Condominium Life

I just love my condo association meetings.  We had one tonight.  The highlight of the evening was the story of a man whose window faced the pool.  He wanted the tree near said window to be only lightly pruned and only on top, so that the branches would cut off people's view inside his place.  However, the board felt that the trees should be pruned alike with the lower branches cut back.  This guy said now his privacy was gone.  (Why couldn't he use a curtain?)  There followed a long discussion, which I won't even try to reproduce.  Suffice it to say that it ended with this guy and our property manager calling each
other liars.

At that point I felt I had done my duty and left.

The On-Campus Farmers' Market Starts Up Again

And they were offering these digitally enhanced edibles:

The Only Way I Could Enter this Contest

Today I received an e-mail from Amazon.com attempting to tempt me into signing up for e-mail alerts regarding stuff I would want to buy.  In exchange, I would have the opportunity to win a $1000 gift card.  I checked out the Official Rules and found this troubling statement:


"How to Enter. You may enter the Sweepstakes beginning at 12:00:01 a.m. (PST) on April 15, 2010 and ending at 11:59:59 p.m. (PST) on May 31, 2010 (the "Sweepstakes Period")."

There's only one way I could enter this sweepstakes:

Not That I'm Competitive, But...

...Sue's African Violet is making more flowers than mine!%#$*

Tapas is Tops!

Yesterday Julie and I ate tapas in the Conservatory at the Faculty Club.  At last they were open to the public again after their norovirus outbreak.  I photographed the menu, because my scanner is giving me nothing but error messages.

We both chose plates 2 and 3.  The sea bass was our hands-down favorite.  Our favorite bartender, Angel, made the sangria; it was wonderfully refreshing, not too sweet, and strong.  Two glasses was enough for us, though we could have had more and coffee too, if we had wanted.  The citrus flan was also quite tasty.  Then Angel stopped by to chat.  Owing to the  norovirus, he was down to 121 lbs.  Julie recounted her and Dave's experience with the virus, which was basically very unpleasant.

$20 for such great food and all the sangria you want is a great deal.  We hope the FC will offer this again and that Sue and Dave can come next time.

Living in Los Alamos Circa 1963

Harvard's Loeb Design Library has a pamphlet aimed at potential Lab employees.  It is not dated; but the catalog record says"1963?"  I would have been 8.  I didn't recognize anybody pictured in said pamphlet, but I offer scans of the cover and first 3 pages for your pleasure.

Feast of the Holy Ghost Parade Passes by my Building

Chuck's Birthday, etc...

I missed Chuck's birthday.  Yikes!

Here's some stuff I did with a photo of tree bark.

The Final Days..

...before Commencement are here!  Outside sweating seniors, reunionists, and tourists navigate a yard full of folding chairs.

Inside JB attempts to fix a faulty floppy (yes, we still have data on floppies).

Things don't go very well........

The Flowers of Evil

These are Chuck and Jerry's poppies with some Photoshop adjustments.

Is It Summer Yet?

Baby robins have been sighted, and it is my belief that this nest outside the Harvard Neighbors door was their hatching-place.  The first time I noticed it, there was a bird tail sticking out from it.

The Loeb House garden continues to breed enormous blooms, probably the result of genetic engineering.

These girls were wearing bunny ears.  Why?

This tree near Loeb House has great bark.

The Real Thing

First, I have added a few new old sci-fi magazine covers to a Picasa album.  You may want to check it out.

 Second, you may have noticed my new profile picture with my new glasses.  I also got magnetic clip-on sunglasses in amber with little purple crystals on the magnets.  That's not clear in the accompanying shot,  But you can always look at a similar pair here.

Third, as an extra, added, free, bonus gift (at no extra charge) I got this lens cloth in a case that doubles as a certificate of authenticity. What a comfort to know that I can silence any  doubters that come my way!

Why Doesn't "Shampoo" Mean Imitation Excrement?

  And I've also been curious about the trend in using nouns as verbs:  people and corporations are busy parenting, partnering, journaling, mentoring, tasking, and friending.  However, a check of the Oxford English Dictionary Online (no link because you have to subscribe) revealed that these uses had antique appeal.  Check out ye olde quotations.

.
PARENT as a verb goes way back.  Note the 67-year gap in usage after 1908.
1663 G. MACKENZIE Religio Stoici (new ed.) 22 Churlishness and close-handedness parented by avarice.

