We had our annual departmental barbecue yesterday, which is something I always look forward to. We had beautiful weather for the occasion, and I cunningly volunteered to help set up beforehand - the ulterior motive being that helping out would make for more time in the sun! Unfortunately, experiments conspired against me, so I didn't make it out fo help set up, and I could only stay for part of it. Still, it was lovely to have some time in the sun on such a beautiful day, and it was really good to catch up with people.
I've recently finished reading two of Primo Levi's memoirs: Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening. Primo Levi was an Italian Jew who spent part of the second World War in Auschwitz. Survival in Auschwitz chronicles his time in Auschwitz, while The Reawakening documents his journey from Auschwitz to his home town, Turin.
These books certainly don't make for light reading, but they aren't full of accusation either. They simply document the experience (horrifying as it was). One of the nicest things about the books is the study they provide of humanity and the human spirit. In some sense they are touchingly insightful. I found it hard to put these books down. They are beautifully written, and their subject matter is too important to be ignored.
I'm making progress on the back of Alice (click the photo for a larger view). When I first started on Alice, the lace pattern worried me a lot - and rightly so. I think I knitted the first 6 rows of the lace pattern three times before I got it right. I was really worried about how I was going to manage decreasing while keeping the pattern straight.
I shouldn't have worried. Miraculously, by the time I had finished the first repeat of the lace pattern I had somehow come to understand how the lace pattern worked. That is to say, I understood what it was doing and why it was doing it. I didn't have to look at the instructions any more, and what I should do when decreasing became obvious! For some reason, this happens every time I knit a lace pattern - it really shouldn't come as a surprise any more, but it does.
Last night my Triple J Hottest 100 (Vol. 11) CD set arrived. Triple J is Australia's "youth" radio station. It's government sponsered, and plays mainly new releases and Australian music. It also is commerical-free. When I lived in Australia I listened to Triple J almost exclusively, and when I moved to America I was disappointed to find that an equivalent radio station doesn't exist. I'm here to tell you that once you've listened to commerical-free radio there's no going back. I listen to NPR now, and have come to love it (it's actually one of my most favorite things about America), but it doesn't really keep me up to date with popular music.
My link to Australian music comes via the Triple J Hottest 100 CDs each year (I could listen to Triple J over the internet, and do sometimes, but its kind of weird to hear the breakfast show in the early evening). The Triple J Hottest 100 is complied via listener votes (in what is supposed to be the largest radio voting system in the world), and as Hottest 100 lists go, it's not bad. It certainly is good enough to let me know about any new bands that are appearing. The CDs have 40 of the hottest 100 songs, and I downloaded nearly 40 more via iTunes (a lot of the songs on the list are from Australian bands, and haven't made it to iTunes yet). I've spent the day catching up on a year's worth of music while working at my desk - it's made me realise just how much I miss listening to music on a regular basis.
At midnight last night, Cambridge became the first city in America to issue legally sanctioned marriage licenses to same sex couples. As luck would have it, I live just then minutes walk from Cambridge city hall, so a little after eleven o'clock I headed down to the city hall with my housemates, meeting up with others outside the hall.
I felt really, really lucky to be in the right place to witness this little bit of history (I'd been terribly jealous of San Francisco earlier this year). It's not often that you really get to see history as it happens, and this was certainly such an occasion.
When we got to the city hall there was already a huge crowd of people there - the newspapers have put the crowd size at 10 000 - and the overwhelming majority where there as supporters, which I found to be very pleasing. From where I was I couldn't see a great deal. The crowd was very loud and very happy, though, so it was reasonably easy to work out what was going on, and to be caught up in the excitement. I took some photos (click the picture for a larger view) - they're pretty blurry, but I think they capture the mood (and my view). I stayed for the first license, and then went home - I had to be up early this morning - happy to have been present for a little piece of history.
Tomorrow is a pretty historical day. One of the reasons that tomorrow is historical is that it marks the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional. To mark the occasion, I went to see With All Deliberate Speed, a documentary that interviews people involved in the Supreme Court case.
With the approach of the 50th anniversary, the Brown v. Board of Education decision has been getting a lot of press recently (most notably, from my point of view, an article in The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago), so I went into the movie a whole lot less ignorant than I would have expected. I had a pretty clear idea of how the case was presented in the Supreme Court, and I was reasonably informed about the legal side of the case.
