55F and rainy today in glassland, and the glasslanders were out in force trying to prove that it's warm. As I've said before, born and bred northwesterners have been genetically modified to perceive "chilled and wet" as "warm and dry," and there's no sense in trying to convince them otherwise. An amazing number practice what I call "calendar-based dressing." Calendar-based [...]
So I get home tonight and run to check on my venting kiln–it’s the mold moisture release phase of the cycle–and close everything up for the duration. Thanks to traffic jams I’m very, very late, so the kiln is up to 1300F instead of where it should be. The inside ends of the firebricks propping up the kiln lid are [...]
And I thought the British were the masters of understatement. They ain't got NUTHIN on the Canadians, apparently. Here's a story about poor Fournier, the skydiver who's trying to break the freefall record. He planned to send himself aloft on a helium balloon, break off at 130,000 feet and freefall down. Just for reference, that's about 24.6 miles high. Airliners [...]
“Excuse me,” said the man beside the dairy case, politely, “But can you help me?” I’d watched his son zooming around on rollerball sneakers earlier, swooshing in circles around my cart until his father brought him to heel. The son, about 7, had grinned at me sheepishly, “Sorry,” and hurried back to where his father stood, frowning at a list [...]
Then there was the time, at my first tech journalist job, when the entire network crashed right before deadline. Just died. –snick– Pandemonium, everyone running around screaming (especially the ad sales people, whose commissions depended on the info in the servers), and the managing editor bravely dragging out the hot wax and paper for some old-fashioned newspaper-style layout. Our parent [...]
I spent the first half of last Sunday down at Newspace, having a ball, learning a lot, and getting another whomp upside the head. For those of you who don’t know, Newspace is a non-profit photography center over on the southeast side of glassland, not too far from OMSI. They’re dedicated to promoting photographic art, and they offer classes, portfolio reviews and [...]
If you wanna understand just how inadequate you are as a visual artist, go paint-your-plating with a bunch of graphic designers. Actually, that’s not quite fair: I had a LOT of fun. Group I’m contracting with right now was nice enough to invite me out for a “team-building” exercise. I didn’t really belong (I’m not an employee, after all), but [...]
Dinner theatre website Location: SE Portland (Hawthorne district) Showtimes: Generally Fridays and Saturday nights (make reservations) Cost to fill up (and entertain) two people: $140 plus tip And youse said I don’t got no cultcha. Ahhbviussly, you was wrong. Robyn texted me Friday to ask if I wanted to see who stole her dead husband. I briefly debated sending flowers [...]
La Provence website Location: Lake Oswego, OR Cost to break the fast of two people: About $40 “If you do restaurant reviews, you’ve gotta try this place,” said Bonnie Gilchrist, so we had breakfast at La Provence in Lake Oswego this morning, while we talked GAS. (That’s G.A.S., acronym for Glass Art Society, not the lowercase variety that emerges after [...]
Serves 12... if you can find the plates Blow the dust off your old recipe box and pull out that superb three-years-in-development recipe for your award-winning Triple-Chocoholic cake. No recipe. Recall the time you were late for the hotshop, needed a couple of index cards to line up colored powder on the marver like cocaine on a mirror, and the [...]
