b'dee b'dee b'dee b'dee

Dear Livejournal, I am finished with New Ideas.  There's a non-zero chance I'll go see next week's shows but since I don't know anyone in them, I don't feel very compelled.  Mostly I'll be hanging out with my bro.  Today's shows went very well.  Despite the eccentricities of The Flying Avro Arrow, I had a good time with it.  It's being remounted in the Summer for Fringe and we'll see if I get an invite to revisit my sterling portrayal of Eisenhower.  For the moment, I'm glad to be able to start focusing on Monstrous Invisible where I'm sure I shall be a magnetic HP Lovecraft.  Both performances of Sex on the Beach went well and I'm somewhat sad to be done with it but onwards and upwards as they say.  Because it's awesome, I'll end with this.

Have a good night, Livejournal.

You're a good friend.

What sound does a search engine make?

Male flowers of Broom Crowberry.

Dear Livejournal, I had a first at work today: I abandoned my post.  Rachel and I were under the impression that my folks would be arriving some time in the evening.  After emailing them in the morning, we discovered they were showing up much earlier.  This led to something of a panic but finally crescendoed in my asking to leave work three hours early.  It was an odd feeling, running off with almost half of my day still left but in the end, it was the right decision.  I got home, cleaned up the house and was in a good mood to welcome my folks who promptly took us out for a tasty meal at the James Joyce.  The evening was capped with an excellent performance of Sex on the Beach where I was only mildly slapped.  I call today a success.

What do you call it, Livejournal?  You're a good friend.

Yours truly, Leeman

I am new to Latin (plowed through Wheelock in a couple weeks) and I'm working through a passage of Tischendorf written in Latin and would like to verify that I understand how this one sentence begins. He writes: Quodsi verum est ut in veteri est proverbio, non facile spargi rumorem... If I understand this correctly, he is saying: "And if the old adage is true, a rumor is not easily spread..." Does my translation capture that correctly?

Cake vs. Pie: The Tournament (via fs_appetizers)

Voting has already begun.

Location: 122 High Street. Loughton, Essex. Opposite M&S.

Pie's a shiny new shop in the town of Loughton, way out east on the Central Line in greater London. It has a few tables for eating in - full on the day - and a solitary table out front on the broad sidewalk. I suspect it has wider aspirations, given that its Facebook and Twitter accounts are named PieLondon.

First things first: the pies are good. Buttery, crisp crust with ample filling on the medium size serving. The steak and mushroom was classic, well-rounded and rich, but not more. The chicken, leek, and ham, on the other hand, was a standout, with a lovely, light wholegrain mustard sauce to bring it all together. Sweets were forgettable, and would have been improved by taking a note from the savory pies and being made in more delicate or distinctive crusts. As was, bland pastry enveloped a nicely smooth chocolate-hazelnut mousse whose flavor couldn't quite counterbalance the crust. Equally bland pastry and crisp meringue shrounded an intense layer of Jolly Ranger flavor-like lemon-passionfruit filling. They looked very pretty at least.

Inside, the counter is a visual combination of pastry store, jewelry store, and bank. Large, solid glass cases filled jewel-like with hot or cold pastries, sweet and savory, cut a line down the edge of the countertop. (Photo) The gaps between the cases, bank cashier-like, are the windows of opportunity for ordering. The signage is poor: pies hide the bottom half of their labels, and the hot pies are cryptically flagged with abbreviations whose entirety is divided between the two halves of the sticker wrapped around a toothpick. Fortunately, there's a flier - for the astute - to read in compensation.

Food options include three sizes of pie, from miniature to small dinner party, mashed and baked potatoes, mashed and baked squash, substantial salads, drinks - hot and cold - and a beautiful array of sweets, some of which might be more memorable than the ones we had. Some of it's for takeaway, especially the mash already in plastic containers and larger pies. It's not cheap, with the medium pies priced at £4.75, but it's not trying to compete with Gregg's. If it gets its signage and intimidating countertop act together, this could be long-term competition for the likes of Square Pie.

Dear Livejournal, last night was not as smooth a sailing as opening but we'll just have to redouble our efforts tonight.  My folks fly in this evening and will come see me sing and act tomorrow.  I'm looking forward to seeing them.  I have a very different growing up experience with my parents than my brothers do.  Given our eleven year difference, that shouldn't be too surprising.  Two of the big factors include my brothers' stint in boarding school for their secondary education and then my parents' resignation from Nigeria right as I was about to start 6th grade.  This meant that, to some degree despite being the youngest, I was my parents' first full time teenager that they had to raise.  While the end result is the stunning and spectacular me, it has created an interesting contrast with how my brothers were raised.  Boarding school plus the age difference also meant that I have very spotty recollections of my brothers up until well into my childhood.  I can recall a week here, a summer there but until I moved back to the States permanently, I think it's fair to say I wasn't quite sure what these large fellows were.  Seventeen years have passed since my time in Nigeria though and in that time I have got to know both brothers very well and have to say I'm the richer for it.  It does make me wonder what growing up with them more contiguously would have been like.

Contiguously is a fun word, Livejournal.  You're a good friend.

Yours truly, Leeman

Glass Bell from Makers Market. So much cool stuff on there!



Description says:

In a former life, this glass bell was a bathroom sink – useful, but unmusical. If the name
Harry Partch means anything to you, you’ll know why I needed a glass bell in a frame.

Overall, it’s 22” x 22” x 16” high. This model was meant for your belfry, but should your bell tower be unavailable, I can make a taller, floor-standing tintinnabulator.

FYI, "barista" =/= "barrister".

