Short Day

When we have a noon Smart Talk it makes for a short day: setting up chairs, the talk itself, taking the artist to lunch, breaking down the chairs. And on my winter schedule of leaving work an hour early. Built a fire, then changed into sweats and put on an extra pair of socks. Very good talk by Art Werger, the printmaker with the show upstairs, about the way he works. Even better talk at the pub for a late lunch. An extremely visual person, of course, and we talked about installations and variations of installations. Shop talk. Back at the museum, D had a tech meeting with a local genius and I couldn't understand a word they were saying, web stuff, new software; I'm technically a genius, though not with anything technical, and I feel like a moron half the time, because I don't know how to do something; but I do know how to do a surprising number of things, and my ability to jury-rig is legion. Honed by a career in theater. Actually I left theater just when I got a serious and high-paying job offer, but the education has served me well. To fall into the museum, at this point in my life, was serendipitous. Hanging art and mopping floors are two things I can do. Hooting owl outside, I haven't heard one in a while, it took me away, remembering owls. Drift-fishing for Crappie, in tributaries of the St. Johns River (I checked the atlas, there's no hyphen) we'd often see them, bedded down for the day, in trees along the banks. Their eyes would open and their heads would pivot to impossible degrees, watching us float by. I don't know very much about owls, I need to put them to the list. Their necks must articulate differently. A couple of tenderized veal steaks in the remaindered bin at Kroger, I freeze one and bread the other in some highly seasoned bread crumbs (washed first with a beaten egg) topped with a simple tomato sauce and cheese; I'd roasted a few red potatoes, cut in quarters, with which I cleaned up the remains of sauce. Very good, but would be so much better served with a marinade of caramelized onions and fire-roasted tomatoes, which I intend to try next weekend. There's always 'chopped' steak, of one sort or another, in the remaindered bin. Linda and I were talking about this, living on food-stamps, $3:60 a day, or whatever, could you do it, and of course I could, I get a fair amount of my protein from outside the normal loop. A brain-dead squirrel, lovingly cooked and deboned, served on pasta; and egg noodles I make myself, costs maybe twenty cents, maybe forty cents, I'm a cheap lay, what can I say?