The Plentiful Vintage

..while waiting for this week's episode to turn up online.

( A change in tone... )

Snagged from debg and serenada, among others.

When you see this, post a couple of quotations from your own favorite writers. These should be people you read over and over again, not people who had one great idea; go ahead and do it from memory, mistakes and all.

Like serenada, I'm not the sort of reader who can often quote passages at the drop of a hat, but I do remember the gist. I looked these up to make sure I had them right.

Jim Bouton:
You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.

Roger Zelazny:
"None sings hymns to breath," said Yama. "But, oh to be without it!"

Zelazny is one of the few writers whose lines I can quote. Here's another:
I was rabbit.

Terry Pratchett:
That was another thing. Her books on alchemy were marvelous objects, every page a work of the engraver's art, but they nowhere contained instructions like "Be sure to open a window." They did have instructions like "Adde Aqua Quirmis to the Zinc untile Rising Gas Yse Vigorously Evolved," but never added "Don't Doe Thys Atte Home" or even "And Say Fare-Thee-Welle to Thy Eyebrows."

To understand my affection for this passage, it helps to know that as a kid I once cleared out the family home with hydrogen sulfide (aka rotten egg gas) whilst experimenting with my chemistry set. My mother was not amused. They don't make chemistry sets like that anymore. Sigh.

Larry Niven:
Never throw shit at an armed man. Never stand next to someone throwing shit at an armed man.

---
The Pratchett quote is from , which I just finished. It's another Watch book, and the mystery is really quite good. There were also (for me, anyway) two laugh out loud moments. A terrific book.

The stars and the full moon are visible in the sky tonight. What's up with that?

Spent this morning playing CIA analyst. I was watching This Old House the other night, and their new project is located in Cambridge. One of the things that surprised me about is that the house is only about fifty years old, and it is a modern style house, all boxes and angles, not at all TOH's usual choice. The other thing that surprised me was the size of the back yard, which was very large. That seemed decidely un-Cambridge-like, at least for the neighborhoods I was familiar with.

Anyway, I was curious as to where it was. I've seen one other TOH project house, Kirkside, but that was by accident. It's right on Rt. 20 in the center of Wayland, and I happened to drive by it one day. This one is a bit more secluded. Now, TOH doesn't give the address, so I had to do some Googling. First I found an brief article in one of Cambridge's free papers that mentioned what neighborhood, then found a real estate site that mentioned what part of town the neighborhood was in. After that I just used Google Earth's satellite imagery to search the neighborhood visually. That was a piece of cake, first because the satellite imagery for Cambridge has incredible resolution, probably the best in the whole database, making it easy to zoom in to see details. Second, the house is all boxes and very pink. It sticks out like a sore thumb in a neighborhood full of Victorians. I drove by it today in the pouring rain. I didn't stop. There were a couple of contractors trailers there, but nobody was working. I was surprised at how much smaller it looked in person than it did on TV.

I didn't drive to Cambridge this afternoon just to satisfy a whim. I was up there to exercise my long unused, mad organic chemistry teaching skilz for vwbug. It was fun for me, because it's something I like to think I'm good at, and I rarely get the opportunity anymore. I hope it was useful for vw. Afterwards, she, helvirago, and I went out for dinner, then saw Serenity. I'd seen one of the preview showings, but it was nice to see the final product. Also, I got to pay attention to things that I didn't know would be important later. Still bugged by Joss's complete lack of science education, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the movie again.