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Before we left Washington DC after our brief but packed visit, my colleague and I paid a visit to the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum. We decided to walk from where we were staying, forgetting that the park around the capitol was completely blocked off for the fair. This turned what would have been a 13-minute walk in the sweltering heat into 35-minute walk in said heat. By the time we got to the museum queue, which stretched beyond the shade of the building, we were melting.

At least we had an odd aerobatics display involving parachutes and upside-down flags to entertain us while we queued.

Happy, happy nerds, who have successful achieved museum entry. And air conditioning. Blessed, blessed air conditioning.

Lunar module LM-2 feet. Gold on the outer side, black on the inner side facing the main engine exhaust. Thermal management!

Aforementioned LM-2 main engine.

LM2 from above.

Pioneer!

CubeSats.

The excellent little Sorato rover, developed by the Japanese company ispace, which sadly hasn’t flown.

IceCube neutrino observatory.

So many treasures in the space hall.

This still blows my mind. These holes are where the debris impact craters were drilled out and studied when Hubble’s original Wide Field Camera was removed and replaced, and the flawed camera returned to Earth.

Delighted colleague with Hubble’s backup mirror.

Dava Newman’s spacesuit.

The aftermath of 16 years in space.

Telstar. Fantastic little spacecraft. Most excellent cat (RIP Telly).

Epilogue: I didn’t end up replacing my SR-71 blackbird hoodie, because I thought most of the designs in the shop were rather tacky. Everything’s gone to these big screen-printed images that take up the entire front or back (or both) of the item. My old hoodie just had an attractive sewn logo on the top left side on the front. I settled for a t-shirt that had a similar printed logo on the front.

prettygoodword

astrakhan (AS-truh-kuhn, AS-truh-kan) - n., a closely-curled black or grey fleece of very young karakul lambs from Astrakhan, Russia; a cloth, usually wool and/or mohair, with a curled pile resembling this.

The fleece is also called karakul, sometimes more often called that, but the made imitation isn't ever. (Hats made from the fleece are also called karakul.) Astrakhan is in the upper Volga delta, which is still a good 100km/60mi from the Caspian Sea, and the sheep is bred throughout Central Asia because of its drought and famine hardiness -- for some reason, the fleece specifically from Astrakhan became known in western Europe, specifically in France, and we got the name from French (in the 1760s).

---L.

prettygoodword

elote (eh-LOH-tay) - n., corn/maize harvested before maturity; a Central American street food consisting of grilled or boiled young corn on the cob served on a stick and seasoned with a creamy sauce (such as mayonnaise, sour cream, or crema) and garnished with toppings (such as lime juice, cotija cheese, and chili powder).

Thanks, WikiMedia! Though it'd be a better shot if the stick wasn't blurred out

Also called Mexican street corn, though it's eaten this way throughout Central America with much regional variation in seasoning. Not to be confused with esquites, which is kernels of corn with the same dressings, served in a cup. We got the name from Mexican Spanish, where its primary meaning is the first one above (the street food is also called that, but because of the young cob not the preparation), in turn from Nahuatl ēlōtl, young/fresh ear of corn/maize. (Esquites fwiw is also from Nahuatl, from īzquitl, toasted corn kernels.)

Admin note: posting might be spotty over the next week due to external obligations (aka: adulting, ugh).

---L.

conuly

This has to have been an EARLY scifi novel. 80s- to early 00s at the latest.

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nanila

While my colleague and I were speaking about Srs Bsnss with our industrial partners last week, we heard a roaring noise outside the window. The 250th anniversary flyover displays by the fighter jets had begun.

We grabbed our hats and sunglasses and went onto the roof to have a closer look.

Watch on YouTube

It ended up being a very close look indeed. (I would like to point out that none of us were the ones clapping.)

Watch on YouTube

This was a more comfortable view of the formation flying.

Watch on YouTube

Here they are coming from t’other direction.

This continued for around 10 minutes before they all zoomed off, presumably to base for a little rest from the heat.

conuly

She's fine, no worries - well, not fine fine, she's at the hospital, but it's nothing to worry about.

Taking the bus back from the hospital always gets me thinking about Hurricane Sandy. They named a corner after those two boys. They'd be in high school now, or even entering college. It's easy to judge their mother - and don't get me wrong, I do judge her, because she made every possible mistake from before the storm even hit, starting with not evacuating - but people do dumb stuff all the time and it usually works out just fine. People don't usually die because they did something stupid, they don't usually lose their kids over it.

It's been rainy too. It's really just a maudlin way to start a week.

But I still think, every time I take that bus from the hospital, that those kids should've gotten to grow up, and instead they didn't even get to go trick-or-treating that year.

The moral of this post, inasmuch as there even is one, is that if your area is under an evacuation order, or ought to be, fucking evacuate. Or if you've decided to shelter in place, shelter in place. Don't try to evacuate after the storm is already upon you. That's how it all goes wrong.

prettygoodword

dudgeon (DUHJ-uhn) - n., (arch. except in the set phrase "in high dudgeon") a state of anger, resentment, or indignation; (obs.) a type of wood used to make the hilt of daggers, (obs.) a dagger hilt made with this, (arch.) a dagger with such a hilt.

