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Suzie, Brad, Michael, and I were headed to Chicago this weekend for the Chicago Comic Entertainment Expo (C2E2) but the night before, Suzie, Brad, Kai, and I went light painting in Ault Park.

I really like light painting.  As a technique, it has a very low barrier to entry and rewards imagination.  Brad’s artistic skill and willingness to try everything five times helped as did Suzie’s and Kai’s willingness to be flashed repeatedly in the face while being asked to stand completely still.

Once Brad got an idea of what we could do, he let loose to much success:
Big Daddy on Wall
These images are largely unedited as that’s kind of the point of light painting.

The above is drawn directly with the pen light on my key chain. If you combine this with an actual person illuminated by a light wash you can add secondary features like Suzie’s wings.
Winged Suzie
Faces don’t hold up to tight scrutiny as even the stillest person will introduce some movement over a 25 second exposure.

Light painting also allows you to do a one-man scene:
Me Shooting Myself
My one request of Brad was that he not draw me holding a penis gun. I am thankful to him for meeting that request.

Finally, Brad got a chance to be the subject and produced a shot of some anime reference. I think he’s attacking the world with a spoon of light but he’s happy with it so I am by extension:
Brad Doing Something

After the park, Suzie and I retired to our AirBNB hosts for the evening. They had a libertarian presidential candidate sign in their lawn, introduced themselves as libertarians, their wifi network was “LiveFreeOrDie” and they had a stack of Reason magazines on the coffee table. These people weren’t kidding. The bedroom has a lending library bookshelf of the works of Ray Bradbury and Ayn Rand. I wonder if they used AirBNB more as a way to proselytize rather than gain income. If so, kudos for using market forces.

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As the resident operator of the massive printer at work, I was contacted to do a number of posters for our EHS department to promote Earth Day.  They wanted them to be 30″ x 40″ and mounted and it took me some sacrificial rollstock to get the colors right.  I had just spent a day making a large series of posters saying “I promise to not print unless necessary”.

Good to know that irony doesn’t clog the print heads.

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Marketing Boss: Terry.
Me: Yes?
Marketing Boss: We need to talk, you’re scaring some of the marketing people.
Me: How?
Marketing Boss: Well, someone saw you running around in a lab coat with a large knife wearing protective glasses.  And with your headphones on you looked kinda menacing.
Me: Well, I brought in fudge today and people were having trouble cutting and I didn’t want the crowd to disperse so I suspend my lab testing, grabbed the spare knife I had stored and started walking over there.  The building was chilly so I went back and put my lab coat on, and was in a hurry so I moved faster than usual.
Marketing Boss: So, this was all for brownies?
Me: Yes.
Marketing Boss: Ok.  Try not to do this on non-Mondays.
Me: Got it.

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My Fitbit was somehow in logging mode while I drove home from Albany and it interpreted my bumpy ride down the Catskills as me having climbed 244 flights of stairs and having ran 11 miles.  This was going to be a hell of a nuisance to the integrity of my pedometer data unless I were to run a half marathon.  So I did.

The first 10 miles passed quickly as I was watching Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and keeping a 6 MPH pace.  The next mile was tough and for the last two and a tenth I felt bored out of my skull and may have wanted to die a little.  My motivation was going to be able to say “screw you, Clara” after her “I’ll be able to walk tomorrow” comment.

I finished in a little over two hours and twenty minutes and hobbled off my treadmill.  I showered, sat down, and couldn’t easily get up again.  Maybe Clara was right in the end in that annoying Oracle at Delphi kind of way.

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Single refill in diner and a bus person that was all over that shit. World’s dullest ice skates and an uninterested rink attendant.

I drove to Albany to visit Pat and Clara who are always kind hosts to me. For instance, the restaurant we hit for lunch had a single refill policy and both ceded theirs to me. After lunch, Clara and I went ice skating and she cringed at my skate application method. Apparently, cocking your ankle at a 45° angle and then slamming down with the weight of your body to get a skate on isn’t proper form. Clara and I were 50% of the rinks occupants and the counter person appeared to be on Valium but we had a grand time sliding sideways on skates last sharpened during the Reagan administration.

