Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

If I were artsy

If I were artsy, I'd give my pictures names. Like this one, I could call Spent Wish or something. Or I could give them really dull descriptive names, but if they were long and in italics, they'd still look artsy, like Deck Chairs Lined Up By Empty Pool, Maryland, Summer, 2006.

In case you're wondering...yes, I'm still trying to run out the batteries. But I honestly took this picture with an attempt at actual composition. It's the lines...kinda a Piet Mondrian thing. Well, without the red and yellow. And I'm not sure he used diagonals. Forget it, I'm not artsy.

Memorial Day

All that the consecrated wealth and taste of the nation can add to their adornment and security is but a fitting tribute to the memory of her slain defenders. Let no wanton foot tread rudely on such hallowed grounds. Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.

~General John A. Logan

from General Order No. 11, mandating the creation of the first Memorial Day, May 30, 1868.

Surrealism

Technically they aren't surrealist. Technically, it's me playing with my closeup filters and finding, wow, if I layer the +1, +2, and +4, I have no depth of field whatsoever, and a gentle breeze acts like a gale force wind.

Really technically, I'm trying to shot a lot of pictures to see how the charge holds up in some NiMH batteries. Last night I went to a carnival on the other side of town to take some pictures of the rides at night (you know, 'cause I thought they'd look surreal), and the brand-new alkaline AAs wouldn't power the camera. I spent a couple of hours researching, reaching the conclusion that 1. batteries are a lot more complex than I thought and 2. I hate it when complex stuff that bores me gets in the way of doing simple stuff I like.

On to the pictures.

Click on the images for the full-blown versions, which are much more surreal.

Without the exaggerated depth of field and without her dead prey, this one is just a mildly out-of-focus picture of a spider. I like how you can see the web, though.

In the course of taking the pictures, I lost my balance and knocked into a fern. That was enough the crash the web. She starting rebuilding it already, but I feel bad about it.

Also, I still hate spiders. I have had Victor remove three of them from the house this weekend, and although I don't stand on a chair a scream like a girl when I see one, it's not too far from that.

Just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in

Wide eyes, hair up on end. Yeah, that's about right.

That. Was. Painful.

Not so much the outcome of the game (though that sucked), but being surrounded by a bunch of frat boys from Charm City. Mercifully I had a radio with me (I like to listen to Charlie and Dave even when I'm at the game), and so I just put on the earphones and kept turning up the volume.

The low point was the national anthem, when of course the Baltimorons yelled "O!" and then were booed by Nats fans. Classless all around. (Turning the anthem into a fight song for a team pisses me off anyway...as bleeding heart liberal as I am, there are certain institutions I respect, and that's one. Stand at attention, take off your hat, stop eating your popcorn, and unless you're singing respectfully, keep your mouth shut.)

There is a silver lining. In a few weeks the Washington Nationals will officially be owned by Ted Lerner. Everything I've read and heard about the Lerners and Stan Kasten sounds great, and I have every reason to believe they'll begin the process of turning the team into a proud and successful franchise.

The Orioles will still be owned by Peter Angelos.

So there.

I am not a Baltimore fan

First, let's go to the wayback machine for a minute...September 14, 2003:

I am not a big Baltimore fan...I would probably like the city well enough were it not for the people I know who live(d) there. Because I self-identify as a Washingtonian, the Baltimoreans (I'm trying to be nice) I know take every opportunity to tell me why they loooooove Baltimore and hate D.C.

It usually has something to do with "Baltimore has character, Washington is dull." "Baltimore is friendly, Washington is snobby." "Baltimore is affordable, Washington is too expensive."

I must admit for the record: I live in Maryland, not D.C. I'm even outside the Beltway. I do, however, harbor a fantasy of buying my grandfather's boyhood home in Columbia Heights. And my sports allegiances are straight down the line Washington: Capitals, Redskins, Mystics, Freedom, United, Wizards. There's no baseball team on that list because we don't have a baseball team and haven't since 1972. I will not substitute the Orioles.

My blood pressure is rising, so I'll lay off that subject for now.

Even with the way they've been playing, my blood pressure has improved since the Nationals came to town. I love them. I love baseball. And I am looking forward to this weekend's series...

To fuel my enthusiasm further, I decided to see if the Bawlmer Sun had anything worth reading about this so-called rivalry in today's Sports section. I found New twist to old rivalry. And when I read it, I pretty much got my blood pressure back up to 2003 levels, because this little paragraph

Many Baltimoreans still resent the Redskins' organization for its perceived role in Baltimore's prolonged period without an NFL team after the Colts moved to Indianapolis in 1984. Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke opposed expansion, then flirted with building a new stadium just 15 miles south of Baltimore before settling on Prince George's County.

...wasn't followed up with a discussion of how the Baltimore baseball franchise shut us out for all those year!

Not bitter, though.

A lot of people still don't get it, though a few do. From the Tom Boswell chat on washingtonpost.com today:

Washington, D.C.: Tom, I'm a little surprised at how little build-up there has been for Nats-O's this week. Yes, I saw that story in the Sports section today, but that's sort of the point -- everything is about how this ISN'T a rivalry. But, as a Nat's fan, tonight is the game I've looked forward to more than any other this year. I hate Angelos. I hate the fact that we went so long without a team here, because of the Orioles. Just because I don't hate the O's players (yet) doesn't mean I don't want the Nats to beat them up this weekend. It means more to me than them beating the Mets or the Braves right now. Isn't that a rivalry? Who knows, maybe I'm the only one.

Yeah, why not?

