This man is one of my heroes. This nice posting from eGullet.com tells about him. (I have a couple of his books, too.)
I’m deep in work on Wizard’s Holiday, and probably won’t have any time to spare for extracurricular activities until this time next week. Just so those who are curious should know….
Off to the Continent to take care of some business: back shortly. (Peter’s staying home, so there’ll be somoene to put sunblock on the cat’s ears.)
…and now I can spend even less time thinking about it, now that I know where to find the Postmodernism Generator!
(Thanks to Cinderella Bloggerfeller for the link.)
Anybody else just see “The Day that Britain Stopped”?
Wow. Wow. Wow. PBS viewers in the US, if you’re lucky, you may get it too. The problems of UK transport aren’t exactly approximate to those in US cities… nonetheless, I can see a NY version of this. (shudder)
My back is killing me today: so not much blogging. Here, look at this instead. (Warning: adult language.)
(Yes, I have my eye on a new chair. Probably this one. The thing comes with a twelve-year guarantee. And has the same name as the Queen of Kelts. That can’t be bad.)
A long busy day at the computer, working on Wizard’s Holiday. But it was punctuated by a couple of cases of the Universe repeating itself.
(1) I’m finishing up a chapter, typing at fairly high speed, when I hear a sound that we’ve learned to think of as Mr. Squeak’s “Look What I’ve Got For You!” cry: “yow-YOW?! Yow-YOW!” I go to see what it is, and find that he’s already brought it into the front hall for me. It’s a duck, about half grown, lying there looking very flat. Another duck. (Though the thought has since occurred to me: is this perhaps the same duck as the duckling Goodman brought in some weeks back? Are we perhaps dealing, here, with the Stupidest Duck in Wicklow?)
Poke the duck gently. Duck blinks. Okay…not a dead duck: just shocky. Let’s find out how shocky.
We have a routine for this kind of thing, now. Open downstairs bathroom, run water into sink, insert duck, close door, bribe cat with tuna to forget about duck. Call Peter to fetch Duck Repatriation Box. After ten minutes or so, open bathroom to evaluate condition of duck and devise nursing plan. Duck now behind toilet, eyeing practitioner with some malevolence. Nursing evaluation: Client is suitable for release to home environment.
Insert duck into Repatriation Box, put on boots, go out with Peter to pond to repatriate duck. Duck is released into reeds, sits there somewhat dazed for a moment, then skedaddles off through the reeds into the deeper water. Good. Stay out there, duck, I think. At least until I finish this chapter. Turn around and walk back home 
accompanied by three cats demanding to know what we’re doing, and a fourth cat indignant about having his duck taken away. ((Note to self: sodium pentothal faces no competition from canned tuna as a memory-dulling drug.) On arriving home, retire Duck Repatriation Box to garbage, as it has been well seasoned with Duck Poop. (Wel, if Mr. Squeak dragged me across the field, and then someone shut me in the bathroom and after that put me in a box and hauled me crosscountry, probably my underwear would need changing too.)
So much for that. However:
(2) Return to computer, finish work. Knock off around 10:30 PM. Desire for food emerges, bigtime. Go to freezer, rummage around. Find small sirloin steak. Plan emerges: grill sirloin, saute’ onions, deglaze pan with balsamic vinegar and red wine, make roesti using two-day-old boiled potatoes on counter (the two days give the starch time to turn to sugar, which helps the texture of the roesti). Eat. Yum, yum.
Defrost steak, remove from wrapping, clip small freezer-burned part off. Go into living room to do something for a moment. Peter goes in to get phone to call his mom…and calls me instead. “Uh…your steak is gone!”
Well, not gone, exactly. Half of it is on the floor. The rest of it is inside the Cat Goodman; yea, even he of the sunblock-anointed ears. Goodman is presently outside, looking through the cat door and trying to assess how pissed off we are.
Nothing I can do at this point but laugh and defrost another steak. The rest of the meal goes forward as planned. Around the time I sit down to it, Goodman oozes back in through the cat door, sits down in the middle of the kitchen floor, and starts washing with a “Not My Fault, It Menaced Me And I Was Forced To Eat It In Self-Defense” expression. I have my glass of wine and regard his insouciance with amusement. “You little sod,” I say. “How would you like it if I ate your food?”
The Cat Goodman looks up at me. But you wouldn’t. Hahahahahaha….
I give him a superior look and drink my wine.
Just another day in Paradise…
The Main Concourse of Grand Central as seen from the Metrazur restaurant at the east end of Grand Central. It’s a shame the flag blocks the view of the single tile that they left uncleaned (for contrast) when they were doing the ceiling-cleaning.
Interesting: “The granddaughter of Winnie the Pooh creator A.A. Milne had sued to regain the rights to the honey-addicted bear, which she planned to sign over to the Walt Disney Co.” And she can’t have them, it seems.
Yes, it’s that time of year again. As the days get longer and the Sun slides toward the Solstice, most mornings we have to catch the Cat Goodman and put sunblock on his ears.
Goodman is white. Very white. Indeed, dazzlingly white. (Hence his name — a reference to the white helper-cat in the Uncle books. 
The neighbors call him “Mr. Persil”, a reference to a local brand of laundry detergent and its ads for whiter-than-white wash.) The weird thing, though, is that for one reason or another he has very little fur on his ears. As a result, they get sunburned, and some summers back we started noticing that around the beginning of June, Goodman would start turning into a cat version of those pink-eared white fayhounds that run through Irish mythology.
Skin cancer is a very real threat for a cat in this situation. So we started putting sunblock on his ears. The problem is (a) knowing on which day you’re really going to need to do this — Irish weather reports being famously afraid to say the word “sunny” for fear of scaring said celestial body away — and (b) once you’ve determined that this is the day, then you have to find and catch the cat. Goodman, like any other respectable (former) tom with a large territory to patrol, does not consult us regarding his comings and goings, and may be a mile or two away when the weather shifts to sunny. This introduces a sometimes annoying element of chance into the whole business.
Anyway, we caught him just now and did the deed. He struggles a lot less than he used to. 
Just watch it start raining now, though…
(In answer to an e-mail inquiry: The sunblock we’re using is from La Roche-Posay: the brand is “Anthelios” — a fragrance-free, hypoallergenic spray-on sunblock for fair skin, SPF 30. It gives Goodman no trouble, but I’m still looking for a spray-on hypoallergenic with a higher SPF. 50 would make me happier.)
I had no idea that Chesley Bonestell had worked at Warner Brothers, or that he had so much film work under his belt. Live and learn… Besides space art, the website contains some of his early architectural art, and details of matte work he did for the movies.
Also, don’t miss the “Man Conquers Space” website, detailing the film project dedicated to bringing to life the Collier’s Magazine series about a mid-20th century space program. The link page alone is worth the price of admission.
Via Variety, at the very bottom of the “Dish” column, one sentence: “Mindfire Entertainment is prepping “Free Enterprise II: My Big Geek Wedding,” continuing the antics of Shatner and a group of sci-fi-obsessed, thirtysomething Trekkies.”
Hokay…