isn't, but several of the other songs on her CD are).
There is one wrong (but compatible) note, which I know is going to haunt me forever, in that someday someone who doesn't know who I am will try to teach it to me at some folk music event, and they'll think the first interval is a minor third instead of a perfect fifth. Hey, this means I've arrived - I've been folk-processed! I just didn't think I would be able to point to the moment at which it happened.
Then back to Waltham in a rented minivan with fiddledragon and crystalpyramid. We were late getting on the road because we stopped at Trader Joe's for provisions, and at the Bryn Mawr College bookstore for CD-Rs. Why did you stop for CD-Rs? Because, having two iBooks, but no way of recharging them en route - or of passing their sound output to the minivan's speakers - burning playlists onto CDs was in fact the single most reasonable way of keeping us in music on the long trip.
The trip was lovely - every time I have a long road to travel, may it be with dear friends such as you.
But why a minivan? So I could go to IKEA the next morning and buy a loft bed and two bookshelves. fiddledragon and crystalpyramid crashed at my place and helped me assemble them. My mother warned me about the vertical clearance under a loft bed, but this space is perfectly comfortable - it's the clearance above the bed that's a bit cramped. I may have to invest in glow-in-the-dark stars as a precautionary measure. But, my books are on shelves, and a single gooseneck lamp serves as my above-the-desk and beside-the-bed light, which makes me feel wonderfully clever.
Then in to Cambridge with fiddledragon to visit rushthatspeaks, gaudior, and company (whom I have much in common with and must get to know better), and then to spend all afternoon and evening at the Museum of Science. Mobius model train tracks! Dinosaurs depicted with feathers! Hatching chickens! (Same thing?) And, of course, the company of a true and dear friend.
So, it's been quite a couple of weeks :-).