These are actually two words that happen to share the same spelling, with separate origins -- both of which are entirely obscure. Well, we know the wood name is from Anglo-Norman, but where that language got it, we have no idea, aside from noting the possible French cognate douve, stave. As for the snit, proposed origins include Welsh dygen, malice, the obsolete English dudgen, trash/something worthless (which since its origin is unknown wouldn't exactly help), and Italian aduggiare, to overshadow -- but none of these have any evidence whatsoever, not even indirect. This deficiency puts me in low dudgeon.

---L.

conuly

but at least it's cooled down!

(I always picture all this rain after a heat wave like somebody reaching up and literally wringing out the damp air.)

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prettygoodword

prothonotary (proh-THON-uh-ter-ee, proh-thuh-NOH-tuh-ree) or protonotary (proh-TON-uh-ter-ee, proh-tuh-NOH-tuh-ree) - n., the chief clerk in certain law courts and certain ecclesiastical courts; an eastern North American warbler (Protonotaria citrea) of wooded swamps with a golden-yellow head and breast and bluish-gray wings, also called prothonotary warbler.

Thanks, WikiMedia!

I say "also called," but you won't find the bird in the dictionary entry for prothonotary, only in the separate prothonotary warbler entry -- even though clearly it's the more important sense. I mean, look at that gal, she's gorgeous. Admittedly the bird is named (an Americanism dating to the 1780s) after the clerk, after the yellow-hooded robe that some types of prothonotary clerks wore. The clerk was so named in English from the middle ages, from Medieval Latin prōthonotārius, from Late Latin prōtonotārius, from Byzantine Greek prōtonotā́rios, from prôtos, first + notários, secretary/stenographer, both from Ancient Greek.

---L.

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conuly

It's just not working most of the time?

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nanila

I have had to omit some of this DitL, but this collection of random photos provides reasonably complete coverage of the informal bits of it.

Entrance to Chinatown, next to the Walgreens where I bought the laptop charger I forgot to bring with me. I never fail to omit packing something important when I travel. It used to be underwear. These days it tends to be either toiletries or electronic accessories (much more boring).

Maman’s bakery pastries: S’mores Croissant Cube (rating unknown, but watched a small girl trying to get through it with a fork and it looked a little dense) + Orange Pistachio Olive Tea Cake (5 stars out of 5, ecstatic breakfast experience).

Fanciful crockery design at the breakfast venue.

Delicious oat milk cappuccino in fanciful crockery.

Hang on, isn’t there some sort of special occasion happening fairly soon?

Ah yes, that was it.

Never mind, let’s have some whisky and not think about this, or indeed anything else, for a short while.

Such a shame we don’t have a bit more time to sample more than 1/1000th of the collection.

Bed, who needs bed when you can go on the rooftop and drink wine?

Also, watch the moonrise and try to spot satellite trails.

Epilogue: After a 19-hour day, I did go to bed.

conuly

but they really need to.

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( All of these links have been sitting around for ages, so they may be a bit old )

conuly

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

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Happy 4th of July

moonhare

Damn, it seems like we were just celebrating the 200th! On July 4, 1976, I was with a friend visiting his hometown in upstate New York. They had a wonderful ‘small town’ parade and fireworks to celebrate the Bicentennial. *sigh* good times…

Flash forward to our 250th! We celebrated here at home (yesterday) with a nice family cookout. Tonight I’m watching events unfold on YouTube, although bad weather has postponed the DC activities, and I’ll be in bed before any fireworks displays happen ;o)

And still few, if any, fireflies here, but there is a large doe grazing on the front lawn. And there is a fawn, across the road; cars are slowing down, thankfully.

Happy 4th, to those who celebrate!

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: John Philip Sousa, of course!

nanila

Watch on YouTube

Very late, this video. But it has Humuhumu drawings in it, and snippets of garden flora and fauna.

I got back from DC this morning. The trip home was the smoothest flying experience I've had in a long time. I guess no one leaves the USA tye day before Independence Day. Both flights weren't even half full. I walked out of the airport, got on the shuttle bus to the car park, and was driven with a grand total of one other person to our cars.

I've had a grand total of about 9 hours’ sleep since Tuesday. It was also 9000 degrees in DC. Okay, touching 40 C, but with the humidity it was “feels like 45 C” which is just brain-meltingly hot. Discovering that the DC metro is air-conditioned may have caused us a disproportionate amount of joy. I think it was a successful work trip but only time will tell.

prettygoodword

querimonious (kwer-uh-MOH-nee-uhs) - adj., querulous, habitually complaining, full of grievances.

Nothing goes right for the querimonious, and if it does they'll still complain. From either archaic querimony, complaint, or Medieval Latin querimoniosus, both of which are from Latin querimonia, complaint/grievance, from queror, to complain, probably from PIE root *ḱwes-, to puff/sigh -- making it cognate with quarrel and wheeze.

---L.

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conuly

and only came up to my (attic) bedroom to get my clothes after the sun had gone down. And to use my computer once the room cooled a bit.

Anybody want to guess how hot it was up here before I turned on the a/c?

( Drumroll please...! )

Please, everybody, stay cool.