NY Food Bucket List ... NOT

If you can decipher that title, more power to you. I was simply trying to say that there are a couple of New York food items that I have no intention of tasting before I leave. They are:

An egg cream: Chocolate syrup, milk and soda water. Sounds like a poor man's soda, but worse. I suspect mixing those ingredients would produce watery fake-chocolate milk that makes you burp. No thank you.

Nova: That would be smoked salmon. It's called Nova because it's salmon from Nova Scotia. And it's supposed to be extra "silky" which to me sounds a lot like extra slimy. No thank you.

That's a pretty short list, mind you. I'm not a picky eater.

If anyone has any recommendations for something I should eat while in NY (i.e. before heading back to the culinary wasteland of Loveland, CO), please let me know asap.

Ignorance series abort. (is3 & is4)

Whatever gave me the idea to do an Ignorance Series, a better idea is to end it. That light bulb went off when I was writing is3 and realized that I was bored, a good indication that any reader of the post would be even more bored. So I'm going to give the Cliff Notes version of the last two intended posts.

Ignorance is bliss. (is3)
Not in the usual sense, but rather the happiness that comes from realizing how little humans actually know. That's because of the pleasure of learning, and because imagining that humans are the highest form of life in the universe is not only ridiculous but horribly depressing.

Where in the heavens is heaven? (is4)
Not the religious heaven of angels and harps, but rather any kind of an afterlife. Instantly knowing everything, the end of ignorance, would be great for a second, and then what? Considering also that the challenges of life, no matter how unpleasant, are ultimately part of the joy of life, my conclusion is that heaven is here.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Toilets Tell the Story

When the nephews came, I finally had an excuse to go to Sunnyside, which is Washington Irving's estate in...yes, Irvington. It's only a couple of miles from our apartment, but until now I dutifully shunned the trip (and spat in the intersection at the turnoff) because the Sunnyside intersection is Durf's most hated of his (3 mile) commute.

But geez, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle are beloved stories in our family (anything dark and weird), so what could I do? Off we went.

The 10 nanosecond tour was delivered by six or seven costumed young women, each stationed in one room of Irving's house, and each poised to begin speaking when the first person in the tour group came in to view. Had we been at the back of the group, we would have missed half of every declamation.

Although we were told that the $1800 Irving paid for the estate bought him only a modest home, we were skeptical, especially after inspecting the "facilities." There were three toilet seats with three doors (thank god) and substantial housing for the whole thing. AND there was even a covered walkway leading back to the house. Holy cow! Seems like luxury to me.

Brrrrrrr

I was happy to see that we had sun for our excursion to the city yesterday. We had plans to take a self-guided walking tour, dine al fresco at Shake Shack, and play a little chess in Washington Square Park.

I was less happy when I looked at the thermometer and saw that it read 38 degrees when we headed out.

A little weather wasn't going to stop us. After all, these guys are from Texas! Tyson did tell me it's a little hard to play chess when it's cold, but he and Nolan sat right down when the time came:

I can see what Tyson meant, though. The shivering makes it hard to play using the touch rule. Your fingers shiver right off the pieces. And Nolan's board kept blowing over, so he and his opponent had to reconstruct their positions a half dozen times.

But here the two of them stand in victory (in Times Square)!

And let me also take this opportunity to thank Chef Danny Meyer for putting heaters around his outdoor tables. Ok, I'll take a free custard for this plug, please.

A parade experience.

Attending the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade/Extravaganza was one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my entire life. It all started when we hopped out of bed at 05:15 so we could get downtown early to secure a good viewing point. There were four of us getting ready and before long it was, "Hurry! Hurry! We're late!" I rushed to bring the car to the front of the apartment and finally we were off. We arrived at the train station 20 minutes early.

I remembered almost right away that I'd forgotten my iPhone, which contained the book I was reading, diversions for the ride into Manhattan, my camera, and other goodies, but I quickly forgot about that as I sat shivering while awaiting the train. It was 34 degrees and I was wearing only a T-shirt and a light jacket, which are pretty much the only options I have here. My plan for the winter is to be outside as little as possible. Finally the train arrived, surprisingly crowded with people apparently as insane as we. The first and only delight of the morning appeared at Grand Central Terminal in the guise of a hot cup of coffee from Starbucks, but that too eventually proved to be a near-tragic miscalculation.

We emerged from GCT into the gray gloom of the morning and trundled through the crowds to find a suitable viewing place. It really was amazing how many other people were there, especially considering that you can see the entire parade perfectly well on television. We found a place on 6th Avenue where we would have only one row of people in front of us, so we encamped there. It was 6:30. It was only two and a half hours before the start of the parade.

I had steeled myself to Zen through the wait, but I was unprepared for the cold. Shivering, I hopped from foot to foot to try to generate some heat. There was a large grate in the sidewalk just in front of us from which blessedly warm air escaped whenever a subway train passed underneath. Each time one did, I held the bottom of my jacket away from my body, praying for some of the heat to slip inside. My plan became to survive from train to train.

Meanwhile, more people were arriving. Two couples of twenty-somethings appeared behind Twila, who soon began to edge closer and closer to me. One of the guys had turned his back to her, ostensibly to talk to and smooch with his girlfriend, and he was, in a very New Yorker kind of manner, gradually pushing her out of his way. When it became obvious that he wasn't going to stop, I switched places with her and took a firm stance. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my elbow into play with my hand in my pocket.

At about that time, the delightful coffee I'd enjoyed at Starbucks began to give clues that it was ready to move on. Just what I needed. I consoled myself with the idea that at least it wouldn't get worse if I didn't drink any more, a woeful misconception.

Meanwhile, pushing guy was still pushing, so I asked him to stop. I might not have cared if he'd been providing any warmth, but that wasn't the case. He turned to look at me, then turned away and continued his relentless assault on our space. I repositioned my feet to counter his advance, and before long I'd been pushed a couple of feet in front of Twila. I was leaning as hard as I could and he was still pushing, so I shoved back and told him to cut it out, a commotion that at least temporarily relieved the boredom of those around us. After that we kept an uneasy truce.

Finally, finally the parade started. The people in front of us stood up and Twila was able to step up next to me. Marchers, bands, police motorcycles, people on stilts, floats, and giant balloons started to go by, all the thrills and (dare I say it?) chills we'd been waiting for. A lot of the floats carried famous people, although I hadn't heard of most of them. It surely would have been more enjoyable if it had been warmer, and if that coffee hadn't become even more persistent.

Getting rid of the coffee was soon foremost on my mind. Going back to GCT to take care of it seemed possible, until I looked around. There were several rows of people behind us, all crammed together by virtue of having pushed forward as far as they could. I marveled that so many people could provide so little warmth. I knew I could work my way out of that crowd, though getting back in didn't seem a reasonable possibility. No matter, I would have gotten out if I'd had any place to go, but we were surrounded by parade. I had no idea how I'd get back to GCT. I decided I had little option but to tough it out, so I stood there hopping and squeezing, while reflecting on the indignities and humiliations of near-geezerhood.

Twila was finally able to bring a smile to my face, which she published in her post, by saying those sweet words, "Do you think we should leave?"

It was surprising how stiff my legs were after standing and hopping for five and a half hours. I probably looked like someone on stilts as I hobbled as quickly as I could back to GCT. We had to push through crowds and take a roundabout route, but no disaster occurred.

Next year we're going to watch the parade on TV.

As promised...

These pix tell at least some of the story. First, Tyson & Nolan look reasonably cheerful in spite of the fact that the sun hadn't yet come up and we still had a couple of hours before the first float would go by:

Some of my favorite parts of the parade:

I think these guys in green got the biggest cheer:

And finally, Durf, as he appeared at the start ...

...and the finish:

Parade

Before I dragged Durf & Nolan & Tyson to the Macy's Parade, Durf sent me the following cartoon:

And indeed when that first giant balloon came around the corner, that's exactly what I prayed for.

After that, we all prayed that we would not be trampled by the other 3.5 million people who chose to watch the parade with us on the streets of NYC. I have never seen, let alone mingled among, such a large crowd of people in my entire life. Now there's an experience everyone needs to have.

More pictures later.

TG.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! And remember, it only lasts one day. Hopefully the "thankful" part will keep going, though.

Heading South

With only a month left of my NY Sojourn, I turned my sights on the south portion of the Croton Aqueduct Trail. You might recall my frequent whining in the early days of our stay in Tarrytown, when I lost the trail...repeatedly. To forestall future whining, Durf cased out the trail from his more southerly post in Irvington (where he works).

He promised greater beauty and many points of interest. Here's what I found.

First, beauty:

As for points of interest, the halfway point on the trail is marked by the caretaker's house. Needs a coat of paint, I think:

Had I run all the way to NYC in 1842, I would have seen this:

If I had done so yesterday, I would have seen this:

I wonder if the nephews will want to complete the run with me. Maybe if I tell them there's beer and Haagen Dazs at the library.

The Heart of Capitalism

Durf has the week off, so we thought we'd go to the city yesterday and knock a few things off his bucket list.

We spent most of our time in lower Manhattan, on or near Wall Street. That would be "the heart of capitalism." Durf's choice, mind you. Durf, the man who had a bumper sticker with the words "Capitalism is not a victimless crime" hanging in his office for a few decades.

Anyway, we started by going to the federal reserve and asking the guard if we could see Ben. (I am not lying.) He said, "Ben who?" (I'm not lying.)

Next we tried to get into the New York Stock Exchange to see how our stock in Peet's Coffee was doing. The guards wouldn't let us in there either.

At that point, we starting thinking to ourselves, "Hmmm, there sure are a lot of guards around here." Check out these guys:

They stand outside the now vacant J.P. Morgan building and collect tips from tourists who want to take their picture. (Ok, I made that last part up. Not the picture taking, but the tip taking.)

Having had enough reminders of 9/11, we paid our respects to Trinity Church:

And then strolled across the Brooklyn Bridge on a gorgeous fall day.

Beer, Ice Cream & Parades...

....That's all I needed to entice my nephews here for Thanksgiving. I think. They aren't here yet.

Twenty-somethings make easy guests. Usually my biggest concern centers around feeding people. That's because I don't cook. But for these guys I know I just need to stock up on beer, Haagen Dazs ice cream bars, and bagels. That diet works for me too except I would add wine and cinnamon rolls.

As for entertainment, I figured the Macy's Parade can't be beat. But then I looked up the viewing tips (posted all over the internet, sigh) and discovered that we need to be in the city by 6 a.m. if we hope to see anything except the back of someone's head. So then I asked myself, "Do twenty-somethings get up at 5 a.m.? Ever?"

Stay tuned.

The fly.

On November 6 in a post entitled, appropriately, "Terror", I included a photo of the horrible fly/creature that had returned to haunt us. Some skeptic asked why the photo couldn't be enlarged, so fine! Here is the photo again, and you can see the full-sized version by clicking on it. Sheesh.

Do you know what time it is?

Since I've been in New York, I've developed a modicum -- but only a modicum -- of empathy for those brokers, clients, journalists and business people who used to call me at 6 in the morning when I lived in California.

It was a fairly regular occurrence, so when the phone rang at that hour, I simply picked it up and said, "Do you know what *time* it is???"

In those days, I thought New Yorkers were simply narcissistic and therefore oblivious, but now that I'm on the east coast and of all my phone calls go to the west coast, I know better. I'm certainly not narcissistic. And I'm never oblivious. (Ahem) But I'm frequently impatient. Waiting until noon to make a business call is almost a physical impossibility for me.

So as I wait, I ponder who I might call to while away the time. Let's see, it's 9 a.m. here. Tanya? No way. Her dogs aren't even up yet. Trina? Nope, she takes after Dad. She'll be up in another four hours or so. I know...MOM! The original morning person.

Unfortunately, Mom's in the hospital right now. (She fell and failed to bounce. No broken bones, though. She should be home soon.) But that doesn't stop me. So when I called yesterday, I noticed she was kind of whispering.... Oh right, the roommate. I forgot.

Schrödinger, Monty Hall, and humility pie. (is2)

Schrödinger was a physicist who devised a paradox to illustrate what he saw as a problem in a certain interpretation of quantum mechanics. It postulates that a cat is inside a sealed box along with poison and a radioactive source. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation, the flask is shattered, releasing poison that kills the cat. The quantum mechanics implication is that the cat is simultaneously alive and dead until we look into the box.

The first time I learned of the paradox I thought, "Ho ho. What a doofus! Obviously, the cat is either alive or dead, not both." Since then I have learned not to mock people who are way smarter than I am, and Monty Hall had a lot to do with that.

The Monty Hall problem is simpler, I think. You're on "Let's Make a Deal". There are three doors. Behind two of the doors are goats, and behind one of them is a Subaru Outback. You hopefully choose Door #1. Then Monty opens Door #2, and you see that a goat was behind that door. Monty says that you can stay with Door #1, or switch to Door #3. What should you do? Does it make any difference? (Assume that you want the Subaru, not the goat.)

I thought that my extensive experience in games would help me solve the Monty Hall problem easily. (I actually developed my own "game theory" in college. It was, basically, "I can develop my mind better by playing this game than by studying.") I'd learned about a priori expectations while studying backgammon, and the principle of restricted choice while playing bridge. It turned out that both of those could be applied, but I failed to do that accurately. Even worse, after I learned the correct answer to the problem, I thought, "Ho, ho. What a doofus! Obviously, that answer is wrong!"

One serving of humility pie, coming right up.

The correct answer to the Monty Hall problem is that you double your chance of winning the car if you switch to Door #3. Specifically, if you stay with Door #1, your chance of winning the car is 1/3, the a priori expectation. But if you switch to Door #3, your chance of winning is 2/3. You are, in effect, choosing Door #2 and Door #3.

There are plenty of places on the web where you can learn why that answer is correct, including Wikipedia. Just for fun, though, I'll throw in a bit of a kicker.

The principle of restricted choice states that the play of a particular card is an indication that the player does not have an equivalent card. For example, suppose you need to know how the king and queen of a suit are distributed between your two opponents. Since both the king and queen will lose to the ace of the suit and beat all other cards, they are equal. If the opponent on your right (RHO) plays the queen, the odds become 2 to 1 that the player on your left has the king. That's because your RHO might have played either the king or the queen if he'd held both, but if he held just one of them, his play was restricted to that particular card. That's kind of a mind bender in itself, I suppose, but very handy when playing bridge.

Anyway, here's the kicker. Suppose Monty himself doesn't know which door the car is behind, so he opens one of the remaining doors randomly. Does that affect the solution to the problem?

(Yes, I realize that this is kind of a boring post, but it makes an important point in my ignorance series. I'll try to get a picture of Twila picking her nose or something, to liven up my next post.)

Annie Hall & Me

During this time of year, New York City breaks out the "holiday" fairs in abundance. But these are not ordinary street fairs. No siree. It's as though Saks Fifth Avenue divided all of its departments into mini boutiques and moved them to the curb. I found a knit hat I liked at the holiday fair in Bryant Park. It was selling for a mere $20. I saw the same hat a couple of days later in the window of H&M. I went in to look at the price tag: $7.99. Fortunately (and uncharacteristically) I had not purchased the hat at the Bryant Park fair.

Nonetheless, you do get something at the street fairs that you don't get in the stores: compliments. I know for a fact (because every hat vendor at the fair said so) that I look good in hats. No wait, I look *great* in hats. I can wear *any* hat, and mind you, not everyone can. In fact nobody could wear *that* particular hat...except me, of course.

That sort of thing would never happen on a fashion tour, because the people with you are shoppers, not sellers. And those shoppers are your friends. You've spent hours together in very close quarters in your underwear. Those people will tell you the truth, as in "Run, don't walk, away from that pair of pants!" or "Not your color, honey." (Remember her?)

But some days you just need to believe the shysters, know what I mean? Check it out:









Whaddya mean it's blurry?

Twila O'Keeffe

I spent yesterday in the Seaport District, of Manhattan, which is south of the Financial District. Ha! I bet you didn't even know there was land between the Financial District and the East River.

My original destination was the Stieglitz exhibition at the Seaport Museum. But my ticket included a self-guided tour of some of the old sailing boats sitting in the harbor. So what could I do...?

First I communed with Al. He photographed NYC over a period of some 40 years, beginning when cameras were still unwieldy, the development process cumbersome, and the results uneven. On view were some of his iconic shots and under each and every photo was an explanation of why the shot was interesting. I *loved* it.

In fact, I loved it so much I was inspired to do a little experimental photography of my own, using the sailing ships as subjects. It's a good thing Durf wasn't with me. I had to lie down flat on my back for a couple of the shots. He thinks I do that kind of thing to embarrass him. Anyway, one of the shots below was taken from a standing position, the other from a supine position. Can you tell which was which? It's obvious, I guess. The better question is: Can you see how the higher position flattens the image?

Nope, neither can I.

A funny card.

I was just thinking, as giant bubbles of energy tear my world apart, that I hadn't blogged yet today! That was it! And this is it!

I was shopping for a greeting card a few days ago, because we didn't have a color printer, and my eyes caught on the card below. I doubt I'll ever think of anyone I could send it to, but I had to have it, because it made me laugh.

Dylan

Nope, not a Bob Dylan sighting, fortunately, since I am SO *not* a fan. I'd go on but when I do, it tends to irritate some of my friends who are (incongruously) Dylan fans.

The Dylan I saw and visited on Tuesday was Dylan's Candy Bar. It's a candy store whose flagship is in midtown Manhattan. I happen to have a nephew with a sweet tooth and a birthday coming up. (Yep, both are coming up.)

For a while, Dylan's proclaimed itself the largest candy store in the world, but maybe Costco objected, so now it claims only to be the largest "unique" candy store in the world. Sheesh, the local 7-11 could make that claim!

Other problems with Dylan's advertising strategy: It claims Mary-Kate Olsen as a frequent buyer. That is *not* a sick joke on my part. But the ultimate irony is that the eponymous store is named for Dylan Lauren. That would be Ralph's daughter. You know Ralph, the guy who says you can't model his clothing if you weigh more than 80 lbs.

I bought some candy anyway.

State of the job.

Here is a brief description of Nevis Labs from a Columbia page:

Nevis Laboratories is Columbia University's primary center for the study of high-energy experimental particle and nuclear physics. Approximately 12 faculty members, 14 postdoctoral research scientists, and 20 graduate students, supported by a 10-member engineering and technical staff, engage in the preparation, design, and construction of high-energy particle and nuclear experiments and equipment. These experiments and equipment are transported to major national accelerator laboratories for data collection; the data resulting from these experiments are then processed and analyzed using the extensive computer systems at Nevis. Experiments are currently taking place at Fermilab in Chicago, Illinois; CERN in Switzerland; and Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island in Upton, New York.

Nevis Laboratories are located on a scenic 60-acre estate originally owned by the son of Alexander Hamilton. The duPont family of Delaware donated the estate to the University in 1934, and construction of physics facilities at Nevis began in 1947. In the early 1950's Dwight D. Eisenhower, then President of the University, inaugurated what was then the world's most powerful cyclotron, which was eventually retired in 1978.

It was a gorgeous fall day when I arrived at work on Sunday (at 9 AM rather than 4 AM), so I decided to walk to the old cyclotron, which is just a short stroll down this path:

The cyclotron building is unprepossessing:

The lab itself, where I work, can be seen at the end of the path. It's an odd place, cutting-edge science and old... ... ... old ... (do I really want to know)?

As if it weren't creepy enough, especially at 04:15, the lab is haunted! It's true. When I walk in, I can hear the ghost, wandering and whistling. At first I just assumed the whistling was made by some esoteric equipment, but it moves around, one side to the other, closer and further. It isn't really scary, it's interesting, the past, the present.

FM2 is on Layer 61 today. It seems like it grew up fast. We're already preparing it for the intermediate mandrel, and after Thanksgiving both optics will be in dodecants. I already decided that I'll have to go in even earlier to ensure that the grinds are done on time, but I don't care about that.

This morning I was loading spacers and thinking about this blog post, and I thought what I always think: How lucky is this? I'm amazed they even allow me to step foot here, and yet I'm part of something important.

Maybe someday my ghost, too, will wander the lab, full of wonder, and whistling.

Scientists say the darndest things! (is1)

Really, I love scientists. That the other choice is creationist climate-change-deniers isn't even part of the equation. Scientists are our knowledge people, and that's where the fun is.

They do rile me now and then, though. Like those who say that dreams last only 1.2 seconds. Hello? They need better experiments. Or the one who recently wrote that the human brain, which apparently he confused with a Z80 processor, can only do one thing at a time. Or those who think humans must be the preeminent form of intelligent life in the universe because... well, because more intelligent species haven't contacted us, for example (like, would you?). Even the scientists who are at a much higher level, like Stephen Hawking, seem to get boggled down, at times.

My theory is that it's the arrogance of knowledge. Scientists themselves aren't especially arrogant (outside of academia, anyway), but knowledge itself is. It's "The Chris Evert Syndrome". Back in the day when tennis was hot and Chris was the goddess of women's tennis, it occurred to me that to become that good at her game, she had to give up a lot of other things, like life. To be noticeably successful in any widely pursued endeavor, you have to focus on that endeavor to the exclusion of other interests, unless you're just freakishly intelligent, and who is? (I'd have put my money on Richard Feynman, if I were betting.)

Chris Evert eventually recovered, in part because human bodies wear down, so she couldn't be great at tennis anymore. But do scientists recover? My theory is that they become so immersed in their disciplines that eventually they lose sight of the larger picture. One of those forest/tree types of thing.

Take Mr. Hawking, whom I admire greatly on many levels. I heard him say once that we're on the verge of finding the final key to "The Grand Unified Theory of Thingies", after which we'll know all there is to know about the universe (this one, anyway), so we'll have to move on to thinking about other stuff.

...

Darn, I knew that this would get long once I got started, and it's already happening. My original plan was to break the idea into several posts, an "ignorance series" (not to dis ignorance, but to praise it). Fortunately, I think, I eventually realized that the more I blabbed on about ignorance, the more people would think I have it, so I decided to be more subtle about the subject, an approach that so far is failing. I'll jump ahead, but I might slip back some other day to fill in the blanks.

I, with the insight that comes with being much less educated than most physicists, think it is a huge conceit to think that we know even 1% of what there is to know about the universe. All of our knowledge is, after all, based only on what we know. Any new discovery could completely upend everything, instantly.

Even those scientists who might be willing to agree about our general lack of knowledge about the universe would most likely have said that we do, at least, know a great deal about our own galaxy, the Milky Way. I mean, it isn't a gadzillion light years away, it's where we are!

And then this [link] appeared:

The horizontal white pancake in the middle of the picture is the Milky Way, about which we know a lot. The purply balls popping out from the center of the galaxy are giant bubbles of energy that contain the equivalent of 100,000 supernova explosions. How long have we known about them? - a few weeks. My favorite comment so far:

"Wow," said David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton who was not involved in the work.

"And we think we know a lot about our own galaxy," Dr. Spergel added, noting that the bubbles were almost as big as the galaxy and yet unsuspected until now.

Yeah, wow!

Breaded? Good Grief.

What is New York's obsession with breaded food? I completely understand Colorado's (and Ohio's and ...) obsession with fried food. They don't know any better. In Colorado, everyone cooks the same way. You grill the steak and drop everything else in the deep fryer. You jam all that food in your mouth while standing at the sink, and then you go out and milk the cows.

New York should know better. It is the most diverse city in the U.S. (I think). It's been exposed to many different foods cooked many different ways. At this point, New York's taste in food should be terribly refined.

Durf and I, coming from Colorado, swore to ourselves that we would gorge on good seafood while in NY. Recently we went to a purportedly *good* seafood restaurant here in Westchester. I'd been waiting for the perfect place to order lobster. This seemed to be the place. I explained to the waiter that I didn't want to wrestle my dinner into my mouth and he agreed to serve it to me without the shell. Yay!

But what appeared on my plate a while later was some breaded lumps wallowing in linguine. I was pretty sure I had someone else's fried chicken. But no, it was indeed my lobster -- breaded for my Colorado taste buds, I guess.

Art for Lightweights?

I think I like art, but I'm not sure. That's because photography is my favorite art form and yet I wonder if it is more journalism than art. It's possible that I like photography because I have no imagination. If you put an abstract painting in front of me, all I see are blobs of paint. And even when I know I'm allowed to "see" anything I want in the painting, those blobs stubbornly remain blobs.

Make no mistake, however, I quite enjoy listening to other people tell me what they see, or better yet, what the artist saw or wanted others to see. For me it's like going to a foreign country and observing unfamiliar customs.

But standing before a photograph, almost any photograph, piques my curiosity. Who is that person? Or what *is* that thing? Or, in the case of Mappelthorpe, OUCH!

All of this by way of saying I'm in hog heaven right now with an abundance of photography exhibitions to choose from. I recently went to the book-less NY Public Library to see some of its vast collection of portraits. Tomorrow, Stieglitz in Lower Manhattan!

Skinny jeans.

One of the fun parts of being in The City is seeing all the people here. Oh, right, The City.

Everyone who has ever been there knows that The City is San Francisco. Always has been, always will be, unless it's on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, someday. Even then, maybe. But every area has its own "The City", and when Twila and I moved to Colorado, it was Denver. You might have an incomplete idea of how big a step down that was, but trust me, it was. Now we're in NY, and The City is Manhattan. Manhattan isn't San Francisco, by any means, but calling it "The City" isn't entirely stupid, so "YEE HAW!" and "YAH HOO!" ACK, I digress.

Anyway, there are SO many people in this The City that you become kind of anonymous, which is sweet. And the people are from all over - sometimes it seems that 75% of them are tourists (unlike us, of course). So there is always a lot to look at, and most people don't even realize or care that you're looking at them.

Even though I think guys are just fine as people, I tend to look at women. Heck, who doesn't? Women wear all kinds of clothing styles, of course, sometimes dresses and sometimes other stuff and sometimes jeans, so I notice that, too. And what I've noticed since being here is that nearly all of the women who are wearing jeans are wearing the kind that look like they were painted on their legs. I remarked to Twila about that, and she said, "Right. Skinny jeans. They're really in right now."

Skinny jeans. What a concept.

Then I thought that maybe I should try to get in on that deal. I spent a lot of my life running and biking and things, and women have told me that I have great legs. Wouldn't they look even better in these skinny jeans?

So I went on Amazon and tooted, "skinny jeans for men". Somewhat to my surprise, Amazon had them, and I was like, "Yeah!" So I ordered a pair.

The reason I'm mentioning all of this now, I suppose, is that I just got home from work and have a couple of hours before the Niners humiliate the Rams, and returning various unsuccessful experiments is at the top of my "Are You EVER Going To Do This?" list. The skinny jeans are on the floor next to my desk, which is some kind of progress. But again I digress.

What happened was that the skinny jeans for men arrived, so I put them on to show Twila how hot I would look with them on. Getting them on wasn't all that easy, though. You've seen clips of women pulling jeans on, hopping up and down and tugging like crazy. Well, that was me. I finally did get them on, and when Twila was able to get the tears wiped out of her eyes, she said, "They look like girl jeans."

That didn't really bother me. I knew they weren't girl jeans, they were studly guy jeans, and they did show my leg muscles in a way that would repel men and attract women - the perfect combination. The problem was that I was absolutely certain that the slightest attempt to bend over or sit down would result in catastrophic rupture of the jeans, with my compressed body parts violently expanding in a less than attractive way.

I didn't test that, BTW.

NYC's Dirty Little Secret

New York is not really the city that never sleeps. It's the city that sleeps *in*. Slothfully. That means, if you know about this little secret, you can go to lunch at the most popular restaurant in NYC at noon, or even 12:30, and be seated upon arrival. And if you are in the heart of the Sloth District, you might even be able to squeeze in dinner at 6 before the locals wake up.

Yesterday, I had brunch in Greenwich Village with my lovely young friend Zoe, who is a brand new NYU student. She had suggested noon as a meeting time and I thought to myself, "OMG she's become a New Yorker already." And "We'll never get in." But she was right and I was wrong. We were seated immediately, and when we left at 1:30, the sloths hanging around outside the door numbered about 40.

A similar rule applies to museum visits, but with a slight twist. The crowds tend to show up at about 1:30 or 2:00, so it's best to be in the museum soon after it opens. The problem is that all NYC grandmothers are also in line five minutes before the museum opens. It's like going to the lab at the hospital. Everyone over 55 (yes, I know that includes me) shows up when the lab opens. So there's a big needle-jab jam right at 8:30. But if you wait for the eager beaver wave to roll through, you'll have smooth sailing. Analogously, in NYC, you need to show up at the museum 1.5 hours after it opens.

Of course if you follow my rule, you'll never run into Dennis Franz. He was in the 2:00 museum tour with us. As for why we were in the 2:00 tour...don't even ask.

Tears in space.

"Tears in space" is a perfect title for this post, but there are two groups who won't understand it at first: astrophysicists and "Fringe" devotees. For them, I'll explain. In my intended context, "tears" rhymes with "beers", not with "bears".

I wanted today to illustrate the difference between sextant assembly and dodecant assembly, so when I arrived at the lab I immediately whipped out my cellphone camera. Here is FM2, currently in sextants, with all the assembly hardware attached (probably an apt analogy is "hair rollers"):

Here is FM1, which was just promoted to dodecants:

It was an unexpected bonus that FM0, which is complete, had emerged from its cocoon:

I snapped the pix for you, then removed the hardware and began to prepare it for today's layer of glass. Before I knew what was happening, I was crying. None of my tears actually made direct contact with spacers (approximately 12,000 spacers per optic, btw) or assembly hardware, but since with every breath we are, they say, inhaling molecules of air that were once breathed by Cleopatra, and maybe even Paris Hilton, I think it's reasonable to assume that desiccated fragments of my tears landed on a spacer here or there and thus will be traipsing around space, someday.

Why I was crying is, I suppose, the question. This time I know the answer.

It is far beyond my language skills to describe how beautiful these optics are. They're shiny glass, yes, but they're much more than that. Every single section of mirror, every drop of epoxy, every spacer is added to the optics painstakingly and with loving care. There are four guys I see in the lab on a regular basis - Todd, Ken, Tom, and Iliya - and I'm proud of every one of them, and honored to be working with them, because they care so much about this project, as do I. NuSTAR optics are being built by hand, and to say that love is a major component is far from exaggeration. I cried because I became overwhelmed by being lucky enough to be a part of this.

If all goes well, sometime in 2012 an L-1011 flying over the Kwajalein Atoll will drop a Pegasus rocket which will then carry NuSTAR into orbit (link). That will be one of the happiest, most exciting, and proudest moments of my life.

Frick N' Cool

Cathy's NYC bucket list included a trip to the Frick Collection (it might not sound like a museum, but it is), so we sandwiched it in between the Tenement Museum and the Apollo Theater. I'll tell you straight off, Hank Frick can't hold a candle to Dennis Franz or Mr. Apollo. And it's not because he's dead and they are alive.

Frick, an excessively wealthy steel magnate, was a union-busting CEO who thought nothing of using force to break a strike. Dennis Franz might be a republican, but Henry Frick would have been a Tea Bagger, for sure. (Mr. Apollo's politics cannot be faulted.)

Frick used his partially ill-gotten wealth to build a mansion and acquire some truly remarkable art. Standing before amazing art hung in a home is far more appealing to me than seeing such art in a regular museum. I suspect I enjoy the feeling of intimacy a homey venue can provide, which would be difficult to duplicate in a more institutional environment. And it's almost possible to imagine myself living among the paintings.

The drawing room, for example, contains a wonderful storyboard of romantic paintings by Fragonard. Since I am female, I would, no doubt, have been relegated to the drawing room for a good part of my life. And happily. Better than sitting in the dining room with all of those Tea Baggers.

Yet another question.

This just popped into my head.

We've all made that kind of mistake, the kind you would never, ever repeat, if you could help it. Like the time you put your neighbor's cat in your microwave - no, no, no, that was so wrong on so many levels. But, how about those things that you know are mistakes, but they're much closer to the YEAH!/ACK! borderline? For example, "I'll probably regret it if I ask Hildegarde to go out with me again, but....", or "Am I going too far here?" The YEAH!s are worth the ACK!s, right, even if there are only 3 YEAH!s for every 13 ACK!s?

BTW, this question is only superficially similar to the "fly higher" question.

"They Call Me Mr. Apollo"

On my NYC bucket list was to see the Apollo Theater. I didn't have to go in. I just wanted to see it. Feel the vibe. Then I had the brilliant idea of going to Amateur Night at the Apollo. Unfortunately Amateur Night is on hiatus for the rest of the year. But while poking around I saw there were tours. I called and Billy Mitchell answered the phone.

"I want to tour the Apollo," I told him. "Do you have 20 people?" he asked. When I put on my best deflated voice, he told me that if I let him know which day I wanted to come he'd let us tag along with another tour.

We showed up at the appointed time,

and we were greeted warmly by Billy:

But then we discovered that we would be touring with members of the local Italian Mafia.

So Cathy and I rubbed the Tree of Hope, not so much so that we might win Amateur Night, but so that we might survive the tour without being dropped into the East River with bricks attached to our ankles. Here's the Tree of Hope:

On the tour, we discovered that Billy (aka Mr. Apollo) asks prospective tour participants to prepare an act. And then on the day of the tour, he puts on a mini Amateur Night for the tour group. Participants perform on this stage:

You win by acclamation. Or, more likely, you are booed until you leave the stage.

Had I been forewarned, I definitely would have brushed up on my rendition of "Big Mabel Murphy." I'm quite sure I would not have been booed off the stage.

Deathdays.

Are we supposed to remember deathdays? It's probably not very important one way or another, but sometimes I wonder about it. We do remember birthdays, but it seems like that makes more sense, especially if the person is still alive.

An example: my mother was born on October 25, 1923. I remember that, hopefully I always will, although for most of my life I thought she'd been born in 1925. No matter. She died a while ago, and I don't remember the date. I don't even remember the year, but 2004 would be my first guess. Does it matter that I don't remember? Does it matter that I don't really care that I don't remember?

I loved my mom, even though our relationship had its ups and downs. She was my mother, after all. She made me what I am, by both nature and nurture, more than anyone else did or ever could. I look at pictures of her and cry, often. I'm more happy than you could imagine that the last time I saw her was our closest time together in probably 40 years.

Her deathday was a really important day in her life, and in mine. Should I remember the date? Does it matter?

Andrew Who?

In keeping with my recent tradition of going to quirky plays, I dragged Cathy to Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. In case you don't remember, Andrew Jackson was our seventh president. The play tells the story of his life in a mere 90 minutes.

The thought of a 90 minute biography of AJ might evoke images of the speed-talking fed ex pitchman (remember him?), or comedians who demonstrate that they can tell the story of War and Peace (or other epics) in 25 words or less. But in fact, the pace of Bloody Bloody was downright languorous in comparison. And yet, consider what was crammed into that 90 minutes: We learned that Andrew Jackson was orphaned at 14, tortured by the British, Governor of Florida, married to a bigamist, unhappily childless, founder of the democratic party, slave owner, Tennessee booster. Oh and president of the United States.

We gleaned all of this through a crushingly loud rock score and a script full of anachronistic swear words.

Cathy wondered why anyone would give a hoot. About Andrew Jackson, and maybe about the play either.

I must be going through a phase, because I thought it was a kick.

Dissendat.

I was pondering what I might blog today, when the question resolved itself. Just home from work, I started to read 49ers news on SFGate, and this was the first sentence of an article by David White, a Chronicle (yes, we all know it's a rag) staff writer:

"Niners coach Mike Singletary said Alex Smith is everything he wants in a quarterback Tuesday."

So I was like, "What?" I even mentioned it to Twila. Is putting "Tuesday" somewhere else, like at the start of the sentence, really that mystifying? Twila and I chuckled about it, and I moved on to the second sentence in the article, which began:

"He called him fearless, courageous...."

But, how can you be courageous if you're fearless? Dudes, pick one, okay?

At least that helped me decide what to blog, some dissendat. These signs, for example, make perfect sense in context:

You wouldn't want to see them for the first time, however, if a semi were bearing down on your rear bumper at 75 MPH. (It is, honestly, 100% coincidental that that particular photo was labeled IMG_0069 in my camera.)

Here is another traffic control that I find amusing:

Cars often pull over to the curb to figure that mess out!

Malls and More

Sometimes I suspect that NYC has suburb envy. For example, malls belong to the suburbs, no? But NYC seems to think malls belong on the waterfront, or...well, anywhere there is space in Manhattan. Manhattan developers believe, "if we build it, people will come." Consequently, new malls keep springing up all over the place, and indeed people do come.

Many of the malls appear to be food halls. So you have your Chelsea Market and the new Eataly (eat Italian, get it?).

And lets face it, Penn Station and Grand Central are both malls that happen to have train tracks connected to them so they can drop people off.

Yesterday, we went to the Century 21 Department Store in lower Manhattan. On the plus side, I never even knew it existed before yesterday. On the minus side, I now know it exists. It's not that I have anything against malls or shopping in general. But after yesterday, every time I see Century 21, I'm going to get a headache. Or have some kind of a weird Filene's Basement-esque waking nightmare.

Century 21 is billed as a gigantic department store filled with discount designer goods. But when you walk in, you see racks and racks (and racks and racks) of stuff. A lot of it is hanging on hangers, but a lot of it is half on and half off the hanger. Shoeboxes might contain only one shoe, or two shoes of different sizes. Worst of all, at any given time, 1/3 of NYC is in the building.

At least when I go to a boutique I can pretend that shopping is a dignified activity.

An icky question.

Suppose you were Icarus, only wiser. Your life seemed perfect. And then you saw something that might make life even better. Would you fly higher?

Celebrity Sighting

Sometimes while walking around NYC, I imagine myself to be one of those oblivious humans in the movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." In the movie, the body snatchers walk among us, and we don't know it. Here in NYC, because of the sheer number of celebrities working and living here, I suspect they are walking by me all the time and I just don't recognize them. It might be some form of prosopagnosia. Or just general obliviousness. On the other hand, if you put someone in front of me and tell me I should recognize him/her, I usually do.

To wit: Yesterday, Cathy and I took one of the Tenement Museum tours (my second!). About a dozen of us traipsed around the tenement, listening to the guide and discussing immigration. The group was definitely engaged and almost everyone was participating. At one point I noticed Cathy giving me subtle signals. I was wondering if she had to go to the bathroom or something. She didn't seem to be frantic, but she was making a lot of eye contact. As we moved out of one room and into another, she whispered "I think that guy over there is a movie star." I looked at him again (after all, we had now been together for over an hour) and whispered back, "Yeah, he looks just like Dennis Franz." "That's him!" she squealed. Ok, she didn't really squeal, but in a few minutes, she sidled up to him and said quietly, "Has anyone ever told you that you look just like Dennis Franz?" And he said, "I *am* Dennis Franz."

In truth, I'm amazed that I recognized him because it's been a very very long time since I watched one of his shows. However, one of the few memories I have of NYPD Blue is the huge build up to the episode where Franz bares his butt...on national TV. I'm thinking I would have recognized his butt without any prompting from Cathy.

Going underground?

At last count, there were 14,000 readers of this blog. And... oh, did I say 14 *thousand*? Typo.

Anyway, we're (I'm) thinking about taking the blog out of the public domain. That isn't because of that time on the train or what happened in that restaurant or the stupid thing with the vice squad, but because of NuSTAR. The project is hardly secret - it's even on Wikipedia. Rather, it's because my loose lips description of a blunder here or a hilarious situation there might not go over so well at NASA or CalTech or wherever, should they stumble on the blog. That might be a little paranoid, but there is a lot of competition for available funds, and our part of the project should appear just as professional as it really is.

If we decide to take the blog private, it means we'll add your email addresses to a list so you can still read the blog. That might be a bit of a hassle at first, because Google might ask you (but not require you) to sign up for gmail. From verbal and printed comments, we have a good idea of who reads the blog, but some folks might be in stealth mode. I don't know what happens if we're private and someone unlisted comes here for their daily joy... hopefully there will be a message telling how to get on the A-List.

None of that is happening yet - this is a just-in-case post. At any time you can send a message (for any blog-related reason) to boopiblog@xemaps.com, and that will give you elite status, regardless, unless you're a NASA spy.

Playgirl

There's a new playmate in town!

(I had to title this post "Playgirl" to be fair to Arthur, who I believe, was not quite sure he liked being the subject of a blog titled "Playboy." Oh wait..."Playboy".)

ANYway, Cathy showed up last night at the Tarrytown train station with a smile on her face. This in spite of the fact that I made her find her way via public transportation all the way from JFK. And on the day of the NY Marathon, too! Of course, Cathy being Cathy, she had no trouble with any of that and arrived while the pizza was still hot and before Durf went to bed!

Speaking of the NY Marathon, two of the women on our most recent fashion tour were in town for the marathon. Made me want to run it. But with all the bandit-capture horror stories floating around, I think I'd rather just sign up some year. Maybe on my 70th birthday. I know Durf won't run with me. How about you, Arthur?

Nosebleed

It had to happen eventually. Last night we went to see a Broadway play with tickets we had gleefully purchased through our much beloved ticket discounter. And we ended up in the nosebleed section. The problem is not so much that you can't hear or see, because you can. The problem is getting to your seat without being overcome by dizziness and other symptoms of acrophobia and tumbling to your death before the curtain rises.

Of course once I was in my seat, I found it hilarious watching other people try to get to theirs. A couple of old guys actually crawled up the stairs. One woman was leaning forward at about 90 degrees, obviously fearful that a less acute angle would lead to certain death. And these seat-seekers were not all old fogies either. (We *know* acrophobia increases with age, don't we?) But one young woman wimpered at her date, "Hold my hand, Andrew, my balance isn't so good." (Sigh. Hand to the forehead. Eyes peeping from lowered lids.)

Something else happened last night, too. Durf and I diverged in our opinion of the play. Not a first, by any means but a surprise this time...to me, anyway. The play was Noel Coward's "A Brief Encounter." It was made into a movie, back in 1945. It's about a married woman who almost has an affair with a man she meets in a railway station. The director of this Broadway version did some inventive things, like integrating scenes from the movie and having the actors walk into the movie itself. She also had the actors act out some sound effects.

It all worked for me, but not for Durf, I guess. A "too kitchy" thumbs down from the guy who will admit in public that he liked the movie Eraserhead!

A great quote.

Sorry for the threepost, but I think this is an awesome quote:

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

- Douglas Adams

Long shrift.

All of you who know us are surely aware that I adore Twila. However, when her creative volcano begins to erupt, like when she's blogging, she sometimes takes a loose view of the truth, most often to my detriment. Take, for example, her recent post about our Fashion Trek.

It isn't that she said anything "wrong", she just gave me short shrift. I was active! I didn't wait for women to ask me how they looked, I just told them. One woman, for example, was staring at herself in a mirror, and I volunteered, "That dress is kind of cute, but it makes your ass look like a nuclear submarine." Ha, just joking. I said "butt", not "ass". That's another English thing. For men, "ass" = "butt". For women, "ass" = "man". So I was trying to be correct.

Seriously, though, and this is true, I've now been on two fashion tours, and I was the only one singled out! (I know that I kind of stand out in those groups, but this was sincere.) During the last tour we were in the office (whatever, small, hot room with racks of clothes) of designer Anni Kuan. Women were milling around and trying things on and I was poking through the racks, when I came upon a skirt and thought, "Muah, this is hot!" So I held it up and called Twila, and then I heard, "OH MY GOD! You have a GREAT EYE!" And it was no other than Anni Kuan, herself. She went on about that for a bit while I did my "red lightbulb" imitation. Later she came over to me and told me I really do have a great eye, and that I could be a fashion designer, if I wanted to be.

Not only that, but yesterday we returned to Anni's office and we were remembered! (Part of that, I confess, might have been because Twila left much of her hard-earned fortune there, twice.) As you know, the public is not allowed in the designers' office-thingies, and even the tour groups are barely tolerated. Yesterday, though, they told us that we are welcome at Anni's any time! That *must* have something to do with my eye, because they certainly can surmise by now that Twila has no further resources for them to plunder.

Now *that* is the long shrift of the matter.

Another thing I learned on these tours, especially yesterday, is that "shop 'til you drop" is not figurative, it's literal. I really and truly admire the stamina of women, who apparently can stand and walk and try things on for hours and hours without limit, as long as a credit card is somehow involved. I was totally ready to keel over when our guide finally announced that the tour had come to an end.

Terror.

That doesn't mean "terror" as in "terrorism". That means real, horrible, poop-in-your-pants terror, even worse than the times you awaken screaming out loud because of the nightmare where Sarah Palin is elected president. Yes, worse than that.

Honestly, I'm just getting my breath back. And I was able to forgo the p-i-y-p part, because I'd... well, it wasn't a problem. I'm just grateful that all those years of running made my heart stronger than it might have been otherwise, or Twila might have been left to bravely blog on all by herself.