Pumpkin spice cake

I have been avoiding cooking (and even the near occasion of cooking) lately. (There's a new Ledo's by my house. Which isn't the Ledo's, but you can't always go to Adelphi when you want a pizza. Though actually, when I was in school and eating at Ledo's on a regular basis, I rarely had pizza. I was partial to the club sandwich and one called the Ledo Ham Delight. That is apparently no longer on the menu...you can't go home again.)

Anyway. So yesterday was Mother's Day. Now my sister and I hatched this perfect plan to combine Mother's Day with my niece's first communion party and have brunch on Saturday, getting us off the hook for having to do anything Sunday. But then by the end of the week I started to have these pangs of guilt that my mom was going to be stuck cooking her own Mother's Day dinner (or worse, that my dad would insist on taking her out on a night that can only be described as Restaurant Hell.) So I invited my parents over.

The house is a wreck, I have no food, this was not one of my best plans, but I had to forge ahead. (I did seriously consider a Ledo's pizza.)

Some time ago my mom asked me how I made sweet potato fries, so I decided that I'd make her some for dinner. I then had to build the rest of the meal around that. I have a bottle of Arnaud's remoulade sauce, which is great with sweet potato fries. Ok, we have a theme. I considered making a chicken marinade with cajun-y spice, but that's like cooking. Instead I wandered the grocery store until I found an Emeril Lagasse grilling sauce...he's from New Orleans, right?

So I had chicken and fries. Need a green vegetable...zucchini and stewed tomato is southern, and all I have to do is slice the squash and dump in canned tomato.

Once I had dinner under control it struck me that I didn't have dessert. I considered the black bean brownies, but that would have required getting the blender dirty. In the same spirit as the black bean brownies (which are amazingly good), I'd heard that you can make a cake with a can of pumpkin and a box of cake mix.

Well, you can.

Mix a box of spice cake mix and a can of pumpkin. (That's all. Really.) The batter is a little thicker than cake batter; spread it in a 9x13 pan coated with cooking spray. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

That was good cake. I think it would have been even better with a bit of extra ginger, but as it was: fine. Pefectly credible. Nothing that would make my mother think that I was a thoughtless slacker who pulled off Mother's Day dinner with only slightly more effort than it would have taken to order a pizza.

Happy Mother's Day

Here's a little story to show how I am not cut out to be a mother, and to salute those who are.

My sister is a mother. Three kids. This morning, she was slicing bagels and missed, slicing her thumb instead.

Now, twice since I started blogging I have required stitches, and both times I carried on like I was about to bleed to death. Here is what my sister did:

Passed out. Sat on the sofa to let the dry heaves subside. Wraped up her bloody thumb in a mile of gauze. Finished slicing the bagels.

Got herself and the kids ready for church. Attended her daughter's First Communion. Went home and finished getting the buffet ready. Made sure the guests were settled in and fed.

Four hours after slicing open her thumb, when I was outside playing with my nephew, she came out with a commuter mug of coffee and her keys. "Yeah, I thought I'd better go get this stitched up..."

Four minutes after I cut myself I'm calling shock trauma. Four hours after, she's driving herself to the emergency room.

Mothers do that kind of thing. Mothers will take you to the ER as soon as the first drop of blood falls, but mothers make sure you have lunch before they go themselves. I'm in awe of mothers.

Somebody else can't open a Thermos!

I was looking through my SiteMeter stats a bit ago. Most of my hits are still for The Walrus and The Carpenter, or at least people Googling "shoes ships and sealing wax," so I'm betting that they are sitting at the computer saying "What's that poem called, the one with..."

But I also had a hit from somebody who Googled "can't open a Thermos."

At 1:06 p.m.

Lunchtime.

Brother, I feel your pain. And you've made my day, because I wasn't going to admit it, but the day I couldn't open my Thermos...after I'd asked strong people to try to open it...I thought maybe there's a trick to releasing the vaccum...maybe stuck Thermoses are a common problem. And I turned, of course, to Google.

And I got nuthin', just like you got nuthin'.

But misery loves company. I'm not the only dolt who ever went hungry because I couldn't get to my lunch!

What I haven't been doing

I haven't been blogging. I haven't been cooking. I haven't been exercising. I haven't been riding. I haven't been taking pictures. I haven't been watching the playoffs.

I'm not sure exactly what I have been doing to keep me from all of the above, but it sure feels like I've been busy.

I did get home from work today to find a toy I'd ordered. I haven't sprung for the macro lens, but I figured I could justify 40 bucks for some close-up filters. And I did need to update the "In my yard" flowers in the sidebar, so I screwed on the 4x diopter and ducked out front for a few minutes.

Click to see it in actual pixels. The picture itself is nothing special, but I love the texture of the petals, how they look like folds of silk.

I can't wait to have time to go out and shoot this right.

Dillsburg

Gas is only $2.89 a gallon in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania.

I had lunch in Dillsburg once, ten, maybe twelve years ago. It was at an unremarkable restaurant which served unremarkable food, but the place was decorated with black velvet paintings, lots of them. Elvis. Big jungle cats. The painting over my table was an image of the crucified Jesus superimposed on the grill of a Peterbilt truck.

The restaurant is a Thai place now. I bet the trucker Jesus painting went high in the previous restaurant's going-out-of-business auction, though.

So hungry...

I can't open my Thermos.

That's not that unusual...with the diminished use of my index finger, I've lost some dexterity.

Strong people in my office can't open my Thermos, either.

I'm hungry.

Can you see me now?

Since I'm essentially turning this into a photoblog, it won't be worth much if people can't see the pictures. I can see 'em at home and at work, but I've heard a few scattered reports that others can't.

Of course, those might have been my last few readers...

Can you do me a favor? If you are here and don't see pictures, please let me know. Thanks.