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I ended up not going to New York this morning, so I am home for the day.  I think I will see if I am needed at work, which opens at noon today, and I am planning to go see Brett Dennen this evening.

What an exhausting set of five days.  I am SO ready for the weekend.

Tomorrow I am working all day.  On Sunday, my family and I will be traveling to Long Island for my great-great-aunt’s one hundredth birthday.

The glassware at my house is almost as diverse as the silverware in origin and purpose.  Interestingly, as the capacity increases, they tend to become less and less impact-resistant.  Because of the rather high frequency with which we break glasses, we have about six or seven different sets.  One of the inherent challenges this poses is storage compatibility; certain sets can be stacked in certain ways, some can be cross-stacked, but some cannot.  For instance, there are a few sets that are completely incompatible with each other; if stacked they will break or become completely stuck, necessitating the use of hot and cold water as an agent of thermal expansion and contraction.

Another complication is that some of the glasses fit in the dishwasher in certain ways and others do not.  For example, the top rack of the dishwasher has on the left side a sort of plastic ledge that folds down.  If you stack only mugs or small glasses under it, you can fold it down and stack another layer of short items on top, provided they aren’t tall enough to hit the top of the dishwasher.

The smallest set of glasses currently operation has perhaps two surviving members.  We have been using this one for almost a decade.  Only a few are left, but they are incredibly strong.  This is why it’s lasted so long.  We have a concrete countertop, and I have dropped these glasses onto it from a distance of close to five feet, and they have been fine.  They are practically indestructible.  They are also very well designed in that they are constructed of safety glass, so when they break, they don’t break into many long sharp fragments, they break into many small and rounded ones.  They are a pain to clean up, because they go everywhere, but you can sweep them up with your hands, and we don’t have to worry about missing them and having to watch out for them for weeks to come.  Excellent industrial design.  All glass-manufacturers should do the same.

I wonder if there is some sort of coalition or alliance of international glassware-makers.

While preparing a tall mug of tea, I had some interesting thoughts about silverware.  We have a bunch of different sets of silverware all mixed up in my house, so when using utensils one is presented with a conundrum.  Do we specifically select which utensil from which set is preferable, or do we surrender ourselves to random chance and just grab one?  I would argue that it is best to choose, as I have discovered that the different sets tend to be useful for different things.

First of all, some of the sets are simply bigger and bulkier than the others.  These tend to be good for serving food.  However, the spoons from one of the thicker sets are also my first choice for cereal, soup, yogurt, and almost all liquid dishes.  The exception is hot drinks, which need to be stirred.  Tea requires a long-handled heavy teaspoon.  It is important that it be a teaspoon to allow for the proper amount of honey.  And if it is not long-handled and from one of of the heavy sets, it will overheat quickly and become useless for stirring, as it will be too hot to touch.  Other hot drinks do not necessarily require a teaspoon, as they usually just need to be stirred.  But it is still important to use a heavy set, as the same thermal restrictions apply.

The various butter knives are entirely interchangeable.  However, we have two sets of sharp table knives, one that is distinctly steakish, and one that is sort of para-steakish.  The steakish set is sharper and more heavily serrated, so I find it especially useful for bagels, where I can use the same utensil to first cut the bagel and then spread cream cheese.  This then requires the invocation of a fork for lox and onions, but this is a matter I will deal with shortly.  The para-steak-knives are somewhat jacks-of-all-trades.  They can be used as butter knives in a pinch, but also work fairly well for cutting, especially fruit.

Forks are somewhat more straightforward.  I always prefer the smallest forks from one of the light sets.  The heavier ones are just not accurate enough to be used when eating.  I find it difficult to eat anything with anything as large and non-dexterous as these.  Good for spearing potatoes, perhaps, but not for the delicate task of conveying food to my mouth.

Clearly, there’s a lot of depth to this topic.  It seems petty, but I think that my thought process on this matter represents a lot of the way I think about things like efficiency.  I.e. is it useful for me to use a specific type of silverware over another in a certain situation, or is a waste of my time to even be thinking about it?

