We made a kind of Passover dinner Sunday night. Veal meatballs with matzo meal, green olives, egg, parsley and garlic; served with perfectly diced (by me of course!) braised parsnips and turnips picked up from the Public market on Saturday. Shopping at 7:30 am when the weather is 20 degrees was unexpectedly fun.
We have a cooking class tonight at the New York Wine and Culinary Center. It is based on maple, so includes salmon, pork, chicken, brussel sprouts, parsnips and so forth. This is more for my husband than me. In exchange, he has agreed to go with me to a class in two weeks on bivalves, which I love. Finally, I get to learn how to chuck oysters!
Lecture last night at RIT was fascinating. Hiroshi Ishii was the lecturer for "The Art of Tangible Bits." The premise was that there are more ways of interacting and getting information from the environment than mouse/keyboard/display, so why be constrained? There are the science fictiony elements such as the screen displays seen in "Minority Reports." Examples shown include a glow lamp (ambientdevices.com) that changes color based on the stock market; a bottle, placed on a glass table, that when uncorked plays bird song if the weather is nice; a sand table or clay table that is continuously mapped by a computer and has contour maps or other information overlaid on it as it is changed.
I have been picking up and reading and resting from reading "Songs of the Dying Earth," a tribute anthogy to Jack Vance's "The Dying Earth" series. I remember reading his book as a teenager and the stories entranced me. However, the effulgent language is best taken in small draughts and so it has taken me over 6 months to get almost to the end. Another book, Ricardo Pinto's "The Third God," I have been avoiding starting as it feels like such a commitment. I know once I get into it I will enjoy it as he is a visionary writer. It occurred to me to go with my husband to his family this easter weekend as a way of starting the book during the 12 hour total car ride. My husband made fun of me for that thought, declaring he would have taken pleasure at starting the book at home if he knew he was all alone.
We have new kittens arriving in May from Natureworks cattery in Gananoque, Ontario. They are Pixie Bob cats, mainly because I wanted cats that would be on the large size. We couldn't get, for example, Savannah cats, as the lower generation (larger) cats are not legal in NYS. These are likely our last kittens. We've loved all our cats over the years, large and small, but all non-pure-bred; in memory of our big boys Pascal and Tamarind, and girls, Teaka, I wanted big cuddlers. It should be interesting having kittens around! We were commenting the other day about kitten proofing the house and about how we have to train them to not get on the kitchen counter and not walk over keyboards. But then we came to the realization after opening the door for Pumpkin and Pudly for the upteenth time that they train us!
So, names for the cats are under consideration. Obviously they may change as we get to know the kittens and their personalities. Immediately, Ada came to mind for the girl, in honor of Lady Lovelace, the progenitor of computer programming. Grace is also under consideration, for Admiral Hopper, inventor of COBOL. Albert came to mind for the boy, in honor of Einstein. My husband suggested keeping with the theme of famous programmers but they generally have such boring names: George and John and Guido, for example. Von Neumann is on the table. Getting back to physicists, and staying away from names with sibilant consonants: Galileo, Kelvin, Henri, Nikola.
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