Do Bike Helmet Laws Do More Harm Than Good?: I’m not sure what I think about this. If public health laws are intended to sacrifice the good of the few for the good of the many, then I suppose it makes sense – but I also am unconvinced that a few (or a lot, actually) people need to have their heads split open to encourage cycling amongst the many.
Month: April 2009
Where have we been? Part 2a
Raaaaaahhhh, originally uploaded by brixton.
After a very grumpy week, Shane suggested that we get away for the weekend – so we went to Rehoboth Beach, with a side trip to Milton, DE, and the Dogfish Head Brewery. More about this when we get our photos posted, but this might just be my new favorite picture of Shane, so I wanted to post it right away. Shane is handling a chunk of Palo Santo, a very dense wood from South America. Dogfish Head has a ginormous tank made of Palo Santo that they use to brew their Palo Santo Marron.
Where have we been? Part 1
Did we mention that we went to Seattle last month? Oh, cos we did.
To be more precise, we spent about a week in Seattle in early March, partially for vacation and partially for conference attendance. I don’t have a whole lot of pictures from the trip mainly because Shane had the fancy camera, and he hasn’t posted them yet (or has posted them as friends/family only) – also because I spent most of the trip inside a conference center, while he spent it wandering around. To be honest I’m hoping that this post will be the nudge he needs to actually talk about his adventures – but that’s neither here nor there.
Mel and Ray were our gracious hosts for the duration of our visit – showing us around their not-so-recently adopted city, making us delicious food (and margaritas!), driving us back and forth to the airport and also to Twin Peaks locations. I met Mel and Ray in Champaign in 2004, back when I was really involved in NaNoWriMo, and was terribly sad when they moved to Seattle in 2005. We haven’t had many non-Bonnaroo opportunities to hang out since then, so I really enjoyed having a lot of downtime to chat, eat, and renew our friendship. I also enjoyed their enthusiasm for daytrips, as with our trip to the Great Northern Hotel:
and to the Double R Diner (now Twede’s), where we shared a slice of cherry pie:
In addition to Twin Peaks-y things, we spent a glorious afternoon at the Pike Place Market, drank fancy drinks in a variety of locations, caught up with a lot of friends ranging back to high school, toured the Seattle Public Library, and snuck into some library things (or at least Shane did – I was legitimately there to give a talk on the Facebook roadshow).
This marked both of our first trips to the Pacific Northwest, aside from a family trip to Vancouver when I was a kid, and we both really liked what we saw. Navigating on foot and by mass-transit can be challenging, especially when there are OMG HILLS, but I also feel like you get to see and know a lot more of the city that way. I hope that next time we visit Seattle I get more time to bum around, eat remarkable cupcakes, and enjoy many more damn fine cups of coffee!
IM transcript of the day
(5:26:21 PM) gelmaninfo@meebo.org/Home: what is your topic?
(5:26:35 PM) Patron: cow sharing in Maryland
[snip]
(5:32:29 PM) gelmaninfo@meebo.org/Home: is there a synonym for ‘sharing’ that is used in the farm business?
(5:33:21 PM) Patron: i am not certain
(5:33:25 PM) Patron: its like buying cow stocks
(5:33:35 PM) Patron: not a stock but buying like the “shares” to a cow
(5:33:45 PM) gelmaninfo@meebo.org/Home: right. I know they do that in PA with horses
(5:33:56 PM) Patron: really??
(5:34:01 PM) Patron: whats the purpose of that?
(5:34:21 PM) Patron: like the purpose of using cow shares is to get around the law that sales of raw milk are illegal.
(5:34:55 PM) gelmaninfo@meebo.org/Home: oh, my dentist just likes to ride a horse but can’t afford to own one alone… different!
And the winner is…
Best Sweet: Elizabeth
Best Savory: Debbie G.
Best Filling-to-Crust Ratio: Dolsy
Best Presentation: Ann
Best Crust: Tina
Best Overall: Elizabeth
Except that on pi/e day (observed), everyone’s a winner.
Oh ho ho! What’s in my oven?
Oh ho ho! What’s in my oven?
nutmeg-maple cream pie | smitten kitchen
Tomorrow is pi/e day observed, after all! 3.14159265
Stuff I’m digging
Hey there Internet! I don’t have much to say tonight, but I thought I would share with you a few sites I’ve been enjoying with the hopes that they will give you inspiration and/or spice up your feed reader of choice:
- Artificial Owl, which is a blog about abandoned man-made structures. The photos are eerie and beautiful. It’s maybe my favorite thing on the Internet right now – except for, of course, you friendos out there.
- Holga, which is a Tumblr dedicated to “Art, literature, music and film from creative wonders around the world.”
- 30 Bucks a Week, a blog kept by a Brooklyn couple who are trying to eat on $30 per week. That $30 doesn’t include booze, meals out, or non-food items usually purchased while grocery shopping – but technicalities aside, I’ve found it pretty inspiring.
- Letter from Hen Waller, which I just started reading recently, though I’ve been Flickr-spying on this couple for a while. Their dedication to sustainable urban agriculture and urban living is what I hope to aspire to someday.
- Pete Bakes!, which is a new discovery by way of my friend Stephen. It is, as you might imagine, about baking, and is written by a 20-something dude who lives in DC.
- Zooborns. I know some of you don’t enjoy images of cute animals, but I do, and Zooborns does it best – perhaps even better than Cute Overload. Yeah, I said it.
If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to bed in my hotel room 143 miles away from home. Let me know what you think if you check out any of the above – and also if there are wonderful things I should be reading.
American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial
American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial
The awesome Scouting NY blog has more photos of the memorial: “two men are desperately crying for help while a third tries to pull a victim from the water. I can’t tell you how moving this is at high tide, when the water laps at the man.”
This is really moving me today.
Obama in the ‘hood!
Attorney General Eric Holder’s installation was held at GW’s Lisner Auditorium last week. Do you know what that means?
SNIPERS ON THE ROOF!
The library stayed open through the whole thing, despite the fact that H Street was closed and heavily guarded.
Tina and I hung out on the street as long as possible until we were sent inside.
We did get to see Caroline stuck on the corner, and also a fabulous set of police manuevers.
After all of that – my friend Debbie did get to see the man himself! She was coming out of the Marvin Center just as he was leaving, so she waved, and he waved back. Hooray! I’m sure these things get pretty old when you’ve been in DC forever – but it’s still pretty dang exciting for me.
latterdaybohemian 