coo!

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What's better than a pigeon cam that refreshes every thirty seconds? How about the same cam, with a fez. Added by computer. It's usually on the head, though sometimes it's on the bird's keister instead.



If, like me, you go to the webcam's link (it's in San Francisco, so be sure and wear a flower on your fez) and see nothing but blackness, cheer up. There's still the time-lapse quicktime video to get you through the day.

This comes, of course, from bOINGbOING, home of all wonderful things.
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kling clang

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Some time back, I mentioned Henri Kling's "Kitchen Symphony" as part of an LP of toy symphonies played by Raymond Lewenthal and friends. As a result, I was emailed by a man in Germany (though not, seemingly, a German man) who is preparing a new edition of the music. I will be receiving a copy of the score when he's finished with the work, and do you think this won't make me the happiest guy on the block? Ho ho! How little you know me!

That reminds me. Note to self: send money to Frederic Chiu for the engraved version of his "Lt Kije" arrangement. Do it soon; you've waited long enough.
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house work

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Since getting back, I've gotten busy. As mentioned, we moved Sarah from a front bedroom to a back bedroom, where the car noise is less. Now I've taken action on the library, aka the tea room (after a band of wallpaper depicting tea hardware), aka the playroom. First I tidied up Sarah's former bedroom. Then I carried box after box of stored items, many of which need further sorting of the terminal sort, into said bedroom. Then today I vacuumed the rug and then shifted two bookshelves to make more room in the room. Tomorrow I expect to move Sarah's toy boxes and bookshelf into the playroom, and that's about all I plan to do on that for a while. Well, I have to put blinds on the window, but that won't be too awful. The blinds are downstairs, just waiting, with a quiet version of that pre-shark music from Jaws.

In other news, I bought a box of Bisquick yesterday, along with some strawberries and fake whipped cream, and today Sarah and I made strawberry shortcake. As it was cooking, we ran up and down the street a little, looking for a friend of hers to share it with, but we couldn't find anybody. It was tasty. Their recipe said to mix the strawberries with half a cup of white sugar. Instead of that, I sprinkled about a teaspoon over each serving. It was still plenty of sugar.
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oh, michigan

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My nieces pknight and khalla_almani graduated from NMU up in Marquette last week. All sorts of relatives were in Michigan to cheer them on, so malibrarian and Sarah and I got up at 4 last Friday morning and drove to the airport near Hartford. We obediently removed our dignity for scrutiny on the way in. The checkers were particularly interested in my back pack (they didn't know how much stuff I took out of it for the trip), and kept poking at every compartment in it, even as the airline was paging me with "one minute" warnings.

( the rest of this enthralling report -- with photos! -- is behind a cut tag, for those of you with weak hearts )