What I wasn't prepared for was the courage of the people involved in the case at the grass roots level - people like Reverend Joe Delaine and Barbara Johns - and the sacrifices they made. It seemed so sad to me that they didn't get the national recognition that they deserved. I was also saddened by the fact that people didn't enthusastically accept the Supreme Court decision - people had a real opportunity to be part of something new and exciting and (most importantly) right and they didn't embrace it. I feel like it was a real opportunity lost.
I downloaded Kodak EasyShare last week, and I've been pleasantly surprised with the application's versatility. I've been looking for something that will let me upload photos painlessly to Ofoto and EasyShare certainly manages this. I've been wanting to find a painless way to upload to Ofoto because their photo printing service is cheaper than the Apple one (available through iPhoto), and it's a nice, free way to share photos online.
It also is very easy to import photos from iPhoto (although not so easy to go in the opposite direction), which was something of a relief. The photos are still sorted into albums (the same albums they were in in iPhoto), and all the photo information is available (captions, date, exposure, etc.) One other option that EasyShare has that is significantly better than iPhoto is a really nice printing interface, where you can arrange photos on a page, and so on.
However, there are some features of iPhoto that are missing from EasyShare. I like iPhoto's email interface a little better, and it is easier to label photos in iPhoto. iPhoto also makes it easier to export photos for web use (format and dimension can be specified). Given this, I'll be using both applications concurrently until one wins me over.
Today, Australian Mary Donaldson married Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark. For those of you not from Australia or Denmark, Mary and Frederick met in a bar in Sydeny during the 2000 Olympic games. In a fairy tale come true, the two courted for some time, and married today.
It really is a very sweet story. While both Mary and Frederick seem like nice people, they also seem somewhat normal. Now that the marriage is through, I think that the gossip pages of the Australian newspaper will become much less interesting!
I've been Beta testing GMail since April, and I've finally sat down and spent some time with the program. I should admit that I'm a hopeless Beta tester. I'm not really particularly devoted to the "testing" thing - I've hardly had any email directed there at all. When I was given the opportunity to Beta test I figured that all the cool kids were doing it, and that I should to.
That said, I sat down with GMail this afternoon, and I like it. I like it's large capacity, and I like the way it sorts mail. I'll be interested to see how well it's spam filter works. The interface is also clean, and very fast - both big pluses. The downside is that GMail hasn't been tested with Safari, which is what I use for web browsing. It mainly works, but it occasionally does a little buggy thing, and I think the whole interface probably looks a bit better on an optimized browser. That said, by the end of the afternoon I was glad I was doing the Beta testing, and had resolved to send more email GMail's way.
On Monday night, we had our last crew event. We met at John Harvard's for dinner to celebrate our winning season. The guys bought me gifts which was really very nice - a photo of all of us, that they had signed, a book about rowing, which I will read before next season, and a bunch of sunny gerberas.
I was worried about getting the gerberas home on my bike in one peice, so I've left them at work. They're sitting on my desk in a Coleman Half Gallon Jug (no doubt not exactly what the guys had in mind, but I actually don't own a vase - at home or at work). The flowers are incredibly sunny and happy - they've made being inside on really, really nice days somewhat bearable. I've actually enjoyed the flowers a whole lot more than I'd anticipated. I'll be sad when they die.
I made Leek and Swiss Chard Tart on Sunday night - partly to use up leeks and some rainbow chard, and partly so that I would have food for lunch for the beginning of the week. Puff pastry always helps a recipe, but I wish it weren't so expensive - that is, I wish it weren't so expensive at Whole Foods. Presumably there are places I could go that would have cheaper puff pastry (in fact, it's almost a certainty).
Anyway, I stuck to the recipe for the most part, although I didn't remove the ribs from the chard. I think I like the ribs the best, and if you remove them the rainbow chard is barely rainbow any more. The tart took longer to cook than the recipe suggested - but I find this to always be the case for eggy fillings in the oven that I have right now, so I suspect this isn't a defect of the recipe.
The finished product? Pretty good. I've been eating it for three days and I haven't got sick of it yet. I think it would be a little better with a little more nutmeg, but I'm not complaining.
Almost every week there are a couple of pears in my box. I'm not very good at taking them to work for lunch (they usually arrive in a bit of a mashed state) and the pears almost always end up going to waste. This week, there were beautiful red bartlett pears, and I couldn't bear the idea of them not being eaten.
