Nice Weather, Smart Cover

Beautiful here lately.

Emily spotted these fluffy clouds (rare around here) in West Seattle recently, and I enjoyed the view of the Cascades from Louisa Boren Park:


The Times has also been praising our spring weather in a recent story:

Stuart Isett for The New York Times
From left The conservatory in Volunteer Park; the Center for Wooden Boats, where you can rent a rowboat or sailboat; at Sitka & Spruce, the chef and owner, Matthew Dillon.

SPRING comes early to Seattle and lasts long. By the end of February, the rains relent and pastel shades of plum and narcissus initiate a progression of color and scent that lasts months. But new flora is not the only thing popping out of the ground in Seattle these days. Seemingly overnight, whole swatches of downtown and close-in neighborhoods — notably South Lake Union and the Pike-Pine Corridor — have transformed themselves into vibrant enclaves of restaurants, bars and galleries.

They've featured Seattle before, (and I mentioned it then too), but this one really reminded me that I just love living here.

Favorite spots like Volunteer Park, Oddfellows, and Elliott Bay Books (Huzzah for Capitol Hill!), and a nice list of places we need to see, like Sitka & Spruce, the Center for Wooden Boats, and the Museum of History and Industry.

Hope you can visit soon, reader!


Okay, here's a bonus video that I just can't like enough:

Our iPad is working great, but only the new one has this cover...

Well, reader, I'd better get to work. Basketball coming up this evening! Rock Chalk!

Sweet!

I know it's been a while, but I've been so busy having a great week (great month? year?)... Too much for one post, perhaps, but what the hell?

First Rodrigo came to visit. So cool to catch up, see some lovely sites, and enjoy some great film and food in Capitol Hill (okay, downtown too I guess).


Then like the day after he left I heard that the Classical Quarterly accepted my essay on Plato's Symposium for publication!

I've been working on it (and talking about it) for a while, and it's a great feeling to know it'll end up in a good place.

I also celebrated a birthday, and was given the excellent gift of dance lessons at the Century Ballroom. Can't wait!

Among other good gifts was this play in yesterday's Kansas game. Beautiful:


Part of what makes the first weekend of the tournament so cool, of course, is that there are like four games at a time all day long for like four days. So much fun to be had!

Emily's facebook caption: "It is technically possible to watch every game at once but there is a problem of diminishing returns. Still pretty cool."

And me? A very cool week. Cheers, reader.

Sunday Magazine Notes

Liking a lot of the new New York Times Sunday Magazine, including this story about a pretty cool amateur dance video.

Here's the video trailer:

Girl Walk // All Day from jacob krupnick on Vimeo.

And the new Bittman column is here, looking good...

But I loved Virginia Heffernan! How could they cut her??

The world moves forward, though, for better and for worse. And in case it seems odd to devote an entire blog post to my thoughts about a magazine, let me end by praising Sam Anderson's discussion of marginalia. He hits it near the head here: "a way to not just passively read but to fully enter a text, to collaborate with it, to mingle with an author on some kind of primary textual plane."

Blogging's not quite margin-writing, of course, and I agree with Anderson that e-readers haven't quite mastered their margins (though they're awfully close), but I share his hope that "technology, rather than destroying the tradition of marginalia, could actually help us return it to its gloriously social 18th-century roots."

So, here I'll make these notes on the new Magazine. And if you want to follow my note-taking as I read with the Kindle app, this link should work.

A Thing or Two Before I Run to Class

Hey, so when we visited family last month, I heard about readers sometimes wondering when a new post would show up here, and I don't want you to give up hope...

On the other hand, despite conversations about how easy it is to take decent photos with cell phones, we failed to take many pictures. Fortunately Emily did get this shot of Evan:

So glad to have met our new nephew!

Anyway, this quarter has me way too busy, so I should go.

Thanks to Scott Hughes for this reminder of what things looked like when I wasn't so busy:


Oh, and we did take a little break the other day to see The Threepenny Opera. Good music there. It wasn't performed quite like this at the show we saw, but here's a song you might know:


Cheers, reader. Happy March!