Little Life Updates

Things have been busy, so I'm focusing on the basics: staying in shape, doing my homework, paying my bills. The latter has been the most difficult. I forget how much the city beats you up sometimes!

Wedding with Don and his family: Junction City, Kansas

 

Ropes course/ziplining with friends from UD: Newark, Delaware

Halloween. I was Max: Harlem, New York

The famous Roman cage cup at the Corning Museum of Glass: Corning, New York

More Corning glass

Notes from New York

The things I love and find strange and beautiful about New York City... especially things in Astoria.

Mural in Astoria

Giant sticker on a wall in Astoria

Mural in Astoria 

Socrates Sculpture Garden... in Astoria

Brooklyn Wort

Another beer competition! Don and I managed to squeeze into the Brooklyn Wort, an annual local homebrew competition. Brooklyn Wort judges picked the top 30 homebrews, from a pool of 85 contestants. We just barely made the cut (got in as alternates with our Fat Wizard Wheat!), and attended the final event/competition a couple weeks ago.

Simpleton Saison: 7.8% ABV, 26.5 IBUs

We showed up to the event with 5 gallons of my Simpleton Saison, so-called because I tried to stick as close to style as possible. It was also the first beer I brewed alone (i.e., sans Don). We took a cab to the Bell House, a venue in Gowanus, where hundreds of people were lined up and waiting to sample our beer. More than three hundred people attended -- they received a free sandwich and tasting glasses, with which to sample all 30 competition beers -- and we got some great feedback and many positive notes on our saison. We were seated at a table in between an amazing Imperial Coffee Stout and an American pale ale.

Don at the event table

At the end of the event, all attendees voted for their favorite beers (People's Choice), while a handful of judges voted for the same (Judge's Choice). We didn't end up winning any awards, but it was pretty damn cool to have been a part of the event as a finalist. We also got helpful feedback from the judge's scorecards: "relatively clean beer with lots o' phenols and peppery notes"; "head retention could be better"; "wonderfully long finish."

There is a small part of me that thinks it's funny that these adult beer judges are taking my beer seriously; I feel like a kid messing around with recipes in a grown-up's world. I guess I'll keep playing along!

Vacation #4: Burning Man

Last push of liberty and leisure! Don and I had plans to meet up with his friends at Burning Man, an art festival-cum-temporary city built out of nothing in the middle of the desert in Nevada. Burning Man is currently in its 27th year, and is bigger than ever (about 70,000 "citizens").

Describing Burning Man is like trying to describe a dream. It's wonderful, makes no sense to others, and lends itself to childlike storytelling ("and then we met up with our friends, then we swung on a trapeze, and then we took a nap, and then we wandered the desert for three hours, and..."). It was a week of Constant Fun, no holds barred. There is physical activity (plenty of it), music, art, beauty, nature, and lots of kindness. Using currency is not allowed; all experiences are in the form of "gifting," or giving to others without an expectation of compensation. An example: Ashram Galactica serves cold drinks to strangers every evening. They run out of beer the next day. We have lots of extra beer, so we give them some to serve at their bar. New friends, fun had by all, everyone wins.

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to apply these wonderful concepts to a sustainable model in the "default world." Gifting is impossible when you have mean people, money, and an uneven distribution of wealth. Hmmm.

There is also a slightly alarming disregard for safety ("safety third!"), incredible music, lots of dust, and most of all, sincerity and effort. The sheer amount of time, money, and elbow grease it took everyone to prepare their camps and art pieces was astounding. Want to build a giant fish covered in LED scales? Why not! Want to put some flame throwers on top? Sure! Now let's add the best subwoofer we can find.

Unfortunately, I have no night pictures -- I took a couple with my disposable camera, but they just looked awful and didn't really develop. Just imagine a misty black sea filled with colorful moving parts: schools of fish (people on bikes), sharks (mutant vehicles), beachcombers (Esplanade partygoers). Eventually there is just the black desert, unlit and unpeopled.

In Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco

View from Golden Gate Park

The pre-Burn crew, in Palo Alto

Driving over the Sierra Nevadas

Reno (a sad, sad city...)

Nevada scrub

Our solar concentrator, with John and Javed

Across the playa at sunset

The road to the Man

Best camp! Don learned how to use the cyr wheel while I got hula hoop lessons

Just your average shipping container movie theater in the desert

The Photochapel

Howling Wolf, the Man in background

Sunset over the giraffe

Vacation #3.3: Venice [updated]

Last stop: four days in Venice. The city reminded me of Bruges -- old, charming, inescapably touristic but enjoyable nonetheless. I very much liked the lack of cars (but not the lack of bikes!), and the omnipresence of salt water. Our apartment was located a short walk from the sea, not far from the northern Venetian islands. It was easy to find a small street where one could be quiet and think.

On our final day, we bought a day pass for the ferries and hopped from one island to the next: San Michel (a cemetery, where Stravinsky and Ezra Pound are buried, incidentally); Murano (famous for its colorful hand-blown glass); and Burano (famous for its lace and colorful houses). It was an awesome day, with incredible views and sun and water. For how much I wax poetic about mountains, I forget about how much I love water -- hearing the gentle lap of the tides and smelling the nice salty air does the body good. (Although I heard that the Venetians are not so good about where they dump their sewage...)

The Grand Canal

View of San Michel from the Fondamenta Nova

Grand Canal at sunset

Center piazza in the Doge's Palace (Palazza Ducale)

View from San Marco

(Mostly) family pic in San Marco

Obligatory nightly Frulala stop

Gondola

Venetian mask stand

The "fire exit" at Alta Acqua, an incredible used book store

"Giardino Occupado," an outdoor exhibit part of the Venice Bienniale

Left our mark on some ponte

The island of San Michel

Dad on Murano

Murano

Murano

The island of Burano

Classic "seagull against the sunset" picture

Mom on Burano

Fishing ships cleaning up for the day on Burano

Sunset over a park in Burano

Ferry ride back to Venice + profile on handsome man

Vacation #3.2: Florence

After four days in Rome, we took a train up to Florence, where we stayed for two nights. For electrical problems unbeknownst to us, we were upgraded from our third floor apartment to the top floor suite, which had two balconies and roof access. We spent the first night drinking wine and watching shooting stars...

View of the Duomo from our roof

Our street

The Duomo

Ponte Vecchio

Statue in the garden behind the Uffizi Gallery

Unfortunately, many of the sights in Florence forbade the use of photography: Michaelangelo's David in the Galleria del'Accademia; the incredible Uffizi Gallery; the inside of the Duomo. David was particularly moving -- it really validated the importance of seeing something with one's own eyes. I actually gasped when I saw it. It's amazing what differentiates this one statue with the thousands of others just like it, including its copies... nothing perceptible, that's for sure. Hmm. Will think on this one.

Also:

Handicapped chair lift that we sometimes used to move our "luggage"