Swift Display

I remembered to bring my camera today, so I dragged JD over to Building 7 to look at the new Swift display that I put together. It’s supposed to be a light box display, but I hadn’t been able to figure out how to turn the lights on.

The display is on a walkway around a high bay area, on the second floor. We followed the wires from the display down the wall under the walkway. To figure out where it went from there, we went downstairs, and followed them straight into a wall. Oops. JD counted the steps to the door so that we could try to figure out which room the cords went into from the hallway outside of the high bay. Unfortunately, they went into a closed room, since this wasn’t our building, we didn’t feel like we could just walk in.

Someone in the hall suggested that we talk to the facilities manager in the building. Well, that would be too easy, plus we didn’t know his name. Fortunately this random person did know his name, and we went to hunt John down. (Actually, his office was right across from the room where the wires disappears…convenient.)

Sadly, John didn’t know how to turn the light boxes on, either. He led us into the room where the cords disappeared, and at the other end of the cords, we found a plethora of circuit breakers. Of course, none of them were labeled.

John did claim to know someone who would know how to turn on the boxes, but was unable to find him. I took a few pictures of the display, anyhow, since the display is bright enough to see without the lights on (unlike the Cobe display that preceeded it).

John called me later in the afternoon to tell me that he’d found out how to turn them on. Sixteen new light bulbs ought to do it. Apparently, they are always on.

Here’s the whole display:

Panels #1 and 2

Panels #3 and 4

Panels #5 and 6

Panels #7 and 8

Naughty kitten

I heard a creaking in the hall behind me as I was working from home this afternoon….

…and this is what I saw when I went to investigate.

Blanket Bears Aplenty

About a year and a half ago, my brother showed me a blanket bear that his mother-in-law had bought for my niece. He asked if I could make her another one, because she had become so attached to it, they were worried about what would happen if something happened to the bear. I’ve since made her two more, so she has three, and she’s very attached to both of them.

Once, when my sister-in-law and niece were at a small shop in Bloomington, MN (where I grew up), the owner asked where they had gotten the bear. She told my sister-in-law that if I ever wanted to sell them, that she would happily buy some.

Well, I decided not to do that — it takes too much time to make the bears for me to make any actual money. Instead, I will stick to making them for friends and family. To that end, I finished three this weekend — one for my friend Melissa’s best friend, one for my aunt’s daughter-in-law, and one for the next member of the Mattson clan. Here’s a picture of them:

I have three more that I’m making for another friend. I’ll post pictures when I’m done with those, too.

DC’s Big Flea

I went the the DC Big Flea Market at the Dulles Expo Center today. I was expecting a flea market — mostly filled with other people’s junk where it takes a bit to scour through the booths and actually find something you like. Instead, I found what would be called an antique sale in Minnesota — what fun! (Here, in Virginia, it seems that an antique sale has to be hoity-toity stuff that no one actually buys.)

The flea market took up both of the buildings, which means it was HUGE! I found lots of things I could have bought — slide rules at several booths, a Pigs in Space lunch box, Empire Strikes Back thermos (though I don’t have the lunch box yet, so there’s still hope I could get the two together, and a few gifts for family (which I can’t mention, in case they read this).

In the second-to-last aisle, though, I found the piece du resistance. An armillary sphere. Andrew and I have looked at these before, but they are generally prohibitively expensive, so we figured we would have to wait until we were wealthy. I decided to look at the sphere, though, just to see how far out of my budget it was. But it wasn’t! I thought I had to be missing a number, but I wasn’t. I could afford it! Yay! Needless to say, I got it, and here’s a couple pictures:

Cute cats everywhere!

My boys

I couldn’t pass up this picture opportunity — Andrew and Duncan relaxing.

Shakespeare puzzle finished!

I haven’t actually had much time to work on puzzles in the past 6 months, so this one has been on the puzzle caddy for a long time. But I finally sat down and worked on it for nearly two days straight, and finished it. I think this is the first puzzle that I’ve done where I didn’t complete the frame first — that’s because this was one of those puzzles where it’s way too easy to connect the wrong two pieces without realizing it.

Baskets

I bought some baskets at World Market today to organize my office, but Artemis thinks that they will be a good way for her to get herself organized…

Lunch Box Memories

Earlier in the week I noticed that a lunch box exhibit was coming to the Museum of Design in Atlanta. I love lunch boxes. I don’t exactly collect them, though I am trying to complete my Star Wars collection (the original movies — I have Star Wars and Return of the Jedi). I also have a Battlestar Galactica lunch box, complete with its thermos. As luck would have it, the Museum of Design is on the block between the Hyatt (where the AAS meeting is being held) and the Hilton (where I’m staying). So I ducked out of the conference for an hour this morning to catch the exhibit.

I’ve actually seen this domed Star Trek lunch box at an antique shop. I believe it was going for about $900 when I saw it 5 years ago. I don’t recall if it had the thermos or not (though I suspect that it did).

There was a display on how the space race influenced lunch boxes — of course I thought these were about the best ones they had. I’ll have to keep an eye out in antique stores for these 🙂

Quiet Monday with the Fam

The day after Christmas, I was paging through the newspaper and saw a weird item in the Metro Section of the Star Tribune. The headline read, Chimney puts squeeze on Christmas crime caper. Reading further, it seemed that a man had been stuck down a chimney in Minneapolis. At Uncle Hugo’s Bookstore. Hey, wait. I shop at Uncle Hugo’s! I know that place.

Andrew looked up the story in the Pioneer Press, too, and their article had a few more details: Down the Chimney He Fell…

I bring that up because today was our day to go to Uncle Hugo’s. I was worried that they might not be open because of the incident, but my fears were unfounded. Mom came with Andrew and me to look at the adjoining Uncle Edgar’s Bookstore (new and used mysteries). While there, we discovered that while UH has insurance to cover the hole in the chimney the fire department made to get the guy out, they have a $1k deductible. I’m concerned because these small, independent bookstores have been disappearing. I’d hate to see UH go. Andrew and I did our part to help them along, though 🙂

In the evening, we had planned dinner with my brothers and their families, as well as my two Grandmothers. Andrew had previously met Farm Grandma at Wayne’s funeral, so the only person he hadn’t yet met was Grandma Mattson. Frankly I was worried whether or not she would behave, but she did. The evening went quite well. Grandma Mattson had even brought an engagement present for us.

It’s hard to see in the picture, but we are holding a little girl and boy figurine.