I decided to make Pear and Ginger Upside-Down Cake with my Red Bartletts. The recipe kind of required doing things in a lot of different bowls (leading to a lot of washing up) so I modified the order of things, so that everything could be done in one bowl. I began by beating the butter and sugar. To this mixture I added the egg, and then the molasses. I then added the vanilla essence. Next I started on the dry ingredients - flour first and then the spices (although not allspice, as I didn't have any) and the baking powder and soda. Finally I added the milk. I poured the batter over the pears and some crystalized ginger (my addition to the recipe) and baked for the allotted time. I had a little trouble turning the cake out - some of the pear slices stuck to the cake tin, but I was able to take them out, and replace them on the top of the cake (my housemates never knew!).
We ate the cake with cream while watching the final of Survivor All-Stars (and aren't we glad that it's over?). While everyone certainly ate their fair share of the cake, and no-one complained about it's quality, I thought that there was an underlying taste of baking soda - almost imperceptible, but there all the same. I don't think it's because I mixed things in the wrong order, either. That said, I think ginger and pears make a fine combination - I'll be looking for recipes that use both of them in the future.
I went to see Good Bye Lenin! this morning. The movie is set in East Berlin around the fall of the Berlin wall. Shortly before the fall of the Berlin wall Alex's mother, Christiane, suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma. She remains in a coma for the fall of the Berlin wall, and comes to several months later. The doctors insist that she is not subjected to anything distressing or surprising. In the remainder of the movie Christiane's family conspires to prevent her finding out about the fall of the Berlin wall.
The movie was funny in a gentle kind of a way. It was a little slow moving in parts, but I liked that it acknowledged that the reunification of Germany was difficult - especially for for those in the DPR. The movie talked seriously about the letting go of the past while respecting it and moving on, and I like it for it.
I started reading David Mitchell's Ghostwritten while I was in Montreal and, admittedly, it's taken me forever to finish it. I actually really enjoyed the book - I read over half of it during the week I was in Montreal - I just seem to have had less time for reading recently.
Ghostwritten is really only just a novel. It's almost a collection of nine short stories. What makes it into a novel is that fact that the characters in the nine short stories (and the characters range from the mundane to the bizarre) intersect somehow - chance meetings, and so on. While I enjoyed each individual chapter, I also enjoyed looking for the links between them. I found myself racing ahead, trying to spot the (sometimes brief and subtle) links. By the end of the novel I had been struck repeatedly by the smallness of our world.
MIT has a pair of Red Tail Hawks who have set up their nest on the campus. A group there has set up a camera, and is broadcasting pictures of the hawk chicks here. The camera (when it is on) is incredibly clear - it really is wonderful to watch the hawks!
I can't help thinking what a good idea the webcam is. By setting it up, the group has allowed lots of people to track the development of the hatchlings while causing minimal impact to the birds. I like it when technology lets us get a little closer to nature.
anna: ........ [Read]
Katie: Sara - You're actually right on that. I emailed Sa [Read]
Sara: How well do you know Sara - she always looses her [Read]
Katie: Sue - I think it's a permanent move. Typepad has a [Read]
Sue: Why the change in posting? Is it a permanent mov [Read]
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
Moving
Department Barbecue
Survival in Auschwitz
The Back of Alice
Hottest 100
Marriage Licenses in Cambridge
With All Deliberate Speed
Kodak EasyShare
Australian Royalty
GMail
Alice
Books
Kaffe Fassett Cushion
Knitting
Movies
Nikita's Lacy Sweater
Recipes
Restaurants
Theatre
Buttershug.com: Fantastic photos and text.
McSweeney's: Because we are 100 Percent Committed.
Birthday Alarm: Help me remember your birthday.
Booga Bag: A free pattern for a felted bag made with Kureyon yarn.
Brillig: My photos, online.
Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass: A much-needed read in a week of never-ending problem sets.
Mason-Dixon Knitting: Kay lives in Manhatten, Ann lives in Nashville. They exchange wonderful, witty letters.
Miasma: Caitlin is a graduate student in Material Science at MIT.
Text Twist: An incredibly addictive word game.
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64
Hosted by
ADThosting.com
Design by:
Link Me:
