Sculpin

Last night I dreamed that I was alone in a children’s museum that was all about animals. There was a sort of petting zoo operated with giant pneumatic tubes. You’d be in a room watching animal documentaries, and when you saw an animal you wanted to meet you’d press a button and it’d be delivered to you, encased in ice from the neck down so that it wouldn’t scrabble in the tubes or attack the patrons. Press another button, and it’d be taken away.

The petting zoo system was broken, so I figured I’d just watch the documentaries. But one of them was so exciting that I lost my head and unthinkingly ordered a polar bear. Which arrived. Thunk! Turns out only the return was broken. I briefly petted the bear’s broad, confused-looking head, and realized that once the ice melted, I could be in big trouble.

I left the room, shutting the door firmly behind me, and ran downstairs to find a guy working on the machinery. “Um, excuse me,” I said. “I’ve just done the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” He grumbled a little, in a friendly way, and said he’d deal with it. Apparently the polar bear thing was a known problem. Then he handed me a set of delicate little scrapers and set me to cleaning out some tiny channels that had gotten clogged. When he got back from handling the polar bear situation, I was still working; we hung out for a while, chatting and working on the machinery.

Having dreamed that I’d made a bronze belt buckle in the shape of a sunflower, I was checking out the website of Danaca Design, a local metalcraft studio that offers some intriguing classes in jewelry-making. One of their instructors, Juan Reyes, looks like the long-lost brother of Paul Magid.

Every year it’s the same damn thing. Some young single woman takes a bubble bath, dresses up, cooks herself a nice dinner, and writes a gloppy, overheated article calling it liberation. In some markets she’ll tell you about her special night of masturbation, too. Yawn.

So that’s a nice, safe topic. But if there’s somebody else eating that dinner, heaven help you when the disapproving academic feminists find you. (Perhaps you won’t catch the acfem-flak if your dinner partners are Y-chromosome-free. Otherwise, you’re “taking women’s energy and giving it to men,” as I was once told. *spit*)

Incidentally, those articles are almost always “How to survive Valentine’s Day when you haven’t found Mr. Right.” They’re never “How to survive Valentine’s Day when you are the widow of Mr. Right,” which seems to me like a significantly tougher and more interesting problem. But presumably advertisers aren’t interested in old ladies.

“Each child takes one marshmallow which represents the body of Christ.” Via Too Many Chefs, here’s a biblical food site that strays into oddity. Recipe titles include “He’s Alive Buns” and “Obey Donuts”. I also like “Moses Parts the Red Sea Snack”.

“The donut represents the letter ‘O’ in obey. Let them know every time they have a donut, they are reminded to OBEY!”

Today my cold is four weeks old. I bought it a cinnamon roll as a birthday cake. And, I hope, as a retirement present. Surely, virus, your work here is done.

The old Morning Star bakery closed ages ago, but now the original owner has brought it back. It’s on 65th between Bagel Oasis and the Crepe Cafe. Their cinnamon rolls are darn good and just the right size. (Unlike those awful dryish ones as big as your head that you get up the road at the Honey Bear.) They are also notable for their mighty fine pretzels.

Julie Paschkis is a Seattle artist whose work you may recognize; she’s done a lot of local poster art, not to mention the packaging for Mama Lil’s Peppers. (Mmm.) I like her stuff a lot — it’s both mysterious and cheerful, whimsical and smart.

She’s put out a series of cards celebrating the Constitution and Bill of Rights. All the proceeds from their sale go to the ACLU.

There was an interview with her on KUOW a couple of months ago. “What if we all did what we could do? It would be pretty exciting,” she says. True words. (I’d better learn to do something.)

Nice breakfast with the Codex gang this morning. I’m sorry Joy wasn’t there, because I wanted to thank her for the great cards. Thanks, Joy! I love Making Fiends! They are up on our fridge right now, and every time I pass them I mutter, “I am no kind of cake!” and cackle to myself.

I bet the yo-yo competition was great. Too bad it was Saturday, not Sunday. D’oh! Oh, well. Josh and I wandered over to the cat show instead, where we watched the cat agility competition. (It’s not exactly the sheepdog trials. Herding cats is still not easy.) And it may be just as well that we didn’t get to carry out our plans for the afternoon — I was getting pretty significantly pale and tired, and going home early for a nap was a good idea.

I’m heading into Week 4 of feeling extra crummy. I did see the doctor on Friday, for thumping and poking and various examinations, and I don’t appear to have anything bacterial. It seems to be mostly a matter of just hanging in there and not doing anything stupid while my scraggly immune system does its thing. The cabin fever is fierce, but I’m trying to stay good, at least mostly. I know, I know. Rest and fluids. Grrr. And I’ve been doing supta baddha konasana, which is nice when you’ve been spending a lot of time curled up in Potato Bug Pose coughing your lungs out.

At least I have a new haircut and do not look like death warmed over. (Much. Hmph.) It’s sleek and cropped at the neck, but it’s a messy, slightly asymmetrical haystack of hair at the crown. A good deal shorter, in other words. At the rate I’m going, I’ll look like Jean Seberg in Breathless next year, and Mr. Clean the year after.

This may be the most dramatic browser exploit I’ve ever seen. And so simple and elegant. Play with it and you’ll likely see why I turned off International Domain Name support in my browser pronto.

If you’re in downtown Seattle at 12:30 this afternoon (Monday), you might want to check out the free Watjen Organ recital and demonstration at Benaroya Hall. The performance lasts about half an hour.

I’ve been meaning to go to one of these for years now. I don’t know if I can make it this time either; we’ll have to see if I’m still hacking up a lung. (It doesn’t look likely that I’ll go; I’ve had a relapse. Hmph.) If not, maybe in April.

I’m experiencing a relapse of that killer cold. Grr. This calls for some homemade chicken soup. And as it happens, I just ran across some notes I made about making good chicken stock. This is originally from a comment I made to Holly Wade Matter’s journal, where she says, “I am healed! Or closer to being healed, thanks (several dozen times over) to the gift of broth… That is the best darned chicken broth I have ever, ever tasted.” A wonderful compliment.

I used to make terrible chicken broth/stock. I had to make a study of it. The keys are using a pressure cooker, chopping the chicken up well, and cooking the meat a little first.

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