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Monday, January 26th, 2004
I am reading Terry Castle's review of Edith Grossman's new translation of Don Quixote, and thinking I should read it. I read the book, or large parts of it, in college, in Walter Starkie's translation, but it never really hit me -- I never had the DQ experience that I was expecting based primarily on some stuff I had read by Borges. Time to go back to it? I think so -- and Castle sure makes this new translation sound worthwhile.
posted evening of January 26th, 2004: Respond
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My query on the turning forum has generated quite a lot of advice regarding how to control sawdust when using a lathe. I have ordered a Dustfoe 88 dust mask, and a dust collection hood to attach to the lathe. Neither is the very ideal thing, but both are within my budget and can be upgraded at some later date.
posted afternoon of January 26th, 2004: Respond
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Sunday, January 25th, 2004
Turns out you need to wear protection when turning walnut. Up all last night with a mightily inflamed throat and sinuses.
posted morning of January 25th, 2004: Respond
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Saturday, January 24th, 2004
Follow-on to the candlesticks pictures: This evening I turned another candlestick and it is way better than any of those. More interesting shape, better technique, and an actual finish! (By "better technique", I mean essentially that the surface of the turning is smooth almost everywhere, and that the cup for the candle is the right shape, tapering instead of straight.) The finish is shellac, which I mixed myself from Lee Valley's shellac flakes. I made sort of half-hearted efforts toward polishing it, that did not really work, but it is quite lovely anyway. I will post a picture of it when the roll is developed.
posted evening of January 24th, 2004: Respond
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Thursday, January 22nd, 2004
Some new woodworking graphics in the photo album: Some candlesticks and The lathe I used to turn them.
posted evening of January 22nd, 2004: Respond
➳ More posts about Projects
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Tuesday, January 20th, 2004
Ok, now I am really back online, all the DNS issues are resolved (fingers crossed). More posting tomorrow.
posted evening of January 20th, 2004: Respond
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Tuesday, January 13th, 2004
The sounds my house makes during the winter time are many. This was really brought home to me over the last week or so when we have been fighting a losing battle to keep our boiler from calling it quits. I would stand quiet, tense, listening to the peeps and gurgles of our pipes and trying to divine from them how much longer we had. Lately -- yesterday morning -- the plumber (Tom O'Neill of West Orange, whom I recommend highly) put a sealer compound into the boiler's tank which seems to be holding up, and victory may yet be ours; though I think in any case, we will need to buy a boiler in the spring time. Now I sit quiet, relaxed, listening to the peeps and gurgles of our pipes and to the house's frame creaking, and marvel at the degree of personality which I hear -- I believe I have come to know the house's voice a lot better in this interval. One thing about steam pipes and radiators -- the verb "hiss" is used generically to describe the sound they make. But I think of the several sounds I hear the steam making, "hiss" accurately describes only two, both of which are sounds indicative of a problem -- these are the hiss of steam escaping from a broken air vent, and the distinct hiss of steam escaping from a cracked pipe. When steam remains inside the pipes where it belongs, it does not hiss. It sighs, pants, whooshes... and a couple of others that I have not yet come up with words to describe.
posted evening of January 13th, 2004: Respond
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Monday, January 12th, 2004
Well after a couple of weeks of DNS confusion, it appears the internet once again knows how to find READIN.com. Hopefully not too many readers have been scared away by browser error messages, or if you have, hopefully you will check back again soon. I've been missing my ability to blog, so I should be able to come up with some worthwhile entries in the days ahead. Ooh -- and I can see I need to tweak my date formatting routine a bit. This is my first new year's transition since starting the blog; I see it looks a bit unnatural to give the year with dates that were just a couple of months ago. Also the day of the week is butting right up against the month name, with no intervening spaces -- I wonder if this has always been true and I'm just catching it now?
posted evening of January 12th, 2004: Respond
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Tuesday, December 30th, 2003
My brother had a gig working as a clown at a party. I believe the location was a university campus or library, not sure. I was in his dressing room and was not sure whether to wish him good luck or say "break a leg!" so I settled for the universally-recognized thumbs up. Went in to the party and the only other person in attendance was Ophelia Benson, whom I knew at a glance. We were asked to write down a favorite quote and pass it up to the front of the room with our name on the same paper. Ophelia started, and passed me a stack of paper to use and pass along. (The room was starting to fill up.) All I could think of was "'Tis prithee to be wise" and I was about to write that down when I started thinking, that doesn't mean anything -- did anyone actually say that? I thought maybe I was misquoting and started hunting around for what word I could be misremembering as "prithee" -- "pissy"? "Shitty"? Well I locked onto "'Tis shitty to be wise" and could think of nothing else -- meanwhile I was missing my brother's act, I wasn't passing along the stack of paper (it consisted of old newsprint and Ophelia's notes, which were in red ballpoint), people were getting impatient.
posted afternoon of December 30th, 2003: Respond
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Sunday, December 28th, 2003
A weird montage of images in my head. I was talking to Jim, asking him which Hudson River crossing he thought would be best to use when I drive north tomorrow; he did not have much to say on the subject so I included Carl in the conversation. Carl thought GWB was the way to go before 8 in the morning. We decided to fly over the route in his plane. (This part of the dream memory is extremely vague -- there needs to be some transition to the next image.) Now we are sitting in Carl's plane looking at the freeway system, looks like a very big map. And now somehow, we are eating in a restaurant in NYC, a very expensive restaurant where everything is going wrong. Transition to a restaurant-kitchen setting of a sitcom, where the chef (very fat Andrew, who was in my class at Natural Gourmet) is not able to control the kitchen staff and relies instead on the maitre d'hote, a short, thin black man who is overly fond of liverwurst, to keep things going. The maitre d' is on vacation (in Vienna, looking for the perfect liverwurst) and things are falling apart. Sylvia told me the nature of her dream when she woke up this morning -- "There was a dinosaur movie called, called 'Dinosaur Planet'. It had a scary part and parts that were not scary" -- but would give no more detail.
posted morning of December 28th, 2003: Respond
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