Month: June 2012

Unsightly Rooftop Debris

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In the city they don’t built out they build up. When you first move into your condo you are amazed at the city view (if you have one). But then, after a while, you start to notice the details.

While buildings may lavish effort on their facades and interiors, often times they forget the roof. After all, who cares what the roof looks like. Your neighbors up above, that’s who. Those in the middle of the photo collage, to give a feeling for all the condos in the mostly beige and white skyscrapers look down onto the smaller (mostly commercial) buildings. In the loop it is businesses looking at businesses while in River North and the Gold Coast it is mainly condos and hotels looking down on commercial buildings.

Upper left – ever wonder how they hang signs and lights off the side of the building? In this case it is a series of planters filled with concrete in a grid. At least they are neat, I guess. Upper right – there has been a puddle with floating debris (including that rope and those boards) up on that roof for SEVEN YEARS. I can’t believe it doesn’t drive the people beneath them crazy with leaking but, rain or shine, in all seasons, there is a big pond on that roof (in the winter it does freeze). Middle left – there is grass growing (it is dead now) in the large puddle on that roof. Middle right – a roof is a great place to store your cinder blocks, un-needed antennas, and the like, apparently. Also been there almost a decade. Lower left – a bunch of boxes and cartons have been strewn about on that roof for a while. Lower right – of all the rooftops this is the most amazing. That is a fully grown tree (in the winter it sheds its leaves) on the roof of the old firehouse. I have no idea how it gets enough purchase to stay on that roof in the high winds but it has been up there for at least seven years, changing with the seasons. Kind of like those trees that live on the rock face in the wilderness.

Dan asked me over at LITGM why I used the word “purchase”… I was using it as a synonym for “grip” which I thought I heard somewhere but maybe I am just confused.

Cross posted at LITGM

So Far From God

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Poor Mexico, runs the saying usually attributed to long-time Mexican strongman Porfirio Diaz, So far from God, so close to the United States. I was thinking of this, when we went to see the movie For Greater Glory mostly because I had seen brief mention of it here and there on the libertarian-conservative side of the blogosphere, and the whole premise of it interested me, mostly because I had never heard of such a thing as the Cristero War. Never heard of it, and it happened in the lifetime of my grandparents, in the country right next door … and heck, in California we studied Mexico in the sixth grade. It appeared from casual conversation with the dozen or so people who caught the early matinee at a movie multiplex in San Antonio, only one of them had ever heard of it, either. Was there some cosmic cover-up, or did we have troubles enough of our own at the time … or was it just that Mexico was so constantly in turmoil that one more horrific civil struggle just blended seamlessly into the one before and the one after?

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Fathers Day Dinner (Including Potato Salad Recipe)

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I had to be out of the house today, and my wife sent me an email asking what I wanted for fathers day dinner. I generally prefer to cook everything myself, but that is not possible today, though I will cook the meat and brown some onions upon my return home. My requested meal, with instructions, is below the fold.

Note that these instructions contain my potato salad “recipe.” I use quotes because when I make this dish I do so completely by eyeball and I never measure anything. I do not know how close my family will be able to approach my ideal for this dish, though I am sure whatever they come up with will be fine. My senior daughter has assisted with the preparation in the past and may be able to get it done right. We shall see.

Jonathan previously asked me to share this “recipe” and since I had to write it down today, this is the fated moment to pass it along. No doubt everyone has their own absolutely and unassailably best way to make potato salad, and I say each home is its own castle in this regard, and should do things in the time-tested way, and I have no wish to impose my culinary values on anyone.

I do not suggest that mine is better, I just say that it is mine, and I am happy with it.

(Note that the eggs are a concession to my wife, who considers her late grandmother’s potato salad to have been the apex of perfection, and it had egg in it. The egg-or-no-egg controversy is one of the main fault lines in the world of potato salad, and my wife and I fall on opposite sides. But domestic peace is more important than standing on principle on this point.)

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