It has finally decided to be winter here in Winona Lake. I was beginning to think we'd make it all the way to spring without significant snow or cold temperatures. But, alas...
I selected the last two weeks of January to be my weeks to shovel snow at work, and mother nature decided that I shouldn't get off easy. I've been sweeping and shoveling just about every morning for the last week. I actually brought my own broom this morning (a spiffy sidewalk-width one) so that I wouldn't have to use the pitiful little broom they've got in the entryway. It's amazing the difference a good set of tools make.
Speaking of tools, I've also been working on the car. Now, if I could have picked better weather to do this, I would — but it looks like I'm going to have to use this car on Thursday to go pick up May from the airport, and it would be a lot nicer if it ran properly. May has never liked this car much (it rattles, smells funny, and has spiders, she says) so I'd hate to give her further fodder for complaint by having it break down on the road.
So, I hope I have this right. The place the coolant was leaking from looks consistent with the location of the overflow tube, and I don't see any evidence of leaks elsewhere. Since the overflow container was empty, and the radiator was full, and I had experienced dieseling, I figure something's getting pretty hot under the hood, and the first thing to try would be a new thermostat.
A heart of gold, set among the blackened remains of greatness...
Replacing a thermostat is normally pretty easy. I helped Paul replace the thermostat on his car last week (back when it was warm) and the whole thing took 30 minutes, 15 of which were spent trying to find my neighbor to ask if he had a set of metric deep sockets. What I had not contended with, however, was the cold. There are some bits that you can do with thick gloves on, but when things aren't fitting together, the way they should, and the RTV sealant is drying, and the gasket doesn't fit quite right, off come the gloves. And at fifteen below freezing... I cannot describe how bad your hands hurt to handle car parts.
I didn't get the car done, but I did do the dishes. All that nice, warm water to soak your hands in...
This must be what it's like to be a tooth during a root canal.
As I write, two construction workers are outside — scarcely three feet away — repairing the damage caused a few months ago when a youthful driver mistook the gas for the brake, and plowed the family van into the side of the building just opposite my workstation.
When you work in a steel building, and you have damage, who do you call? A contractor? Or an auto-body shop?
They're drilling into the concrete, I think. I can feel the whine and rumble very clearly through the floor, and I can hear — well, that's about all I can hear, actually.
The humor in all this is that one of the workers poked his head in the side door about half an hour ago, to let us know that they were here, and they'd be working on the wall, but there shouldn't be any bother to us inside.
Makes me wonder what they would consider "bother to us inside" — the wall coming down on top of me, maybe?
The Pontiac (a.k.a. Bree) hasn't been repaired yet — when do I have time? — so I've been riding my bicycle to work quite a bit, despite the snow and ice. The surprising thing? I'm really enjoying it. (Anyone who remembered me and my 400+ mile weeks in high school might wonder why this would be surprising; short story is, I got my driver's license.)
One thing that definitely needed improvement, though, was twilight visibility. I spent a while the other night, cutting red and white reflective tape and applying it on the inside of my back rim.
Must be pretty effective; cars are now driving off the road on the other side to give me plenty of room when they're passing me. Maybe I'll sit down sometime and do the front wheel, too.
Over the last few days, I've been having a very enjoyable e-mail exchange with Rob Silvers. If you don't know Rob, he's the guy that invented photomosaics. Well, I had a more-or-less brilliant idea of having next year's Skyline background be a photomosaic of book covers. I told Rob I could provide more than 12,000 cover images. If it's possible to tell that someone is drooling over email... I could tell. Apparently he usually only gets a few hundred to work with. Anyway, he seems to be a very likeable guy — the enthusiasm is palpable. He even offered me a very generous discount on my project because we're a smaller company.
How much would it cost to do what I had in mind? Well, I'll keep the exact numbers confidential, but I'll let slip that he very generously knocked it down from five figures to four. We'll see what the bean-counters have to say, but I have my doubts, to say the least!
Money, money, money, money.
(Click for a larger view. It's worthwhile.)
If you give a town a greenway,
They're going to want to use it.
If they're going to use it,
They're going to want to use it year-round.
If they're going to use it year-round,
you're going to have to clear the snow off of it.
If you're going to clear the snow off of it,
for Pete's sake, clear the snow off of all of it!
As far as I can tell, the path was cleared only as far as the entrance to the Winona Lake Hotel condos, which is right across the street from this picture. So, what — it's only cleared so that Hotel residents can get to the Boathouse restaurant for lunch? The number of tracks walking off the other side of the street lend some credibility to this idea. Thing is, look at the tracks that go off into the snow — there are a lot of them. But they're not going towards the Village and it's shops, so they must not be worthwhile, eh?
OK, I'm done ranting for a few minutes.
On Friday, we went over to a friend's house, and they had a Jumpoline, which tuned out to be a combination air-filled trampoline and ball pit. It also turned had the marvelous side effect of turning nearly all of Fiona's remarkable energy into static electricity.
This afternoon, while I was watching the kids, I was playing with a balloon, and couldn't resist trying it out on Aiden, too.
Rub, rub, rub
Whee!
