Mike,
There’s a wonderful picture on APOD today. A couple of years ago, I was shown how to see Venus during the daytime, and of course everyone has seen the moon a few times in daylight, but this is far, far better.
I’ll be coming up with a nice montage of Freeway art later today.
-rakkity
From this website. (appears to be down at the moment)
Diane and Matt heading back to our hotel.
Through the window of the Draught Horse.
We arrived Friday near dinner time and took Matthew to Bookbinders, a well known Philadelphia restaurant that had been closed for three and half years, renovated and reopened about two years ago. It’s an uber-expensive restaurant (What can I say, we were giddy to see our boy.) with people to greet you, to take your order, to pour your water, to assist you in the bathroom, and to stand around and look pretty. Even the owner walks about and introduces himself.
One more thing about the bathrooms. Diane tells me there were three hair care products lined up on the sink, but the attendant, after appraising Diane’s Do, offered her a fourth. And, after Matthew’s description (“Dad, they looked like closets, not stalls”), I figured one Miller paying to pee was enough so I elected to hold it until we got back to the hotel.
Saturday we woke Matt at noon, had breakfast at the Student Union, and then traipsed off to the Meso-American exhibit at the University of Penn. Last night we had dinner at the uber-inexpensive (Giddy had worn off.) Draught Horse, near Temple, where we grilled (intended) Matt about about his current life compared to his old life. Interestingly for me, he said it wasn’t as different as he expected.
“I still go to classes and I still study.” he said.
“But you pick and choose as you please. And when you’re done studying you can do whatever you want.”
“Dad, I went from unstructured to unstructured.”
(As a father my biggest regret is that I wasn’t able to be more of what I consider a father to be. I didn’t hand down the beatings, but I definitely didn’t deal with my father’s hand’s off approach. I didn’t even recognize it as an issue until I was about done being a parent.)
“You’re right. How about getting away, out from under all our stuff. I figured that would be such a relief.”
“Out from under what?”
“HO, Jimmy, Patti. All that.”
“Partly, but I’m still working on that. I miss Acton and my friends. I miss your shower, I miss my own bed.”
Thursday night, after taking Flo out to dinner, we came home to find the latest issue of Outside Magazine sitting on our doorstep. BirdBrain, my source for free magazines (as rakkity is my source for free books), thought I’d be especially interested in this issue because its articles focus on friendships.
I flipped through the pages to get a sense of who wrote what, and was relieved to find my favorite writer, Mark Jenkins, featured in his own column – ” The Hard Way.” Every few months he’s off risking his life, gathering material, and I have to suffer through a guest writer. Like listening to Bob Oaks instead of Tom Ashbrook.
Sadly, this happens to be his final article. “After seven years, this will be the last Hard Way column. It has been an incomparable journey, but it’s time for me to embark on other writing adventures.” I think he left us with his best, kinda like a walk-off home run. If you read it (Adam), don’t skim.
Did you get my two email responses to your X11 and Firefox problems?
From my ringside seat, I planned to snap close-up photos as the guys from Olympic Tree carefully delimbed, and finally dropped this thirty-five foot tall pine tree. I turned my back for a moment, sensed movement behind me, and then realized how old school my logging paradigm is.
Once they’d wrestled the tree to the asphalt, they cut-off and hoisted entire limbs into the chipper, and in twenty minutes there was nothing left but bare pavement. Contrast this to the worker bees who descend on Mark Queijo’s property every year. Well intentioned, and a larger work force, but soooo slow.