austin_dern

[ Late again, for extremely happy reasons; details will follow. ]

A major part of the exhibit was about the Sistine Chapel, which I knew was going to be good when in the discussion of preparations to building the current Vatican they put in a glass box a foot-long iron compass (the circle-drawing kind) with the caption, ``Tradition, never disproved, holds that this compass was used by Michealangelo''. Who could argue a provenance like that? It also pointed out how ``the similarity of the instrument compared to modern ones'' showed off the sophistication and care which Michealangelo took with his tools, although I would have to read a 380-page book by Henry Petroski to learn how much the drawing compass has evolved in the past five centuries, and it would explain how engineering is a matter of choices to optimize results while minimizing cost while keeping failure modes understood again.

There were more pleasantly human touches, though, such as playing cards which were found underneath the plaster in renovations -- a four of clubs, a Queen of diamonds, and a card I couldn't make out. Those, it turns out, date to around 1710, and probably were put there by people working on a previous restoration, but you have to wonder how bad a hand the workmen had that they were burying their cards under the mosaic of Creation.

And there was as always stuff I never realized I didn't know: apparently, before Michealangelo was hired for some painting, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was painted to look like a starry night, kind of the way young space enthusiasts would do if it wasn't too much bother to accurately place the glow-in-the-dark stars there. The panels also said the Sistine Chapel was designed with the intent of mimicking the dimensions of the Holy of Holies from the book of Solomon, which I didn't realize was specified clearly enough to be reproducible. (I'm vague on many details of Bible lore; as may have been guessed, I was raised Roman Catholic.) Unexplained was why the Pope picked Michealangelo, who was a sculptor, to hire for such a big paint job.

But also neat was they set up a little bridge with scaffolding and a lowered ceiling to represent what it might have looked like in the middle of painting the Creation Of Adam, complete with the cartoon -- which they explain with just a hint of disdain means not a cartoon but rather the detailed drawing of what was to be plastered over and painted -- for some parts, and a speaker rattling out generic scraping noises and Italian mutterings and the like. I can't say I really felt like I was there, but that might have been because of the crowd and cramped dimensions and that I was on an ahistorical bridge, but I appreciated the effort.

Trivia: Magnetic variation of compasses is most easterly at about 8 am and most westerly about 1 pm. In winter the variation is smaller than in summer. Source: Compass: A Story of Exploration and Innovation, Alan Gurney.

Currently Reading: Three To Zero: The Story Of The Birth And Death Of The World Journal Tribune, Joseph Sage.

bentolunch [mybentodiet]

I haven't posted a bento on here in so long! But, I do have the recipe for this bento to make up for it :D I did take a break from all bento making for awhile, but I am back now and I plan on including more recipes and dieting tips on my blog. My bento diet has been a long journey so far, but I'm determined to stick with it until I reach my goal weight! :D

Recipe on my blog
http://theoriginalmybentodiet.blogspot.com/2008/07/salmon-cake-bento.html

bentolunch [erraticeats]

These are leftovers from my husband's birthday dinner. I just packed the box as I was putting stuff away. The Citrus Marinated Shrimp Cocktail is really yummy. I got the recipe on Epicurious. I tucked some corn in next to the shrimp. On the bottom are bread slices with Dubliner and Maytag blue cheeses. I gave him a do-it-yourself strawberry shortcake with pound cake in the silicone cup and sweetened cherries and cream in the little containers. BTW - the pound cake is supposed to be Elvis Presley's favorite pound cake.

bentolunch [librarychan]

This is my first bento post, but my second "serious" attempt at making a bento. As you can tell, it's not exactly cute. My biggest priorities are making it look appetizing and utilizing leftovers so that I waste less. I hope that's still appropriate. :)

This one contains leftover fried chicken I made last night (Thomas Keller's Lemon Brined Fried Chicken from Ad Hoc, to be exact), a simple arugula salad with a balsamic-olive oil-dijon mustard dressing, and plain onigiri. In the rectangular box is dessert: leftover poundcake and maple cream (for the boy) and raspberry preserves (for me). The little beetles are sporks.

bentolunch [kashmirkat]

Top Tier has his Chef Salad (again) with the flower and hearts swiss cheese cutouts - We got the new tulip and teddy bear cutters from ichiban yesterday, so he has some tulips this time :) On the side are strips of red and green peppers and some baby carrots that he can either eat separately or with the salad :)

Bottom Tier has a boiled egg in a car shape and sliced, macaroni salad, pineapple and blueberries, and roasted garlic hummus with a grape tomato in the center for a touch of color :)

( A couple more pics... )

walkyrje

I haven't written anything here in a long time. Months. In part that's because I've been ill. I'm still ill. I have a chronic and sometimes terminal illness called Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), which means that my illness is mental, rather than physical, and there's a lot of stigma about that in our culture. I could write more about this, but it's depressing, and no one really wants to know that I've been seriously contemplating death as an option for months, now... there's a lot of stigma attached to that, too.

Instead, I'm going to write about something positive... rosalarian2's Yu+Me Dream.( Spoilers! )

http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0130.html

austin_dern

[ Late; outstandingly good reasons; will report later. ]

One of the sidelines of the big cleaning-and-shouting festival which took place a couple days ago: one of my father's urgent demands was that I dust the `entertainment center' -- the shelves with the TV set, Tivo, VCR, DVD player I got my parents for Christmas which they never use, Bose speaker, and 100-disc CD player only used to play Christmas CDs on Christmas Day, along with the very many knicknacks left on top of it. It's true that this needed dusting, since the layer of unswept dust as heavy enough to affect the apparent color of the wood and for that matter the books on top. But he also had this dusting glove so that all I'd really have to do is touch everything. I may be basically lazy, but I certainly have fine skills in touching things. I just avoid doing so due to my obsessive-compulsive disorder.

But one of the things to be dusted was the Tivo box, and I picked it up to dust underneath and the sides and back and such, and as I did, the picture blacked out. I set the box down, of course, and waited a bit since these sorts of things often fix themselves, and maybe there was a storm rolling in interrupting satellite reception. But it didn't come back, and the other TVs were fine, so I unplugged the Tivo and plugged it back in. It reported ``Welcome'' and ``Powering up'', but then didn't report anything past that. I did unplug it and try again a few times, with no greater success.

An hour or so later my father called the DirectTV troubleshooting line, then handed the phone to me because, he said, he couldn't describe the problem so they'd understand it. The phone rang a while, connected for a moment, started ringing again, then hung up. I tried a different number, and they had me try unplugging the Tivo and re-plugging it, which, surprisingly, didn't work. So they said they'd send a new unit -- not a Tivo, technically, but whatever system they're with now -- by Federal Express over the next few days. So if I weren't so busy with other tasks this would have been a great chance to catch up watching DVDs I haven't had the chance to, since there's nothing my parents would rather watch instead that they can, except in their room.

We get to keep the broken Tivo, which is nice for our efforts to collect everything in the entire world, particularly if my father's recollection that we bought it anyway is correct.

Trivia: On 22 July 1797 the Spanish milled dollar and its component parts were made legal tender in the United States. Source: History of Money, Glyn Davies.

Currently Reading: The Lawn: A History Of An American Obsession, Virginia Scott Jenkins. I never got the whole lawn-care obsession, past a bit of watering and occasional mowing. Now, I get the sense that lawn-care fanatics are completely whacked out. Normally I grow more sympathetic to things with knowledge; this makes a curious anomaly.

anthropologist [nguzundej]

We'll be glad to see you in URALISTICA - first social network for Finno-Ugric peoples and everyone who interested in Uralic languages and cultures!
http://uralistica.ning.com/

bentolunch [erraticeats]

Today was my husband's birthday. I made him a mini-layer cake by cutting out two tiny circles of cake. I filled it with apricot preserves. It's hard to see, but the cheese hearts spell out HAPPY BIRTHDAY. He got his favorite peanut butter celery, some pickled cucumber, and some nice big shrimp with cocktail sauce. I nestled a little frozen fruit custard in between the shrimp to keep them extra cool.