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Fire Writing and
Figuring Newtons
J: We
had a really nice Thanksindians. This year we had a feast for the
orphans. The honorary orphans mostly included friends who weren't
celebrating with their families (a full list: Dorian,
Amethyst, Brandon,
Dave, Max, Ronda, Diana, Jenny, Kory, Grant).
Gina
poured her kitchen skills into lots of tasty dishes including two
different brands of veggie turkey simulacra, sweet potatoes, peas,
corn, wild mushrump stuffing, and fantastic vegan pecan and pumpkin
pies. We had a dozen people for dinner, and many of them brought other
dishes, more pies, beer and wine. My favorite dish was the vegan pecan
pie -- a good dense pie, not too sweet, and very rich!
After
our dinner more people
arrived for the festivities (Chris, Leo,
Lucy, Joey, Renata, Luisa, Gabby, Gary) and we continued to party
until three AM or so. I lit a little fire out back
and had a good time going between the fire worshipers and the inside
peeps. Later, after most of the guests left, Kory, Grant, and I played Mama
Mia, the pizza-making card game. Gina's brother
Grant stayed overnight, and Chris stayed through the extended
weekend.
The
next day, Friday, was Buy
Nothing Day, so we celebrated by not buying
anything of course. Grant left in the morning. I took leave from work
and went for a walk with Booda in the woods. We stumbled upon a nice
little cluster of fat oyster mushrumps. They huddled together high up
on a dead tree, too high to reach, but there was a long straight stick
with a crook at the end (no, not me, it was part of the stick) lying
right next to the tree. The stick proved to be the perfect tool for
harvesting those particular mushrumps. I found a few other oysters
throughout the walk. It started raining right after we came back from
our hike.
Later
Dorian and Amethyst invited Gina, Chris and I to their house for potato
pancakes made from Dorian's vat of leftover mashed potatoes. He also
made homemade applesauce, by simply coring apples and throwing them
into a Vitamix. Deeelish. I cooked the oysters and seasoned them with
grilled chopped onions and Old Bay spice (good stuff for oysters).
Chris split wood outside in the rain, and made good headway on Dorian's
woodpile. Luisa visited for a short bit, and Kory came by too. We all
relaxed and chatted, with a videotape of Powaqqatsi playing in the
background. Well, everybody relaxed except Kory, he had never seen
Powaqqatsi, and didn't want to see it as a background conversation
piece.
During and after the movie, Amethyst showed great interest in learning
about role playing games, specifically LARPS,
and she asked us many
questions about role playing. Eventually the chit chat got around to a
little game called Psychodrama, found in the pseudo-appendix of a book
called De
Profundis. De Profundis is a "pure" role playing game, it is
diceless and is played through the mail -- players write letters to
each other as characters in a Lovecraftian story. Psychodrama is a
shorter, real time, pure role playing game that only requires a dark
room and some good imaginations. Kory wanted to either play Psychodrama
or Morton's List. We all agreed Psychodrama was a better choice for a
rainy night. So we all decided to rendevous at Ginohn's for the game.
First Booda had to be fed and walked, so while Chris and Kory walked
him Dorian, Gina, and I played a couple rounds of Stoner Fluxx. Then we
modified our mufraj in our bedroom to accommodate six people (Kory,
Chris, Gina, me, Dorian, Amethyst), so we could all lie down, radiating
outward from a central pillow. That way we could hear each other
talking. After making sure we were all comfortable, we turned out the
lights and played Psychodrama. And Dorian turned into a pink werewolf
while Kory, Chris and I kept running off to see the Evil Clown. The
game turned a bit kookier than I was hoping, but I had fun and
experienced some nice instances of vivid imagery, like the tower in the
creepy desert of sugar, you know, the tower with the gigantic clown
nose on the top?
On Saturday Chris spent almost the entire day at the New Deal Cafe,
reading and drinking coffee. I met him there after a haircut, and
stayed a good long while, and left him there when I returned home
again.
Later that night Gina, Kory and I picked Chris up at the cafe to go out
to dinner at the Hard Times Cafe, where we met up with Shaun, Mi Ae,
and a friend of theirs named Dave, who also lives in Greenbelt. Then we
all
went to Peter Weir's latest
movie, Master and Commander. After the movie we descended on Dave's
house, a really nicely decorated three bedroom co-op down the street.
We drank whiskey, rum, and beer, and played pool, mostly Cutthroat,
until three in the morning I think. Then Kory, Gina, Chris and myself
came back to our house and played more Mama Mia. Kory and I are a bit
nutty for Mama Mia lately.
On Sunday Chris, Booda, and I went on another mush-hunt and found more
tasty oysters, which we brought home and ate for lunch. Later after
watching some third season Mr. Show episodes, I drove Chris to the bus
station and off he went, back to Philly. Then I watched a Margaret Cho
video with Gina. It wasn't as funny as I expected it to be. After I
woke up, we went to Luisa's house for a going-away party for her mother
Gabby. She has been helping Luisa to recover from her operation, and is
returning to Mexico now. A lot of neighborhood friends came to say
goodbye. Luisa's mom is a very warm person, easy to get along with, and
has an infectious laugh. We'll miss her; maybe she'll miss us enough to
visit every year or so. At the party, Gary supplied scrap wood for the
fire, and Gina found that if she poked a stick in the fire she could
write and draw on the burning boards. She made lots of little
pictograms and wrote little messages, then we'd watch them slowly burn
away like magic spells. Quite enchanting, Gina is. Other people got in
on the fun, soon there were several witches, drawing their inscriptions
and cackling around the fire. We had to leave them, I had to get to
sleep to go to work the next day.
Not that I actually worked much the next day. For some reason I
wandered off on a mental tangent that had to do with Newton's Method on
square roots. I looked it up, fiddled around with it a bit, then
modified it to figure out solutions to quadratic equations. I don't
often play with math, because I don't really know what I'm doing, but
sometimes it feels less like defusing a bomb and more like playing with
origami. I was so happy with my discovery that I totally geeked out and
enthusiastically told Gina about it. She actually didn't tell me to
shut up! Just in case you, dear reader, are interested, and mostly
because you can't easily tell me to shut up, I'll geek out once more
and show you an email I sent to some friends. The subject line was quadratic fig newton.
Since then I've learned that Newton came up with much better iterative
methods for solving quadratics. Of course he did, he was a friggin'
genius.
Last night Stacy visited us and we had a good time chatting about all
sorts of schtuff and listening to CDs.
Tonight Gina made another pecan pie, just for Ginohn. MMMMMMM.
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THE HEAP
where we wade the web
angry white
boy polka
discordian
quotes
fiddlehead's
shroom pics
is e
normal?
math pages
...dean
is so angry
out of balance
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