1884 W. F. CRAFTS Sabbath for Man (1894) 192 Even a republican government is compelled to parent such of its people as are not capable of self-government. 1908 J. FLYNT My Life 307 It was a silly and unpatriotic thought, no doubt, and it was probably parented by a variety of factors. 1975 Listener 13 Mar. 340/3 Over 75 couples..have already been approved as adoptive or foster-parents... Many..are most suitable candidates to parent the child in question. 1994 Daily Tel. 16 Feb. 10/2, I watched my parents parent the country much the same way they parented my family.

PARTNER

a1616 SHAKESPEARE Cymbeline (1623) I. vi. 122 A Lady, So faire,..to be partner'd With Tomboyes.

1819 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. 5 592 A respectable accompaniment of lads and ‘lasses free’; with whom it is time to partner ourselves on the green. 1898 Times 10 June 11/4 Harry Vardon, who was partnered with Bob Simpson. 1909 Westm. Gaz. 8 Feb. 12/4 Supposing a plus 3 man is partnered with a steady player whose handicap is 8, the two as a foursome side would be handicapped at 5. 1970 J. EARL Tuners & Amplifiers i. 14 Most amplifiers can be partnered with a tuner of matching style and size. 2000 Petcare Jan.-Feb. 3/3 Finally the dog is partnered with a disabled person during a two-week intensive residential course.

JOURNAL

 1. trans. To record in a journal.

1803 J. KENNY Society 107 Oft o'er the journal'd tale she cast her eye. 1892 Idler May 461 His journaled impressions of America.

MENTOR as a verb is younger than the others.  It's an American invention.

   trans. To act as a mentor to (a person, team, etc.); to advise or train (someone, esp. a younger and less experienced colleague). Also intr. and in extended use.

1918 Indianapolis (Indiana) Star 24 Mar. (Sport section) 1/6 Cleo O'Donnell, whose headline job is coaching the footballers, is mentoring the baseball squad at this time. 1948 Mexico (Missouri) Evening Ledger 6 Oct. 7/3 LaBrucherie mentored for 16 seasons at Los Angeles high school. 1976 Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 103 184 Dr. Gould has..mentored several graduate students. 1981 N.Y. Times 16 Aug. VIII. 8/6 The true progress will come when we reach the stage of mentoring the brokers of the next century, androgynously. 1990 E. KRAFT Reservations Recommended vi. 209 He's proud of having had the idea that led to inventing it and proud of having..‘mentored’ the gadget through its development. 1996 Big Issue 15 July 26/2 Levi's head of human resources is mentoring our director of personnel and training.

TASK

1530 PALSGR. 753/1, I taske, I put or sette one to his taske what laboure he shall do or what he shall paye, je tauxe.

1588 SHAKES. L.L.L. II. i. 20 But now to taske the tasker. 1667 WOODHEAD St. Teresa II. xi. 93 Let her task, and employ them in..Exercises. 1784 COWPER Task II. 23 Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;..Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat With stripes. 1828 Life Planter Jamaica 154 The negroes complained more of the [fact] of being tasked, than..of the additional labour.

FRIEND

 3. To act as a friend to, befriend (a person, cause, etc.); to assist, help. arch. or poet.

1562 J. HEYWOOD Prov. & Epigr. (1867) 89 Freende they any, That flatter many? 1581 SAVILE Tacitus' Hist. IV. xxxix. (1591) 198 Kings which frended the cause. 1600 HOLLAND Livy XXXI. xi. 779 They had undertaken the warre upon king Philip, because he had friended and aided [auxiliis juvisset] the Carthaginians. a1618 SYLVESTER Maiden's Blush 967 Shee all the gods requires To friend her love, and further her desires. 1676 W. ROW Contn. Blair's Autobiog. xii. (1848) 434 Reports came that the King would friend Lauderdale. 1855 SINGLETON Virgil I. 27 Do thou but at his birth the boy..O chaste Lucina, friend.

Why noun when you can verb?

How Will We Hide From ET?

I recently watched Dangerous Crossing, a noir shipboard mystery which included Michael Rennie.  It was an excellent little mystery  wrapped in studio fog.  I then remembered that Rennie played the noble alien Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still.  He was one of the helpful aliens.  But now Stephen Hawking says we should avoid alien contact.  (Presumabley he's a fan of The Invaders or Robot Monster.)

OK, we could stop SETI, but what else are we supposed to do? Should we turn out all the lights at night, so it looks like nobody is at home?  While this would aid our environment, I don't think it would save us from alien invaders.   Presumabley these advanced aliens have super-duper telescopes or robot scouts who search out good planets for them to conquer.  If we are lucky, Jupiter and Saturn will hide us or at least divert attention by their bigness.  If we are not lucky, then we will probably have to just surrender.

