Generalities: June 2005 Archives

I've been bidding on boxes of scissors on EBay for some time. Today I finally won!

To celebrate my good fortune, we'll have a little contest here. Send me an email with your guess (preferably an integer) on how many scissors I will receive in my 30 pound box of plastic handled scissors. One entry per person please. Whoever guesses the number of scissors correctly will be awarded one pair of plastic handled scissors. In the event of a tie, I'll select at least one winner based on the entry date. In the event that no one guesses correctly, I'll award the prize to the person who comes closest to the correct number, without going over.

Special thanks to the co-workers, L_, L_, and the one who likes to be referred to as "my favorite", for chipping in and making this happen for me.

I hope you wanted scissors for Christmas.

In 2003 I gave Jeannie a set of cornices for Christmas. One was to be installed over the sliding glass door, the other over the living room window. While I got the first installed pretty quickly, the larger one for the living room languished in the basement, unfinished, for a long time. I finally installed it late last night. It looks great.

Special thanks to Aras for spending a lot of time helping me build what I thought would be a two hour project in his shop. It's a good thing he charged me the undocumented worker rate for his time, rather than high priced defense contractor rates he used to charge. I think I paid him roughly two hamburgers from Wendy's if memory serves me right.

Matthew and I went to the Stone Arch Bridge Art Festival last Saturday. Matthew is pretty much willing to go anywhere and do anything with me. He seemed happy when he got there and noted that "it smells like cookies."

I ran into two co-workers at the fair. Toni was at the art fair exhibiting her custom made jewelry. While looking at her wares I was struck by how the process for making custom fishing jigs must be very similar to making the artistic earrings they were exhibiting. I wonder if there are any cross-over artists who tie fishing flies and make earrings. Her earrings were very nice. The other co-worker Amy, who I've blogged about at least once before, was out shopping with her mother. I'm always pleasantly surprised when I run into someone I know when I'm out and about in the Twin Cities, doubly so when I can meet a parent.

The fair was pretty nice. The weather was nearly perfect. There were a lot of interesting vendors with very reasonably priced goods. I was disappointed that there weren't more potters exhibiting as I am actively looking for a nice pitcher for serving water or milk. This show was much nicer than the Blueberry Festival in Ely. At the Blueberry festival it seems like there are always multiple vendors selling beer can whirligigs at near astronomical prices. Nothing wrong with this, it's just not my taste. (I do admire the fact that those artisans are so willing to drain all those beer cans in order to follow their bliss and create the whirligigs. What sacrifices people make for their art.)

Matthew liked the candied almonds and fresh lemonade best.

According to the Surreal Gourmet you can cook salmon in the dishwasher. I can't decide if this is better or worse than eating something that someone prepared in their shower.

Maybe the recipe was inspired by Scott Berkun's essay on "Why smart people defend bad ideas". I know done everything mentioned in the article at one time or another but I still can't defend eating salmon cooked in the dishwasher.