2 July 05
Return Of The Solar Cooker
We recently replaced our old CooKit from Solar Cookers International. This is a very simple solar cooker made of foil-coated cardboard which reflects sunlight into a black cooking pot that is placed in a transparent roasting bag. It’s timely having the new cooker, for it’s definitely solar cooking weather—long clear hot Davis summer days.
It’s so convenient. Yesterday I threw some quinoa pilaf into the pot with diced tomatoes and garlic and put it outside when I left for work, orienting the cooker to the southwest, and when I returned late in the afternoon it was ready to eat for dinner! This was good since the house was pretty hot and I didn’t want to cook inside. Today the meal was artichokes—yum.
1 July 05
On Charrette
I feel like one of those legendary Parisian architecture students in the 19th century, finishing drawings right on the cart on the way to the delivery spot. We are now into third and fourth proofs of chapters of this thing. And delivering Part One to Kinko’s this evening, I discovered they’re going to be closed on Monday.
Here’s a wave from the cart…
1 July 05
Eyes On A Comet
At 5:52:12 GMT on July 4th, plus or minus 10 seconds, the space probe Deep Impact will slam into the comet 9P/Tempel 1, currently at a modest 10th magnitude in brightness. No one knows what we’ll see, but it’s possible a flash from the impact may be visible in a medium-sized telescope. It should be worth getting mine out for the event.
29 June 05
Dry Run in the Heat
Today was the hottest day of the year so far, about ten degrees hotter than yesterday. It means shutting all the doors and window shades when we leave in the morning to keep the house as cool as possible.
I cycled in to Kinko’s in downtown Davis today at lunchtime to pick up the sample chapter I had taken in yesterday. Some pages are in color, some in black and white; the whole thing is double-sided, and it’s well over 400 pages at this point and I don’t want to be resolving weird issues next Tuesday, a recipe for premature aging.
Then I cycled in again after work to meet Numenius at the bank to try and get a sterling check for the second time in five days. Alas, no luck: this system or that system was down. As a consolation we went to the Picnic in the Park and ambled home. It was still well over 90 degrees fahrenheit at 8:00 pm. It’s sleeping in wet T-shirt weather.
28 June 05
Don Gallo
We’re not getting much of a chance to sleep in these days. The chicken who was present upon our return from North Carolina turns out to be a young rooster who has lately learned how to crow. Nowadays he does this outside our bedroom window, bright and early in the morning.
No one is sure where he came from. Not across the street—though they have had chickens there, there’s never been a rooster. Our landlady thinks somebody just dumped him off here. So far he’s survived the trucks zooming by, and the local coyotes (one of whom we saw from the train Sunday running off with a jackrabbit).
He’s pretty to look at, but I could do without the alarm clock!
27 June 05
From the Trenches
If typefaces were colors, Perpetua would sing quinacridone magenta, then shift up an italic octave to California sunrises. I am swimming in Perpetua these days, which is slightly decadent, slightly not quite anybody’s mandated style, slightly involves flying under the radar of the various style dictators. I have no business having this much fun on a project that is so big, so consuming, so apparently stressful. I’m not stressed. Milagro.
Sabon would be blue, dark blue, but not quite Prussian. Garamond would also be blue but lighter. Cochin would surely be cochineal, ludicrous, outlandish, especially with that italic “n,” dancing on a page like a medieval tumbler.
Berkeley, my bread-and-butter, would bear the golden crust of homemade loaves.
Helvetica, of course, black. And Futura. And Gill Sans. Hmm. Something about those sans-serifs, lining up behind the Trajan column again. Perhaps they are only slate gray, perhaps tinged with light green, like smooth serpentine slopes with a red splash of Clarkia.
Arial is not a typeface. It’s a bastardized corporate THING. It is gray-brown, not organic soil, not the beautiful shiny chestnut of a buckeye or loquat seed, not the textured beauty of walnut desks, not the gold on an eagle’s coverts, but sludge.
26 June 05
Battered in Oakland
The San Francisco Giants are not a pretty sight right now. We went to their game against the A’s in Oakland to witness a 16-nothing drubbing. The Giants’ pitching staff looked like they had stayed out far too late last night, their hitters were completely lost at the the plate, and the A’s young pitcher, Rich Harden, was at the top of his game, ending up allowing only one hit over seven innings.
We had fun nonetheless. The train ride was great. The Coliseum station platform has only been open a couple of weeks, and the person who collected our tickets had no idea we were expected to stop there. But all got sorted out, though we four ended up being the only ones left on the train to get off at that stop. It turned out to be a fast game, too—it wasn’t much of a dilemma skipping out to catch the early train home.
25 June 05
A Wheat Crop and Three Planets
They finally harvested the wheat out back. It seems about three weeks too late—we’ve had unusual rain twice since early June and some of the crop seems to be going a bit black—but it will probably fetch a good price anyway. Yolo County did well, agriculturally, last year, and this year seems likely to follow suit at least in certain crops.
There was also a crop of planets to look at this evening; Mercury, Venus, and Saturn were all close together in the western sky at sunset. I was at work till after dark, having gone in for a quick session after dinner, and ran into Numenius heading home with his binoculars having spotted all three.
Mars, then, in August…
24 June 05
To The Game By Rail
Last Sunday we saw an article in the Sacramento Bee that gave ratings for the five major league baseball stadiums in California (how did we end up with more baseball teams than any other state, anyway?). The Coliseum, home to the Oakland A’s, came in last. No matter. It’s looks like Sunday we’re going to be taking the train down with our friends Susan and Barbara (she of the em-dash debate) to watch the A’s play the Giants at the Coliseum. There’s a new train platform by the Coliseum, so we won’t even have to transfer to BART.
Both teams are doing poorly this season, so the spectacle may have more the air of an exhibition game—barring some miracle, neither team is playoff-bound. I try to support both teams, which makes these interleague games a bit conflicted. I think this means I wear neutral garb like my new Durham Bulls cap!
23 June 05
Arguing About Dashes
I’m working on the biggest publication project I’ve ever tackled. I’m doing the design, layout, and production editing for the California Wildlife Diversity report to Congress. This is hitting my desk a chapter at a time, and my job is to turn it into something that looks good, incorporating about 50 maps. The report will then become a book, about 300 pages, and the book will include 4-color photos.
The editor, a good friend of mine, is excellent. We see eye to eye on most details, I catch a lot of things she misses and vice-versa, and it’s a pleasure to work on this because it’s a project that’s being well managed. (My next two weekends will probably involve a lot of office time, but I had planned on my entire June being a nightmare, which it absolutely isn’t.)
Barbara and I cycled back from a friend’s house tonight arguing about how you punctuate the following four words, used to describe one of the bioregions in the report: Central Valley Bay Delta. Central Valley is one entity; Bay is a second; Delta is a third.
Barbara thinks it should be Central Valley—emdash—Bay—endash—Delta. I think the endash should be a slash, though I dislike them (they’re untidy and ugly, a bad combo). We discussed this heatedly for about a mile and a half, as the California fuchsia by the side of the road starts to come into bloom and the sun already sets a few minutes earlier than it did just two days ago…