Ongoing

Piddled, mostly, at the museum, dozens of small chores that needed doing. Mindless activities, for the most part. Moving something from one place to another, unclogging the toilet in the basement. Start getting the modernism show out of its crates tomorrow. Everyone that sees the glass show wonders how we could possibly have touched the pieces. Well, we have to, so get used to it. The paintings tomorrow, $50,000, $100,000 paintings. We have to get them out of the crates and standing up somewhere, so we can see them, so Sara can set the show, and then we hang them, in a suitable fashion, each one individually, in a manner that minimizes the chance that one would fall. Handling the art is very cool. A tightly considered interface. Intensely interesting short periods of time. I loved moving the large piece in the glass show, with D; the twisted, bent, glass rods seemed so delicate, but they're pyrex, for god's sake, borosilicate, a really strong glass. And in this form and configuration quite flexible. We spread our hands, carrying a piece of this show, to make as much surface contact as possible, and squeeze, and we slightly compress the piece, right where our hands are, and it's glass, and we expect it will explode. It doesn't, he's widely exhibited and there's nothing in the literature about Preparators bleeding out from glass-shard wounds. You have to handle the stuff, to display it. Worked in the basement most of the day because the office manager had to go in for some blood tests, and all she could talk about, at great length, was her body parts. I tend to suffer in silence, so I have nothing to say. Sort screws, start another list. Establish an event horizon. Anthony comes into the bar with the damsel duly saved. I had to grin, because I'd seen this coming. She's smart and attractive and not wearing any makeup. I like her right away. She volunteers to help me with the croquettes. I mean, come on, I need help with the croquettes. Not to misconstrue. Anthony is in my inner set, one of the two or three people I might talk about a certain thing with, and we're on the same wavelength, I would, therefore, have to meet her. She likes cooking in cast iron, which I do almost exclusively, my collection of cast iron cookware is extensive. A set of ramekins you might use, if you were setting something on the table. Tapioca, I think, fish-eyes and glue. Server went out at the end of the night and I'd couldn't SEND, lost a few sentences. An older couple came in the museum yesterday, from Charlottesville Virginia, had found us online and wanted to spend some time with the artifact collection. I talked with them, took them through the glass show. He also a builder, so common ground, and I tell them about working on Peter Jefferson's house. Tom's dad. Frank looked at me strangely and said he'd just finished spending a year working on James Madison's house, which Tom had designed. The windows didn't work well, never did, there's a note in Madison's hand, bitching about them. The windows were large with opening bottom sash and counter-weights. The Jeffersons owned an iron mongery, so the counter-weights were iron, and not heavy enough; Frank, using one of the iron ones, to make a mold (the chase was limited), then cast a new set (for twenty windows) in lead. I told him about threading the exposed iron bars, proto re-bar, and using them as foundation bolts on the Jefferson cistern. In situ, they were poking up out of the tops of the walls, and rather than cut them off, and sink new foundation bolts, I just used them. What are the odds that two people would meet, who, each, had worked on a house designed by Thomas Jefferson? Finger cuts, Jesus, you wouldn't believe the amount of tape used to wrap the Modernism Show. In one full, ball-busting day, we get half of it unwrapped, uncrated, unboxed, and we have filled a thirty gallon trash can with balls of tape. At one point, I take tape from D, as well as ripping off the half of the tape on my side of the padded table on which we unwrap, I had tape completely encasing my right arm, D laughing his outdoor laugh, as I ripped most off the hair from my arm. So, we're unpacking art; ripping off tape, thinking the next time we get a painting show of Christine's from Mary Gray, we'll send her a couple of rolls of the tape we prefer. When you're shipping art, the tape needs to be removable. I wrote an article, for The Janitor, "On Attachment", that addressed that issue. It's not good when you have to cut the tape free and underneath is a back of raw canvas. Sure is an interesting job. Never set down once today, except at lunch, steady unwrapping, until after 4, and we were both wasted, completely shot. D still had miles to drive, the stepchild, visitation, meeting half-way; but I'm footloose, before I sit down and address you, so I go to the pub for a pint. Anthony gets back from the workshop in Huntington, joins me, and we talk about relationships. Mostly, I observe, it's a habit, I notice as a matter of course. I still ljke semi-colons too. Which might be an indicator. Who knows, parsing. If we were going to talk about sexuality and the modern perception, I'm not your guy, am not, don't want to be. In the course of that sentence I understood something. Listen closely. I wouldn't trust him any further than I could throw him. There might be an embedded message. You have to, at least, open the envelopes. It could be a bill, but it's probably bullshit. File this as ongoing, if there's any interest. I delete almost everything. Two priests go into a bar.