That evening after an episode of Top Gear Clara and I retracted the recliner portions of our respective section of the sofa at the same time and for a moment we each saw that we had our legs sticking straight out. We locked eyes, I narrowed mine, she narrowed hers, and a game of “who can hold their legs out the longest” began. Clara is a leggy gal and I don’t know if that helped or hindered her. I do distance running and my quadraceps are the size of tree trunks and I don’t know if that helped or hindered me. Pat got bored and started doing things like putting cat treats at the end of Clara’s feet and having his cat walk out to get them. Pat then upped the stakes:

Pat: Who wants ice cream?
Clara: I do.
Me: I guess you’ll just have to put your legs down and go get some.
Clara: Never, honey would you pick me up some ice cream when you go out?
Pat: Not this time.
Clara: Damn. Shall we call it a draw? How long has it been?
Me: About 30 minutes.
Clara: Ok, on 3. 1 – 2 -3 *we both drop our legs* Good job, Terry, but realize that tomorrow I’ll be able to walk.

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Gary: Is that Chef Boyardee?
Me: Yes.  How are you going to make fun of me?
Gary: What do you mean?
Me: Joe and Reed both made fun of me for it.
Gary: Nah, be proud.  Chef Boyardee carries on a proud tradition of quality foods at low cost that can be prepared at home.
Me: Thank you.
Gary: Maybe one day you’ll turn 10 and will pack a real lunch for yourself.
Me: Die in a fire.

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Reed: Is that Chef Boyardee?
Me: Yes.  It’s good and only as 440 calories per can.
Reed: I remember when I packed that for my son along with a juice box and a fruit snack.
Me: It’s allowed me to cut my lunch cost to under $2.00.
Reed: Maybe you should ask for a higher allowance.
Me: Die in a fire.

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Joe: Is that Chef Boyardee?
Me: Yes.  It’s good and only as 440 calories per can.
Joe: Are you 9?  Where’s your Go-Gurt and Capri Sun.
Me: It’s allowed me to cut my lunch cost to under $2.00.
Joe: Is that all your mom gives you?
Me: Die in a fire.

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Coworker: Terry, was there something wrong with that cake?
Me: What do you mean by wrong?
Coworker: Was it what you had planned going into it?
Me: No, not by any means.  What made you think that?
Coworker: Well, the chocolate later over the graham cracker came out of nowhere and the cake bits were too square.  You usually don’t go for presentation so we though maybe you dropped it and made that instead.
Me: Nah, it just cooked oddly so I had to cut it up ahead of time and find something to do with it.
Coworker: And you probably just had some strawberries lying around?  They seemed pretty sweet and that’s a sign that they’re near the end of their life.
Me: That’s pretty astute.  Any thoughts?
Coworker: Ditch the dark chocolate, otherwise everyone in marketing likes what we’ve dubbed your MacGuyver cake.

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Every once in a while, I prepare a standard for work like a fudge, or a carrot cake, and for tomorrow I wanted to bring in a simple pound cake.  I prepped my standard double sizing of the recipe and popped it into the oven.  After 55 minutes, I pulled it out and found that only the left half had cooked completely.  I put it back in and after another five minutes pulled it out as the left half was starting to get a little over cooked and the right half wasn’t quite done.  I cut out the done portion, popped the rest back in the oven for another 10 minutes and about half of the half had finished cooking.  I cut this piece out again and was asymptotically approaching a properly cooked cake.  Not quite sure what to do, I cut the pound cake into cubes, mixed in a whipped topping, made a graham cracker crust to put under it and then topped it with strawberries.  I’d say it turned out well and have dubbed it FrankenCake.

I’m not sure why my oven wasn’t, well, obeying the laws of thermodynamics.  Later, I did a back-up batch of brownies that cooked evenly.  Maybe my oven feels unloved.