Weekend pieces

I brought grape juice over to friends Friday afternoon. It was amazingly warm, in the 40s! I walked over without a jacket, even, and it felt wonderful, being able to move more freely, unhampered by coat and other winter paraphernalia.

I noticed that the chest-high snow drifts of Monday had melted to waist high two days later, knee-high by Friday, and the weekend rain has made the snow perhaps ankle-height now. And now things have frozen again, and are likely to stay that way until the next snow storm.

I was invited out for Shabbat lunch, the first invitation out in a long while. It was good to see my friends; it felt like we'd been more in phone contact recently, and of course the baby has changed a lot, even in a few weeks. Unfortunately, we didn't see too much of him, since he went down for a nap partway through (his dad going with him...). I met some new people, all Harvard academic types, which was cool.
And the food was lovely. There were two kinds of bread, one with (whole) flax seed in it, that had a sort of pancake flavor, the result of using self-rising flour for part of it, apparently, the other a crustier nutty raisin bread. Both were good, in completely different ways. A wonderful salad, greens and endive, feta and Granny Smith apple slices, a lemony spicy dressing, and pasta with creamy mushrooms (*not* cream of mushroom soup, but hunks of cooked mushroom, mixed with some creamy something, then put on pasta). Also halves of artichokes, and asparagus. I ate far too much, couldn't eat any of the chocolate cake for dessert.

Sunday I made it to the Garment District's sale. I hadn't been sure I was going to go, but someone requested a feather boa, so I had to get that. I wasn't much in the mood for lots of trying things on (to be fair, I almost never am. Other than underwear, I think I only bought one piece of clothing last year, a blouse for the formal wedding in November. The last clothing purchase before that was jeans, a year ago December.). I noticed it was a lot easier to consider black clothing, for some reason. I know I have lots of black already, but other colors weren't so interesting. Ah, well. I ended up with a black sleeveless minidress (where/when I'll wear it is unclear...). The zipper sticks some, and the salesperson suggested putting a bit of soap on the track, to make it slide better. Anyone know if this works? Oh, and I also bought a bunch of fabric from the 'linen' section, including some fabric with vest patterns and directions for sewing already printed on them. I don't think I want the vests, actually, but the fabric was fascinating. (Perhaps I shall end up quilting something after all.)

I was late meeting Queue and Treacle_Well at the Kendall for Rivers and Tides, a movie about Andy Goldsworthy and his installation art. It's a beautiful movie, the nature shots quite lovely. I hadn't seen any of his work before, and was really impressed with what he's created. There are certain forms that repeat, in so many situations, a curve that is marked in snow on a frozen lake, grass draped in tree branches, ice around a boulder (the light shining through), a stone wall. He thinks very differently than most people, about nature, forms, patterns, shapes.
I left wanting to reread a book about a man who decides to make a stone wall on his property, teaching himself how to do so on the fly, and the lessons he learns thereby (not only about working with stone). I don't remember the title at all, though; read it some years ago now.
I also want to play with things, create something, and yet I have no natural materials lying around. Improvise...
And perhaps I will splurge and buy a book of the artist's works... yum.

Misc.

At first I thought it was just me having LJ difficulties this morning, so I upgraded the version of Netscape I have on my work machine (I had been using 4.7, I believe). It didn't help with LJ, except that it distracted me from checking my friends page quite so obsessively as I fiddled with the appearance of the pages, changing fonts and sizes, getting used to new icons. It feels strange, still, and a bit embarrassing to admit that, actually. (One side benefit of upgrading seems to be the lack of random spaces peppering my posts from work. Still has the tendency to eat the last character, but no longer to add one. Interesting.)

It's already that flat grey overcast that means precipitation on the way; I hope it doesn't start until I've gotten the drive home done with and have already snagged a parking spot.
(Nope - in the few minutes I've been typing, the flakes are already coming down rather quickly, mid-sized clumps blowing in what looks like a rather active wind.)
(1610: OK, maybe not; the snow has slowed to small flakes drifting down.)

Where's Bitty? My friends page is moving slower than usual for a Monday :-).

We got an email at work outlining a new opportunity: we can bring stuff in to be sent to soldiers in Military Support Packages. This is not a pen pal sort of suggestion, which I could understand, but a request for actual stuff. ( the list of suggested things )

I suppose I can understand the reading material, since that could get old rather quickly. But somehow I assume that the military (with the percent of the federal budget it commands) should be able to muster basic toiletries, snacks, paper and pens. I just don't understand why I should be asked to send these things. As the bumper sticker says, it's not the military that has to have bake sales... It doesn't help that I am not in favor of this projected war, either. I'm not keen on Saddam Hussein, but he hasn't done much recently that he hasn't been doing for the last decade, as far as I can tell. And just because Bush can't seem to find someone more connected to 9/11 to make a war on doesn't mean it's ok to start a war with him.

Art cars

As I was driving home tonight, I noticed a car behind me had a multi-colored hood. It looked rather like a tessellation. It got closer, and, indeed, it was a tessellation: there was an Escher car headed into Cambridge! The hood was covered with three colors of the lizardy tessellation that looks based on the hexagon. There were individual lizards on the sides of the car, as well, more anatomically realistic ones. And there were line drawings on the back bumper that seemed inspired by Daniel Pinkwater's Lizard Music. Very cool.

Last week or so, I saw a van with murals on it, fish swimming underwater. Perhaps Queue remembers it better?

And a couple of weeks ago I saw a silver car with silver-painted figures glued on top. The ones I remember best were upstanding (that is, standing up; no judgement on moral character) dinosaurs.

Are there more art cars out there than there used to be, or am I noticing them more?

Side art note: I now have two license plates that I'm supposed to destroy. Any ideas for what I should do with them, turn them into? One is bent a bit the long way. (I've already had a suggestion for a handbag. (Or a corset. But that sounds painful, frankly, even if it weren't beyond my skills.)).