American in Spain

Late last year, a blogrollmate of mine, Jagosaurus, turned me on to a project by an acquaintance of hers, Dustin Timbrook, an artist, musician, and all around creative guy. As a challenge to himself, he announced that he would attempt to do one drawing each day, of absolutely anything that was requested of him. Jagosaurus submitted this request:

I’d like to see something involving any of the following: hippo, cuttlefish, penguin, octopus, praying mantis. They don’t have to be playing poker and smoking cigars. Really they don’t. I mean, that would just be silly.

Timbrook produced this:
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My grandmother, Joyce Rasmussen, has always been interested in arts and crafts. She has made baskets, pottery, needlework, crochet, knitting, paper-mâché, and origami. What she’s really been excelling at recently is making elaborate homemade greeting cards. Ever since getting a personal computer back in the late eighties, she has been fond of printing her own greeting cards, which involves choosing appropriate clipart and writing a nice message. I have always appreciated her cards more because I know that the sentiment comes directly from her, not Hallmark™.

At some point the idea occurred to her that if she cut a perfect circle of just the right radius in the front of the card with an X-Acto knife, then one of her origami chrysanthemums would fit there perfectly and be both held tightly in place and completely cover the hole. This discovery ushered in a Renaissance in Joyce-made greeting cards.
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Recently I have been witnessing one of the things I was most looking forward to as a parent, the bilingual language acquisition of my daughter. You can say “Where’s the table?” or “¿Dónde está la mesa?“, and she’ll point right to the table. The same works for her anatomy and toys. In fact one of the best tricks I’ve discovered for keeping her occupied while I sit on the couch is to say, “Where is [object not currently in this room]?”, which prompts her to run off to verify that whatever is in its place. Every day I try to teach her a little more vocabulary. Yesterday was “elbow” and “knee”; today was “couch” and “TV”. But what really amazes me is when I ask her about stuff that I haven’t explicitly taught her, and she knows what I’m referring to. That’s what really blows my mind.
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When I took Nora to her 18-month doctor’s checkup, the doctor asked questions like, “Does she do X?”, “If you give her Y, does she do Z with it?”, etc. Beaming with paternal pride, I was able to answer yes to all of them…until he said, “If you give her a pencil and paper, will she draw?” I had to answer, “Probably, we’ve never really done that,” as I plummeted down the rabbit hole of “I’m a terrible parent” guilt.

When we got home, I gave her a pen and paper, and she scribbled away like a tormented artist. She seems to slightly favor her right hand, but she’ll scribble with her left as well.
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Parking in nearby beach tourist town, Laredo, is really a nightmare in July and August, especially for those of us that go there year round. But never is the parking problem worse than on the last Friday of August, when Laredo hosts their famous Batalla de Flores (Flower Battle), a parade of floats with 100% real flowers. So this year we came up with a parking strategy.

I’ve been walking a lot lately, so we decided that I would drive the car to Laredo in the morning, park it as close to the downtown parade site as possible, and then walk back home. I took Nora with me since she isn’t any extra work on walks (when bribed with cookies), but she is a handful to care for around the house. Then, at 17:00, we set out walking to Laredo. Immediately the sky began to look ominous, and about halfway there, it began to rain. We managed to find a little shelter and soon the rain slowed and then stopped. We got there late for the initial lap (for the judges to see the floats), but we caught the entire second lap (for the awards to be given) and a little of the third lap (for the awards to be paraded, literally, around the town).
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On today’s walk I went down a street I don’t normally use and found a bronze plaque I had never noticed. On it was a poem by José Hierro, one of Spain’s twentieth century poets. He was born in Madrid, but then moved to Cantabria, the region where I live, when he was two years old. I don’t know about Hierro’s philosophy, but this particular poem is quite nihilistic. It’s also just the length and has just the right amount of wordplay that I like in poems. What do you think?
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The other day I was looking at a framed photo in my house and wondering how the area of the border around the picture (called a mat board in the framing industry) compared to the area of the picture itself. Immediately I remembered the master of all aesthetic ratios, the golden ratio, Phi! 1.61803398874989… I thought, “I bet if the ratio of the area of the picture to the border was Phi, it would look good!” So I set off on an algebraic quest to find the answer…
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I recently found myself in a dark room with my iPhone and a cold pint of lager. For reasons still unclear to me, I set my beer down on top of my iPhone, and the result was amazing. A beer lamp!

In short, Apple has manufactured not only the best mobile phone on the market, but also the most awesome coaster ever!
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The brainchild of my blogrollmate, Lance, he and I and three other people he knows are participating in a photoblogging project that we call Obiter picta. From the About page (as a lawyer, he couldn’t resist the Latin play on words):

Obiter dicta are incidental words, things said in passing. Obiter picta is a collaborative photo blog updated Tuesday through Friday. The participants’ contributions are not coordinated in advance. Any consonance or dissonance perceived in the themes, content or composition presented here is coincidental.

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After eleventh hour gourd procurement last year, this year my local grocer friend, Andrés, who regularly visits farmers markets to buy fruit and vegetables, had his eye out for the perfect pumpkin for me to carve. And sure enough, he came through with the perfectly shaped pumpkin. Last night I carved it into a jack-o-lantern.
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