Some of Us Are Easily Amused.

(27 August, 2000)

That's typically a way of saying that someone is not very swift, I guess, but like many swords it cuts at least a couple ways. I can watch the yellowjackets flying into and out of their nest, which is right next to the faucet that controls my sprinkler, for quite a while, wondering what it all looks like under the paving bricks. Mind you, there's a kind of amusement I'm not quite ready for, which involves lifting the bricks to find out. I'm happy to coexist with the yellowjackets, which are entirely docile at this time of year, unlike the squirrels, which are wreaking havoc among my plants, and which I sometimes think about assassinating.

Pottery Proceeds Apace

(27 August, 2000)

The dilatometry results are in, and We Are All Very Pleased. Looks like my flameproof porcelain is almost as good as fused silica. Meanwhile, I continue with glaze testing, attempts at replicating an ancient Chinese glaze, an old Japanese glaze, and a modern black glaze that Richard Burkett came up with, all of which I've modified to use my materials and work at cone 11-12. How well this works is anyone's guess until the tests come out of the kiln, which will be a week or two.

(28 August, 2000)

In the process of adjusting some glaze formulas to contain ingredients I actually have (something I thought I was getting turns out to have been discontinued, and there are other things I seem to be lacking for one reason or another, or to have variant versions of), I came across a mention of Black Ding ware in Nigel Wood's book. This looked very interesting, so I've cut a version to test. My guess is that it won't quite work: the original was fired in oxidation (or so Wood suspects) at cone 10, and we operate in reduction at cone 11. This glaze is relatively high in iron, so things should be the other way 'round, and I am likely to need more alumina and maybe silica. (Iron is a ferocious flux in reduction.) I haven't mixed a test yet, so I still have time to reconsider.

Being Entertained Isn't Easy

I don't usually seek out forms of entertainment that require me to be passive. I don't get much of a kick out of spectator sports; I refuse to own a TV (see my little squib about having ADHD); I don't do well with most movies for reasons that are partly related to the TV problem and partly mysterious.

I do, however, take a kind of mindless delight in having my teeth cleaned. All I have to do is sit there, and in 45 minutes or so I'm all sparkling and fresh; someone else has to do all the work. (Yes, I have a high pain tolerance, but only for fleeting pain. Give me a pulled muscle or a tummyache, and I'm as miserable as anyone else. The pain involved in getting a tooth-cleaning is so short, though, that I barely have time to think "Hmmm. I can feel that!" before it goes away again. Inasmuch as some of the feelings, especially with ultrasonic wands, are literally in the "touching a nerve" category, that's a damn good thing.)

...But as I say, a few minutes later they're busy polishing, whereupon the little rubber polisher makes tiny cat-noises around my teeth as it rubs up against them, ...and as I said, some of us are easily amused.



ChikFiz

Friends Dave McGuire and Kiran Wagle have come up with a real money-maker: they want to issue soda-cans of chilled carbonated chicken broth.

...When was the last time I told you that I've fallen in with a bad crowd?



Teapot, No dome

(29 August, 2000)

I actually put the lugs on that teapot, the other night. They are not great, and I have work to do with them yet, but they may prove viable in the long run. (One can but hope.)

Mandalay Cafe

(29 August, 2000)

There's a donut shop on US 1 in College Park, Maryland. It's probably a righteous donut shop, but I guess that's not enough for the Burmese family who own it. What with one thing and another (including the fact that they don't sell a whole lot of donuts after about 10 am), they seem to have decided to open a Burmese restaurant in the shop as well.

Any cognitive dissonance occasioned by the cases of donuts is swiftly dispersed by the excellence and strangeness of the food. Pickled tea-leaf salad is probably about as peculiar as it gets, and even that is very approachable; but all of the food is different. Just as Thai food differs from, say, Cambodian or Vietnamese, Burmese food is at least that different from other southeast Asian food, and Burmese restaurants are at least as uncommon as Cambodian ones.

While I've liked everything I've tried so far, I can particularly commend the pork with mango pickles, the ginger salad, the potato curry, the chicken with noodles, and the banana cake.

If you like other food from that region and you happen to be in this region, please give Mandalay Cafe a try. You'll find it on the east side of US 1, a little south of the Days Inn and the other hotel (Marriott?) in College Park, perhaps as much as a mile south of the beltway interchange.



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