This morning I was talking to James, who expressed shock at my response to his response about the biplane. Now, several of you are reading this, and thinking, "His response? I thought you were responding to me!" It isn't so. James was just one of a surprising number of people who were running around, waving their arms in the air, assuring me that I didn't want to own an airplane.
So, if you felt singled out, I apologize — you're actually in the good company of a number of concerned and thoughtful people who unexpectedly reponded en masse and in kind.
Since yesterday's post about by desire for a little red biplane, I have been greatly amused by the response — people going out of their way to track me down and convince me that I do not want an airplane. There's several things about all this that I find very amusing:
The other possibility, of course, is that I am indeed insane, irresponsible, a risk-taker, and that I don't listen to advice from anyone. :-)
Now, where have I heard that before...?
For some reason, for the last week or so, I have been inundated with a constant thought: Wouldn't it be cool to have an airplane? I can only imagine that this is what it must be like for a woman hearing her biological clock ticking: Baby baby Baby baby Baby. (I've experienced this sort of thing secondhand.)
Everywhere I look, it seems, there is discussion about flying and learning to fly. I know several dozen people who have their license, many of whom also have their own planes. My relatives have gyrocopters in their back yards. I see signs on the street that say, "Learn to fly!" (no, really!). A friend of mine asks where she can find pictures of old WWI aircraft.
Wouldn't it be cool to have an airplane? Not a model or something, a real one. And not something boring, all point A to point B, but something fun and totally impractical, like an aerobatic biplane. In red.
And that's where I messed up. I went to eBay, all innocently, and typed in "biplane."
Oops.
Doggone it, just what I was imagining. For a small fraction of what I imagined it would cost. I just about cried from the longing. Can anyone spare me $15,000 or so?
I have been reminded, once again, that there is a fine line between cleverness and obscurity. I tend to wander across that line on a regular basis.
Many of the books I get to design covers for can be classified as "esoteric." If I knew the book were about, say, pottery, I could put a nice pot on the cover. But I don't always know exactly what the book is about, even. Often, I get a photocopied Foreword, which I read, scanning for a hook I can hang a picture on.
This book had a very interesting Foreword, talking about (of all things) what was considered "esoteric" in the ancient world; that is, which prophecies, myths and legends were known to scholars, which were known to common men, and how the two sets differ, especially when they keep recurring throughout history. There was an interesting mention of cuneiform tablets found with parallel colums of stories. The images were suggesting themselves to me left and right. Or up and down. Repeatedly.
A wonderful, bold design! Filled with meaning, and displayed with a great economy of elements — just lines and text in two colors. Sideways English even sort of looks like cuneiform. So what if it wasn't legible...? I sent a copy around for comments with a note:
Needless to say, I'm back at the drawing board for this one...
Now that I've lambasted my own work, I feel better about criticizing someone else's. To wit, I present to you, the Worst Book Cover of the Year, 2006 Never mind the 2003 publication date — 2006 is when I found the sucker. Let's take a look:
The Double Voice of Her Desire
...yes, it's a real book.
OK, first off... there's the severed head. Eww. I could stop right there and we'd still have a... winner. Not everyone appreciates gore on the cover. For that matter, I'm not sure I've ever met anyone that does appreciate it.
Next up... the purple. I don't have anything against purple, per se, but whoever designed this one didn't choose a color with a different value than the graphic they were putting it on. So the type just sort of blends in there, and does weird things with your eyes against the engraving, and engravings tend to do weird things to your eyes anyway.
Now, if the purple didn't obscure they type enough already, note that you can't see the articles in the title. They're tiny and far removed from the rest of the text, so you're left with what looks like DOUBLE VOICE HER DESIRE. Double voice? How do I do that? The only way to get two voices is... wait... with two heads? Is that what the image is about? And — DESIRE?? Ladies, do you find all this sexy? Say it ain't so!
And so, for 2006, we present (symbolically) to anyone who comes across this book... a stack of brown paper and some Scotch tape. Make yourself a book cover; you're not protecting the book, you're protecting the eyes that might see it!
I never did mention that we flew back here on New Year's day. A few people are still under the impression that we're still in New Hampshire. But: We're back. Now you know.
May didn't come back with us, as originally planned. May's other sister, Sara, volunteered to coach May in her schoolwork, which had come to something of a standstill (standoff?) under our supervision. Last we heard, the schoolwork was going quite well.
Ah, yes, the bear. You were wondering about that, weren't you?
This was one of Fiona's Christmas presents, from her grandmother, I think. We went to New Hampshire with full suitcases, and all the carry-ons we could handle. We had even more coming back — I thought for sure we'd have to leave things behind. But on the last night, I had a bright idea: the bear could ride in the car seats on the plane! To save further space, the bear is also wearing Aiden's bulky snowsuit. Problem solved!
I got a piece of sad news last night. Ace (May's alter ego and treasured companion) darted into the street and was hit by an oil truck. The driver stopped and helped Allan (my father-in-law) bury her beside the house.
As I was telling Deborah the news last night, Fiona, showing understanding beyond her years, looked up with great sadness.
"May loved her dog!"
I couldn't say it better. If it was obvious to a three-year-old who was visiting for a week, it would be obvious to anybody.