Perhaps I will continue in the future with a discussion of our similarly fragmented glass, plate, and bowl populations.

In honor of one of the strangest “holidays” in existence, we are watching the movie Groundhog Day tonight.

There was some most excellent speechifying, and the most intense beef I have ever had. I am headed to bed; I have to get up at 6 AM.

It was wonderful to get to see relatives I haven’t seen in a while at the brunch, and to meet more of the Taubers (Joel [the fiancé]‘s family), whom I enjoyed greatly.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy small children. I have been having a great time with all of my little cousins. Eli and I did some building with these nifty sets of magnetic balls and rods which can be stuck together in all sorts of ways. I attempted to build a hypercube, but was thwarted by time, material availability, and the physical limits of the pieces. So it goes.

The dinner was a great success. I met and talked to many interesting people. And the food was FABULOUS. The lamb was not to be believed. Also, the restaurant had very interesting architecture.

Tomorrow morning we’ll be hanging out here at the house, and in the afternoon we go to the wedding, which is in an unknown location. We all get on a bus; no one but the bride, groom, and a couple of their closest friends know where we are going. It looks to be a lot of fun.

It is not really the right time for brunch, but my mother insightfully points out that people expect a different type of food when you say “lunch”, and the food here is of a distinctly brunchish variety (bagels, lox, etc.).

My father and I spent several hours this afternoon in The Museum of Jurassic Technology, which is an incredibly odd place.  The best simple way to describe it is as a museum about the idea of museums; sort of a simultaneous parody of and homage to curated exhibits, or as a monument to human attempts to make sense of the world.

There are all sorts of weird things in it.  Diagrams of geometric logic operators:

Strange electrical doodads:

Exhibits about string games:

A tea room, with a samovar:

Mice on toast, as part of the room full of physical models or dioramas of old folk remedies

An entire room dedicated to Napoleon. Pictured here is what I think is an oud, and what I know is a painting, although I’m not sure of whom:

There were many additional things that I couldn’t even begin to list. One of them was an entire room of letters that people had written to the Mount Wilson astronomical observatory when it first opened in the 1930s. Some of them were commendations, some were asking for money, some were total crackpot theories. I got a shirt that says “No one may ever have the same knowledge again – Letters to the Mount Wilson Observatory – The Museum of Jurassic Technology”.

What I think sums up the place pretty nicely, though, wasn’t even an exhibit. In the lobby, I observed that the display on the cash register at the check-in desk, which was below the counter, and could thus only be seen by the cashier, had the following text scrolling across it:

From the familiar to the unfamiliar
Like a chain of flowers

To me, this is sort of symbolic of the whole place. Rather than have a “message” or something, the museum forces viewers to find their own. It is almost as if someone said, “I have a brilliant idea that I don’t want to tell anyone. I will build a strange museum to make people try to decide what it could be.”  This, I suppose, implies that there is a central idea to the museum that you have to “figure out”, which I don’t really think is the case, but there is a level of concealment present.

After the museum, we went to dinner with my relatives at a rather loud and packed open-air mall. I obtained what may be the largest pickle known to mankind:

Note the relative size of the pickle compared to my hand. Or should I say the relative size of the MANPICKLE?!

While at dinner, I articulated what it is that makes that type of place (the mall, not the Museum) rather overwhelming and unattractive to me. It is the feeling that the place was designed to make people do a certain thing, and that you are doing it. Make no mistake, I don’t have a problem with functionality. My favorite places are those that serve their purposes well; they are comfortable, efficient, and pleasant to exist in. But there is a difference between this type of efficiency and the feeling that a space is designed to create needs rather than address them.

I did have a very good time, though; I met my aunt’s soon-to-be-husband (fianceé, although that implies an indeterminate time [they are getting married the day after tomorrow (hence my being here)]), who is very interesting and I like very much, and I saw some relatives I haven’t seen in a while.

Also, I am still enjoying the weather.  It is still unfair that some people get to have this weather all the time.