Guy comes up from Berkeley to buy a dumbbell set for $40 (I think I paid the same).  He drives like an hour and a half through rush hour traffic.  When he gets here I ask if he wants any other furniture.

"How much are the lamps?"

"I'll sell you those two for $12."

"How about $20?"  he says.

"Okay."

Weird.

And another guy from San Jose wanted to drive up and get the dumbbell set as well.  Is there some kind of dumbbell famine I don't know about?

(P.S.  the first person to make a "dumbass" joke in the comments wins a set of dumbbells for only $800)

Classics degrees at Leeds: The degrees in Latin and Greek are going to be cut, part of the funding cuts pressure which is causing cuts in languages all over the places. But I'm particularly sorry to see so many Latin and Greek degrees affected. There's a student FB group, Save Classics@Leeds.

Short stories: Polyphony, volume 7 of a highly-reviewed fantasy/slipstream anthology series, is in danger of going under if it doesn't have enough pre-subscribers by Friday. Commentary on the issue here, here, and here. I note that it's moderately expensive, but publishing has costs. It has spawned more debate over the vibrancy (or lack thereof) of the short story market.

Data on having a novel published: Parts one and two of Jim Hines's survey of the successful quest for a professional novel sale among authors is out. I particularly like the graphs.

Pan d'oro and Panettone: It came two days after I ordered it, to my astonishment. I now have all the panettone in the world, and yet there's still more of it on sale for UKP2.99 and 3.99. Note that the cheapest shipping price is 6.50, so if you're tempted, factor that into consideration. (Context)

Not anymore.

I'm new to this group, and new to Latin. I know a few of the basics, but in Latin, that's not even enough to string a proper sentence together without mutilating it. :P

I'm teaching myself by reading Latin texts with English translations that are as literal as possible, and I plan on picking up my "Latin for Dummies" book again once it gets unpacked from my recent move.

This community has already been pretty useful to me, and I've only been on it for a couple of days. Since at this stage, I'm more comfortable mutilating my own language on purpose than I am mutilating Latin by accident, just allow me to say that I look forward to Latin-izing with all y'all. ;)

Dear Livejournal, my opening night was a success!  We had no hiccups, we had no long awkward silences, we were spot on.  Randy, Jerry, Mark, Sean and Siham all came out to see me and it was quite a delight.  I hope the next four shows go just as well.  It's all very exciting!

Wish me luck, Livejournal.  You're a good friend.

Yours truly, Leeman

It may be indicative of how little I have in the way of t.v. habits that, if I put a television program into my calendar far enough in advance, I will often remember to watch it, but rarely otherwise. (Eurovision has been in my calendar since the dates were announced.) I had about two weeks' warning on tonight's BBC4 Alan Davidson documentary, and so managed to watch it in real time, as broadcast.

Alan Davidson wrote the magnificent Oxford Companion to Food, a volume I refer to frequently, and also founded the delectable Oxford Symposium, the conference with the best food in the world. He grew up all over the UK - his family moved frequently - and then worked over large swathes of the world as a diplomat. In Laos, when his wife was confused by so few names for so many fish, he wrote a book encompassing 144 Laotian fish, their names, and identifiers. Soon after, he left foreign service and from there, food writing, and promoting food as an academic discipline increasingly became his work.

Part of the wonder of watching the show was how many of the people interviewed, or at least filmed in passing, I recognized from attending the Oxford Symposium. I was delighted to learn that Paul Levy is (co-)credited with coining the word "foodie". The Mekong River looks spectacular. The only footage of Davidson cooking seems to have been from the Martha Stewart show, and the documentary made good use of it. I've never browsed the Ws in the book, so look forward to reading his entry on "washing up", in which the washer is likened to a priest before the altar. QI apparently relies on the book quite heavily in researching its questions.

The documentary was really a labor of love, an affectionate look at the history of the man and his major legacies. It wasn't particularly svelte or overproduced, although too many close-ups of pouring wine started to put me visually off wine. It was, however, a labor long in the making as is shown by filming of the Oxford Symposium - two years ago. I left with a desire to read more of the book, the Oxford Companion to Food - and best of all, one I already own and so don't need to spend more .

Have you *seen* this shit?! They're a "print on demand" publisher that used to specialize in academic theses and crap like that, but have now found it much more profitable to charge you $46 for a 100-page bound set of Wikipedia articles. Yes, Wikipedia is aware of this. The same set of "editors" (fake names, surely!) are responsible for a great many other "books" of the same crapulosity, all of which have a big red label on the front which says, excitedly, "High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles!"

I've tagged their Noh drama book I tripped over on Amazon with the tags dubious, sketchy, buyer_beware, caveat_emptor, recycled_content, do_not_buy, do_not_cite, and do_not_use.

Dear Livejournal, we performed in front of a live studio audience this evening and, despite some hiccups (hiccoughs for the British) we did a decent job.  Now let's see how people feel about us once they've parted with their money.  I doubt they will be quite as forgiving.  As I sit here, I find no words coming to me.  Perhaps I have used them all up.  I will just say that my Christopher Walken impressions made quite the splash this evening so there you have it.

There you have it, Livejournal.  You're a good friend.

Yours truly, Leeman

I had to venture out into a downpour last night to do a terrarium gardening demonstration at Random Tea Room. Figured it was a good opportunity to don the tweed suit that my man James of A Fine Tooth had so generously sent me this autumn. Treacherous thing so close to St. Paddy's, green tweed. Leprechaun-related jibes are expected, of course.

I'm blogging this through my iPod at some cafe at 27th and Judah in SF. Although
my thumbs are too big to type fast I am improving. It only took like forty minutes to type this. It's very warm today. This might have been exciting if I had stopped a few sentences back.