lani, me, and two of lani’s coworkers/roommates kim and yura, left DC friday afternoon. by dark we were at our campsite at jane’s island state park with out tents set up and a dinner fire started.
saturday morning we went into town and got some breakfast. then we wandered around, checked out “Meatland” and the docks. we also happened to be in the right place at the right time to catch some kind of parade. shriner’s in their mini cars, firetrucks, cheerleaders, the whole nine yards. we even saw “miss crustacean”.
went back to the park and tried our hands at crab fishing. apparently crabs are about the stupidest animals there are. to catch them, you just tie a chicken neck to a string, dip it in the water, wait for a crab to grab a hold of it and then pull them up into a waiting net. you don’t need hooks or traps; once they get a grip on the meat, they won’t let go. it sounds all too easy.
after about 2 minutes, lani and i had both pulled up crabs. they’re not kidding. it really is easy. unfortunately, they have to be over 5 1/4 inches. for the next hour or two, we caught dozens of small ones. eventually kim caught one that was 5 1/2 inches, battle-scarred and missing a claw. we ended up giving to some kids who were fishing next to us; one crab wasn’t really worth cooking.
we’d planned on staying till monday but on sunday it was raining and threatening to get even worse that night. so we packed up the tents and got ready to leave. naturally, as soon as the tents were down, the sun came out. so we put everything in the trunk, crabbed for a while longer and then went and rented some sea kayaks. lani and i never entirely figured out how to steer the two-person kayak, but we still had fun zig-zagging around the bay for a couple hours. afterwards, my arms felt like they were going to fall off, my hands were blistered and i had a sunburn on my nose.
went out to a local restaurant to finally get some crab since we hadn’t really been able to catch enough to eat ourselves. unfortunately, the restaurant we went to was out of whole crabs. so we had to settle for the “world’s best crabcake” and a pitcher of beer. slept in the back seat of the car for most of the ride home as it started really pouring.
monday lani and i went to the Hirshhold gallery to check out some photography and the <a href=”http://www.artmolds.com/ali/halloffame/ron_muek.htm”>Ron Mueck</a> exhibit. then we walked to Vegetarian Soul Exodus for some vegan soul food. finally we met up with mark in dupont circle for some dessert.
for the next few weeks, it’ll be difficult to get around. when they first arrive on campus and don’t know anyone, they tend to form into groups with everyone in their freshmen center. and until they have full, busy schedules they all drift around campus in giant clumps.
tuck is currently in new york for a brief period before heading back to china.
<p>met up with him, julie, and a random assortment of danish and german folk at a german bar called Zum on 7th and ave C tonight. </p>
<p>we had a couple enormous $10 beers. they were huge and came in a big stein about the size of my head that you pretty much needed two hands to lift. i don’t remember what the beer was called but it is apparently the official beer of Munich. </p>
<p>we learned how to drink and toast in danish. it goes like: “<span class="caps">SKOAL</span>!! [rising tone] <span class="caps">SKOAL</span>!! [falling tone] [then you sing a little song in danish] <span class="caps">SKOAL</span>!! [rising tone] <span class="caps">SKOAL</span>!! [falling tone] [yell something really complex in danish really fast. then you finally drink]”</p>
<p>too complicated for me.</p>
<p>got thoroughly rained on on the way home. quite pleasant.</p>
i’ve been playing with python and tkinter lately and decided to start up a little project to give me something solid to work on as i learn.
drachen is a little GUI playlist editor designed to handle extremely large music collections. the interface is a little unusual and makes use of the sets instead of trees approach i mentioned recently in the bookmarks. from using drachen for the last couple of days though, i can say that i find it orders of magnitudes easier to work with than other playlist managers i’ve used.
saw a sign in a restaurant tonight handwritten and taped up to the wall that said ‘dry paint’.
<p>brilliant. </p>
<p>i need to start leaving signs like that all over to warn people. maybe even ‘no paint’ signs where appropriate. a road sign or two warning commuters of ‘no construction ahead’ would be nice too.</p>
<p>hmm… ‘beware of no dog’, ‘not slippery when wet’, ‘no baby on board’…</p>
we moved to our new office today. in the same building just down a floor. it’s a little smaller than our old one but the furniture is nicer and arranged better. we also have a conference room that is walled off so the noise of meetings can be contained a bit.
<p>i was sad though because to complete the move we had to unplug the servers and move them. my linux server had been up for over a year:</p>
i madesaint today on perlmonks. saint is the highest level at perlmonks. i hope i don’t lose interest in it just because i “beat” it. oh well, i guess i still have other people’s high scores to try to beat.
<p>technically, to be canonized, you’re supposed to be dead and have performed at least two verifiable miracles. i’m hoping nobody comes around to enforce the ‘dead’ part. i wonder what the miracles i performed were…</p>