Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Bits and Pieces
Once again, the many words that promiscuously congregate in my noggin are taking a back seat to some intense images to which I’ve recently exposed myself. Howzabout I share a bit of that with you this morning, and I’ll see later on whether I’ve written any essays worth your time to read sometime in the undefined future.
For example, we recently took a visit to Ft Funston, where voluptuous duned cliffs tower over the ocean. This used to be an army base, where rifled cannon were able to fire 16” shells 25 miles out to sea. The old gun emplacement now anchors an observation deck, but the steel-and-concrete construction has weathered really well over the last 60 years or so. Here’s a bit of the iceplant dunes, and a nice close view of the steel shield over the old emplacement.
Saturday we took a jog through the park and then went out to IKEA for 90 minutes of high-powered shopping, including some actual purchases and some research for a future in which we get a round dining table and a little table and chair set for Zaq. For the time being we got some replacement mirrortiles and a bit of lighting for the monkey’s room - maybe something he’s less interested in shimmying up than that stale old torchiere. Good times, people. Till the boy blew a gasket, anyway, but you’ll have that. He was pretty sugar-fried, as was I.
And why would that be? We’d visited Vik’s Chaat House in the west Berkeley flats beforehand. Vik’s is a big, fun place to gorge on excellent cheap Indian food, and we did our best there but after three big tasty entrees we weren’t quite able to eat all four of our desserts, even with Zak helping. So our shopping trip was a bit… blurry for me. I got over it eventually, though, and in honor of the Ikea trip we watched Fight Club on saturday night. Mmmm, violently relaxing.
Sunday morning Kel went to a brunch and took the child, leaving me free to reinstall our new new printer (the old new printer had a hardware problem and HP sent us a replacement), vacuum most of the house, mop the kitchen floor, clean up in the study, do some laundry, and hang some stuff on the walls. In particular, I hung a painting by my paternal grandmother next to the window in the study; it’s a painting I’ve always liked and found very provocative. I never met Delores, but this one canvas makes me think she might have been an interesting person to have known.
It’s nice, anyway, to have her hanging around now.
And on the other side of the grandparent scene, I stuck the little green lady up to the wall above the new new printer. My maternal grandfather had a bigger version of her, and she always freaked us all out a little - especially when he got so anxious about who’d be inheriting her. Well, I dodged that bullet but then mom found me a mini-version in Portland, and I rather prefer it. Here she is, watching me at my keyboard with Nestor Netsuke, the little dude with the mellow ‘tude.
Finally, we also finally got the ranma stuck on the wall over the bed. It’s been more than a year that we’ve had it sitting around, and a month or so that I’ve had the hand-hammered brackets wherewith to install it. As promised sometime in the murky past, here’s a few shots of the whole shebang. (Please bang gently.) (and I don’t know why the thumbnails aren’t working but tough noogies you gotta clik thru to see’em, I’m done messing with it.)
This is about all I’ve got for now. There’s plenty of words to be shared, but I can’t think of many of them right now. I keep hearing awesome stuff to share, but not remembering it for more than 30 seconds - and not writing it down so I never think of it again, except to think that I forgot something. Speaking of which, I forgot, I’m done. Catch ya later.