It came from nowhere. I'd actually been laughing at a very good Susan Collins OpEd about women in politics. I was still chuckling when I got up. Then I opened a door, and there he was:

Heaven help us.

The Fashion Gene

I like clothes, I like shopping, I like reading about fashion. Ok, there, I got it out. Yet another confession. This from the girl who went to Berkeley (where the school uniform was birkenstocks and painter's overalls), and who expanded her closet when she was young and poor simply by wearing her husband's clothes. But little by little, my interest in fashion began to assert itself. Not that anyone would know by looking. But I knew because of ... (see first sentence). It was unsquelchable, so it must be genetic, right Mom?

All that by way of saying Durf and I took another NY showroom fashion tour yesterday. This time Durf served as fashion consultant to about a dozen women. I think he enjoys it when other women ask him how they look. And he's a great pack mule.

Yesterday was particularly fun because of the camaraderie, which was lacking in the first tour. The women on this tour were interested in soliciting everyone's opinion about everything they put on. And let me tell you, everyone had an opinion. "Ewwww no, wrong color!" "Oh, honey, you are way too short for that dress."

The designers also offered their own advice in answer to questions such as, "How short can I go at my age without looking like Tammy Faye Baker?" "Do I need breast enhancements to wear this dress?"

I know, I know, it all sounds terribly superficial, but boy was it fun!

Grammar gripe.

Since I have all this unexpected free time, and since we've been complaining about hideous mispronunciations, I guess I'll explain why I consistently break a grammar rule. This is "correct":

I just finished reading "The Feminine Mystique." (I call that a self-contained joke.)

This is "incorrect":

I just finished reading "The Feminine Mystique".

Whoever came up with the rule that punctuation should go inside quote marks at the end of a phrase wasn't thinking clearly. Sometimes they should, but often it is clearer and more aesthetically pleasing to put the little buggers outside the quotes, and I will continue to do so until the Gods of English take note and change the rule.

From 9/11 to 11/3.

I have a day off today because of terrorism. Yep. The glass that was supposed to be mounted on FM2 yesterday arrived from Copenhagen in a DHL shipment to JFK, and WTF are all these acronyms? Sorry, that just popped into my head. Anyway, the shipment with the glass was detained so the NYPD could inspect a "suspicious" package. Here is the scoop, in case you missed it:

Package Scare at Kennedy Airport DHL Facility

Updated: Wednesday, 03 Nov 2010, 10:17 PM EDT
Published : Wednesday, 03 Nov 2010, 8:04 PM EDT

MYFOXNY.COM - A suspicious package found at a DHL shipping facility at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City Wednesday evening turned out to be harmless, officials said.

The package was noticed at about 5:30 p.m., the Port Authority said. A source told Fox 5 that Customs agents wanted to take a closer look, so they called the Port Authority Police and the New York Police Department.

The NYPD said the package contained a cell phone and paperwork, the AP reported.

Officials said police undertook the investigation out of "an abundance of caution" to determine if the package was linked to any of the explosive devices placed on UPS and FedEx cargo planes last week in a Yemen-based terror plot, Fox News reported.

Passenger terminals at JFK were not affected by the investigation.

Silly Painting Rivalries

Do you know who this man is?

It's Bruce Willis, in 15 years -- or maybe a little sooner. We'll see.

Ok, how about this fellow?

It's Edward Hopper. Cute, no? And he is the reason there were hordes of people in Gallery 2 at the Whitney while I was there. (The other floors were occupied mostly by me and the megaphone lady.)

In truth, Hopper was not on my radar screen before Arthur came to visit and expressed interest in seeing Hopper's childhood home in Nyack, which is just across the river from our apartment.

Nice house:

Hopper was painting in the realism style when realism was out of favor. Why was it out of favor? Because everyone in American thought painters in the early 20th century should be painting like Picasso. How silly is that?

That whole attitude obviously annoyed Hopper too, so he claimed to have no idea who Picasso was.

I think Hopper was jealous because Picasso was a dead ringer for Bruce Willis.

Jason.

I was expecting bugs. I even brought a mosquito-slaying zapper. But we have had very few bugs, indeed. That's not my recollection of New York, but it was Syracuse I remembered, and probably the bugs are all there. Except one, a fly, which flew across our living room several days ago and sent us into a panic. "I'll get him later," I promised Twila.

He turned out to be, unfortunately, a very acrobatic and swift fly. I was hampered a bit because I wasn't using rolled-up newspaper, not feeling particularly excited about squashed fly on wherever. So I chased him futilely around the apartment with a DustBuster, again and again.

Then he made a mistake that showed his fly brain was no match for my human, albeit similarly-sized, brain. He went into the bathroom. I had him trapped in a room so small that we couldn't even put a scale inside. HA! Stupid fly!

In moments I was in the bathroom, the door closed, DustBuster in my hand, and I attacked. It didn't go as well as I'd planned. Even though the room was small, the fly had lost none of his flying prowess. So I decided I had to outsmart him.

I know (or think I know) that flies take off backward. So I approached the fly from the rear, slowly, slowly, until the whirring vacuum was only a couple of inches behind him. Then I tried to pounce, but the fly was too fast. Soon I was cursing and violently waving the DustBuster all over the bathroom, toothpaste tubes and towels flying everywhere. "I'll wear the bastard out," I thought. And he did get tired. And so did I. Round 2 to fly.

For some reason, the fly decided to stay in the bathroom. (Certainly *I* had nothing to do with that.) Even though we left the bathroom door open, the fly didn't leave. I made a couple more attempts to vacuum him, but finally I gave up. Instead of trying to kill him, I named him Jason. When I'd go into the bathroom to read, there was Jason, on a towel or the bathtub or the shower curtain, serene and unafraid. I talked to him.

I'm under no illusions. I'm sure Jason pooped on my toothbrush whenever he got the chance. But after my many fevered attempts to slay him, I couldn't really get too upset about his tiny revenges. We were forming an odd relationship, it seemed.

A couple of days ago I grabbed the newspaper (unrolled) and headed into the bathroom. There was Jason, waiting. Though I'd stopped trying to catch him, I could see that age and the numerous attempts on his life had taken a toll. He wasn't the same Jason, he probably couldn't escape the vacuum now, but I wasn't about to go after him again. Instead, I decided to take his picture and then blog about him. When I finished reading, I went upstairs to get my camera.

That went the way things usually go. I decided to check my email first, and soon I was traipsing from one web link to another in search of heaven knows what. Then the front door opened and Twila returned from her run. I leaned over the railing that girds my loft and examined her for new wounds, but she was okay. She told me our traditional post-run "l'histoire du jour." Then she went back to take a shower and I went back to my computer.

In a couple of minutes I heard a most ominous sound, the DustBuster being turned on. Jason!

"STOP!" I wailed at the top of my lungs. "STOP!"

Alas, Twila couldn't hear me. Almost immediately she emerged from the bathroom and said with distasteful glee, "Got him!" My heart sank. The darn fly had been here for so long, then he was sucked up just when I wanted his picture for our blog. Jason, gone.

A couple of hours later I had a thought. Maybe Jason wasn't dead. I emptied the DustBuster on some newspaper and sifted through the dust and Triscuit crumbs. Finally I found him and carefully removed him from the detritus. I blew some of the crud off him, but it was too late. He just lay there in still repose, off to Fly Heaven or Fly Outhouse, or wherever they go.

Then something caught my eye and I leaned down to take a closer look at my old fly friend. Funny, I'd never noticed that tiny goalie mask before.

Read the damn description, will ya!

