Grey, and exciting

It's a weathery day. Has been since yesterday. A piece of the "Pineapple Express" is giving us some of the less common rain from down south (most of our rain comes down out of the Bering Sea). When Maia and I headed onto Poly to trim the pots we threw Friday night at Throwfest (the Craft Center's annual 24 hour free-clay marathon. If you trim and glaze your own pots, it's 2 bucks a piece to keep them, if you leave it for the staff, it's four. If you volunteer you get to keep; gratis, one pot per hour worked. I think I'm owed at least two more pots than the three I threw, but they gave us each a fifty lb. box of Laguna's WS 05, so I guess I got a bunch of free pots out of it after all) the sky was covered with a thin sheet of rumpled clouds, torn and patchy.

When we came out, three hours later, it was thicker, like clotted cream. High clouds, altocumulus, and streaming past the mountain tops.

Down on the ground the wind was still.

All there were brief flurries of wind.

Today, the clouds are low, and dull. When I look at the sattelite pictures the look thin, and from the ground the light is grey, with yellow notes. The wind gusts, and there's an advisory that it will do so all day, at up to 25 miles an hour. I wonder what the shore looks like, and I wish the D2H wasn't having it's brain repaired in El Segundo, because the gale warning (wind from the SW) for the past 30+ hours means the seas are probably high, and hitting the rocks from the better light.

At the moment the air is still, and some rain is falling, straight down, and softly.

     Western wind when wilt though blow
        That the small rain down can rain?

      Oh! that my love were in my arms
         And I in my bed again

This is that kind of weather.

Losses

Octavia Butler died. Many of you know this already, because it has been making the rounds.

I found out from Steve Barnes who did a swell eulogy for her.

I wasn't really planning to write anything about this becauseI didn't know her. But I did get to meet her, a couple of times while I was in Seattle. I suppose, as I look at the praises, and pain, her death has brought, I can thank the Army for getting to meet her, as I can blame it for not having been able to meet Zealazny. The few hours I got to spend in the same room with her showed a warm person, with a gentle sense of humor. Active whimsy. Reading the obituaries (and the Seattle Post-Intellgencer did a very nice one, which was picked up on the wire) and the comments of those who did know her, I wish I'd gotten to know her.

I guess, and a sad reason to pick them up, I'll go read some of her work now, and from the comments of her friends, and fans, perhaps those of you who, like me haven't done so either, might want to think about doing the same.

Quickie food

Slice some pork up thin (as for scallopine)

Soak in slightly stale sake, for two-three hours

Heat skillet.

Cook until just done.

Dress with cracked white pepper, salt and lemon.

The lemon brings out the sake from the marinating, in a way that not using the lemon doesn't.

If you have a lemon which is old, and has dried a bit, all the better.

If the lemon has started to turn brown, and really dry on the inside, that's too intense.