Where can this lead but to a new government agency devoted to anti-alien affairs:  the Homeplanet dept. for Interplanetary DEfence (HIDE).  They will spend jillions of dollars developing a whole-Earth cloaking device.  

 Klaatu and his Earthling helper

I'm hoping Hawking's comments will revive the long-defunct Extraterrestrial Anti-Defamation Organization (ETADO).  I used to enjoy their website.

Flowers on Steroids?

Look at the huge flowers in front of Loeb House.

This flower is as big as a baby's head.

A bee doing its job.

Dance Around the Maypole

These Victorian little girls celebrate May Day .

A Lovely New Computer at Work1

Here it is!  Wider screen.  Smaller CPU.  Keyboard with characters that haven't been rubbed off by years of toil. So happy.  Reduced to sentence frags.

LED Wand Clock Update

OK, J.B. finally confessed to leaving the clock on my windowsill.  He discovered it during spring cleaning and thought it would be a good joke, since the the clock looks funny.  He couldn't find the cord.  Now he's moved it to Ranald's desk.

Metronome Update

It appears that the "metronome" is actually an LED Wand Clock.  On the right you see the LED wand waving back and forth.  What you do not see is the current time, which, during normal operation, would seem to float in the air.

It seems innocent enough.
Then why has nobody admitted to leaving it there?  One cannot help remembering Stephen Hawking's recent warning about aliens.  Wouldn't it be clever of them to plant their super-high-tech spying mid-control devices in our own pitiful gizmos and then to leave them here and there.  After all, these aliens don't neend to nuke us;  they have sneakier ways of conquering us.

Why a Metronome?

This morning I found this metronome on the windowsill next to my desk.  Nobody will confess to putting it there.  What am I supposed to do with it?  The culprit didn't leave the accompanying cord, so I can't plug it in.  Am I supposed to use it for some found-object type sculpture, or is this a slam on my sense of rhythm?

Floral Sleeplore?

Blooming lilac bushes reminded both Sue and JB of their Catholic school days.  The nuns would not allow them to bring lilacs into the classsroom because of their alleged soporific powers.  I'd never heard that.  In The Wizard of Oz it was the poppies that put you to sleep.

The Ad de Vries Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery says lilacs can symbolize youth, first love, spring (duh!), and mourning.  It's unlucky to bring them into the house, but there's nothing about them putting you to sleep.  Perhaps the nuns were using "put you to sleep" as a euphemism for "kill you," since they are bad luck, and one is particularly warned not to bring them into a hospital.
Please enjoy these safe flowers that will enhance your alertness!

A Pair of Horns.

Pussycat sits on a chair

Implacably with acid stare.

Those who early loved in vain

Use the cat to try again,

And test their bruised omnipotence

Against the cat's austere defense.

__________________________

In the tub we soap our skin

And drowse and meditate within.

The mirror clouds, the vapors rise,

We view our toes with sad surprise:

The toes that mother kissed and counted,

The since neglected and unwanted.

Both these poems are from Poems in Places by Edward Newman Horn, New York: Zebulin Pr., 1963.  The second one reminds me that my yoga instructor wants us (her pupils) to work on moving each little toe independently from the others.  This is hard.  Each set of four little toes move like a harnessed team of horses.  When will they go wildly in different directions?  

The first poem does seem a bit cynical regarding cat ownership.  But I liked it, and it gave me an excuse to use cat clip-art.

Redcoat University?

Harvard does not observe Patriots' Day, which fact makes me wonder if they have secret Tory sympathies.

A Poem for Spring

The Dandelion
by Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)

O dandelion, rich and haughty,
King of village flowers!
Each day is coronation time,
You have no humble hours.
I like to see you bring a troop
to beat the blue-grass spears,
To scorn the lawn-mower that would be
Like fate's triumphant shears,
Your yellow heads are cut away,
It seems your reign is o'er.
By noon you raise a sea of stars
More golden than before.

This Recipe Rocks!

I am a mediocre cook, so when I come across a recipe that is both easy and delicious, I get very excited. This one is from 50 Thrifty Meals: A Green Guide to Living Better With Less by Ramona Hamblin.

Tuna and Tomato with Pasta

2 6oz. cans of solid light tuna in olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 28 oz. can of crushed or chopped tomatoes
1 tablespoon of sugar
2 tablespoons of capers
1 lb. of tubular pasta
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Drain the oil from the tuna into a pan and saute the onion in oil until translucent, add tomatoes, sugar, and tuna, cook for 4-5 minutes. In the meantime cook the pasta. Toss pasta with tuna mixture in large bowl and sprinkle with capers and parsley.
[I used 3 cans of tuna packed in water and sauted the onion plus some garlic in canola oil.]