As you know, I was headed to the NYPL yesterday. But while on the train I changed my mind and from GCT veered off toward the Whitney. Too many new and interesting exhibitions beckoned: Edward Hopper, a River Phoenix doppelganger video by Ed Lachman, Paul Thek (almost lost but not forgotten, at least by the Whitney). Oh and a solo show of Sara VanDerBeek's work, which I thought I wanted to see ( but I was wrong).

I was particularly intrigued by the description of an exhibition by Lee Friedlander. It was called, America by Car. And it was terrific. Although the photos look simple and stark, they are actually full of detail. Some scenes are framed in the windshield and/or the side windows, while others appear in the rear view mirror. I went around trying to identify the state in which each photo was taken, which was fun for a while -- until I became frustrated at not getting any of them right.

At one point, I was getting up close and personal with a photo taken in Alaska when I heard this very loud NY voice behind me. It sounded like she was using a megaphone. She said, "You know what I don't like about these photos? There's just too much car. Look! There's a car in every photo. Nope, just too much car."

What, you might wonder, popped into my mind as her words reverberated around the gallery? Well, I'll tell you. I thought of my (then six year old) nephew Soren, who while riding in his family car one day, commented on the cursing of the driver (his mother, yelling at another driver). Soren said, "Everyone's a critic." And that's what I thought yesterday.

Voter anger.

Newspaper headline: "Voters send angry message". I love it.

The elections are over, at last, so now the campaigning for 2012 can begin. That would be my angry message: "Give us a break!"

I'm actually happy about the 2010 results, sort of. Colorado was, by and large, sane, unlike much of the country. I'm glad the GOP is in control of the House (but I hope they don't elect Boehner speaker), because maybe Republicans will actually have to do something now, or take more blame if they don't.

Voters were angry because Wall Street trashed our economy. They were angry because of the high unemployment rate. They were angry because of the federal deficit. Etc. So what did they do? They put those back in office who caused the problems in the first place and who prevented more from being done about the problems. Go figure.

That's the thing about democracy. By definition, it will always hover around mediocrity, not much worse nor much better than the average citizen.

Whoopee.

Liberries

Do you know why people mispronounce library? It's a protest. No language should contain a word that has the "br" sound right in the middle of it. Ask any six year old.

What I really want to talk about is how wonderful it is to live among people who love libraries. Most communities in which I've lived have relegated the library to cast-off warehouses or dark, dank, low-ceilinged buildings that even senior center administrators won't touch. Then they allocate to the library a budget that wouldn't support the book collection of a hamster...or a Sarah Palin or a George Bush.

In contrast, the libraries of Westchester County are gorgeous and inviting. I have yet to find one I don't love. Check it out:

I admit, it might be hard to see why I'm gushing over this place, but take a look inside:

This is the "reading room" and it's just as gigantic as it looks. The sun pours in, the chairs are comfy. It's like hanging out in the library you always wanted to have in your own mansion one day

And here's the library in Rye (a mere 10 miles away). It too is gorgeous inside.

Today I'm off, yet again, to the NY Public Library. As you know from earlier posts, I won't find any books there, but I'll be able to sit in some comfy chairs.

Dodecants.

This is my compulsory post du jour. For about a week I'd been planning what I really wanted to write today, but Twila came home and killed him. So I'm thinking about what I want to do about that, and in the meantime, here is my current horror story:

That's a diagram of the end of an optic. The concentric yellow lines are layers of glass and the radial gray lines are spacers. The concentric blue lines form the intermediate mandrel, where we change from sextants to dodecants. (Actually, the people in the lab call them 12tants, but that's only because they're PhDs.) That switch on FM1 is going to happen in about two days.

The reason I'm going all Edgar Allan Poe on that is because the number of spacers per layer is about to double, from 60 to 120. That means that the number of hardware pieces that hold the spacers is also going to double, from 48 to 96. So everyone is going to have twice as much work.

That isn't a bad thing, in itself. Currently my workday is grind-limited. I arrive at 04:15, remove the hardware from FM1 and start the first rough grind, then remove the hardware from FM2 and start the first grind there. The reason I go in so early is to get the grinds done before the techs arrive at 08:15, and the three grinds take a bit over 3 hours. When the initial grinds have been started on both optics, I can breathe a bit easier. I then prepare the hardware for the techs to install the next layer of glass, but I finish that usually with 45 minutes or so to spare. Then I read or something until the final grind finishes on FM2, so I can finish that up and go home. When FM1 goes to dodecants, there will be more hardware to prepare, but I'd rather be working than reading, since I'm being paid. It will also be easier to stay awake.

The scarier part is getting the grinds started early enough. I'm faster at removing the hardware, but there is a limit to how fast I can try to do it - I've learned that heavy pieces of metal have little trouble smashing through the optics, if given the chance. If the NuSTAR mission were to be scrubbed because I broke a bunch of glass, a big bunch of people would be seriously annoyed. I might have to leave the country.

My estimate is that unloading FM1 will take about 15 minutes longer than it does now, which wouldn't be a problem. It would still be ready about the time Tom gets in, and Ilya, who loads FM2, arrives a bit later. If my optimism is justified, I won't have to freak out again until FM2, now on Layer 45, goes to dodecants. I suppose I could get up earlier then, if I had to, but that doesn't hold a lot of appeal.

P.S. Whether you're feeling blue or seeing red, please vote today. If you can, vote several times. The only person more uninformed than the typical American voter is the typical American non-voter. Not that I find that comforting in any way.

I Hate Birds

Really. I do. And I'm sending out a big *sorry* to all you bird lovers and bird watchers out there. I definitely don't want to offend anyone, especially those of you who plan to vote for a democrat today. If you are a bird lover and you vote the democratic ticket and you also vote for the propositions etc that I support (feel free to ask), please ignore this post and go vote. You can read it later.

Anyway, as I was saying, I hate birds, especially New York birds. I can't figure out what useful purpose they serve. I do know that they poop all over the place. And I find it particularly annoying when they poop on me. Yesterday, I went to the Tarrytown library but I arrived a little too early so I walked over to the post office and the bank. Just normal chores, you know. I did *not* stop under a tree to answer my phone or anything like that. I was just walking along minding my own business -- and in a good mood, I might add -- when this bird decides to drop a load of shit on me. Now that put me in a *bad* mood, especially when I couldn't find any tissue or anything to wipe it off.

I'm recovering...slowly. I'll be back on track tomorrow. Cheerful, I'm sure -- especially if you democrats go out there and vote!

Halloween in New York

Durf & I have always loved Halloween. We dress up in scary costumes and Durf traditionally rigs up a fright, like a giant spider that drops onto the shoulders of the trick-or-treaters. We measure the success of our Halloween by the number of kids who burst into tears of fright or sail off our stoop into their daddy's arms.

So successful was our venue in Dublin that we had over 100 kids. In fact we suspected that some left and came back with other friends (or not) -- especially the year we ran out of candy and Durf went to the store and brought back boxes and boxes of *full-sized* (yep) candy bars.

Because we live in the back country of Colorado, we had only 8 trick-or-treaters the first year we were there. We grew that number to 35 by having Durf slay me with an axe after I opened the door. I would scream and toss candy at the kids as I fell to the floor.

Ok, back to NY. We actually expected to have ZERO trick-or-treaters. After all, we live in an apartment complex. And my mother never had any kids come by when she lived in a similar complex in Dublin. But much to our surprise, our NY doorbell rang for the first time at 5:30. The sun was still in the sky, for god's sake.

The final count last night was only 22. Most came while it was still light out and all were pre-teen. That was new. Best of all, it felt like a good-old-days Halloween. The kids were excited, they actually said "Trick-or-Treat," and they shouted out "Happy Halloween" as they raced down the steps and over to the next apartment.

Question: How old were you when you last went trick-or-treating? I'll confess...I was 19! And married!