It's All About the Data

When we first moved in, my neighbor (who is from New Orleans) found out I cook a lot of Cajun food. He asked us to come to an annual “Fait-Do-Do” (party) that he was holding at his house, where they cooked up a bunch of crawfish (Cajun Lobster :). I of course immediately agreed.

The next year they invited us again, so we brought some fried chicken and experienced a little “South” again – something we miss a lot.

This year, I asked if they were having the crawfish boil again, and was told that at this point, I was part of the family. So I made up a bunch of red beans and rice and we drove to the latest location, at James and Tracy’s home in Federal Way, Washington.

We had a LOT to eat, and got to catch up with all the families. Sure enough, we’ve been adopted in, and now we’re just one of the families that shows up with a ton of food to share.

It’s good to have good neighbors!

I was scheduled to speak at the “SQL Saturday” event yesterday in Portland, Oregon on the 6th so we all decided to go. It’s about a 3-hour drive from here, but if you leave early traffic isn’t too bad. I made some pancakes and strong coffee (is there any other kind?) and we drove down to Portland after breakfast.

I had about 60 or so folks in the room, and we had a really great time.

After I finished work, we drove to the city center. Portland was having its flower festival, where all the floats are made completely of flowers – there were floats from lots of companies and even countries – and there was even a “grocery store” (Fred Meyers) made from flowers – with a few vegetables!

After we saw the sights, we walked all over downtown and stopped for a Thai Ice Tea before having dinner at one of the best Italian places in town – Momma Mia’s. We had lasagna, chicken parm, and pomodoro, all family-style.

The sun is out!  We dropped the top on the convertible and drove to Seattle, parking close to the Public market along Pike and Pine Ave.

Each year the city holds a "cheese festival", and various local and international cheesemongers bring their products and line the streets next to the market.

We bought some cheese and went inside Beechers cheese shop which is just next to the original Starbucks. Out came the water bottles and a few garlic-herbed crackers and the snacking was on.

From there we toured the market, buying some Smoked King Salmon, a little more cheese, more crackers, and a few different types of grapes.

I put all that together for a pretty awesome dinner.

I love the sunshine.

Marjorie had to work this weekend so Christina and I grabbed the discs and headed out for a morning of golf.

Disc golf is like regular golf, with a course, holes and so on, but you use special discs to play. They are a little smaller and much heavier than a frisbee, and you just throw them down the course until you get close to the "hole", which is a basket with chains on it, placed on a stand.

We had several courses near our house in Florida, and the main hazards there were large L-shaped courses, lots of water, and (no kidding) alligators. I lost one disc to a gator once - just too close to pick it up.

Here in Washington there aren't as many courses, but it is growing in popularity. There's not much maintenance on the course, and since everything is done "in the air" you don't have to mow or change a current park to outfit it for disc golf other than putting up the baskets. It coexists well with just about any course.

Some of the places I landed at were "tough lies" - meaning that you had to go up, around or through trees and bushes to get to the basket.

The weather dawned, bright, sunny and warm. OK, the morning didn't actually dawn, it was more that the clock showed 7:00, and it was snowing and then raining. So this weekend we picked an indoor activity!

We visited the Bellevue Art Museum, which is about 20 miles north of here. They had a special series of exhibits that appealed to all of us.

You can't take pictures in a museum, so I'll try and describe a little of what we saw. I assure you I won't do it justice, but you can use your mind's eye to fill in the details.

The first exhibit was on baskets - not your average baskets, mind you, but artwork inspired by baskets. Many weren't bowl-shaped at all - some were made in the shape of a shallow plate, others were square and completely enclosed, and still others were bowls inside of other bowls. There were tiny bowls, huge art pieces, and each were made of something different. I found weavings of thread, horsehair, porcupine quills, film negatives, tape, staples, branches, copper strips, silver wire, gold wire - even one made out of fish skins! There was one box made of silk weaving, and inside you could see a ball that was made of silk weaving as well, suspended in the box somehow. It was amazing.

The next exhibit was on quilts, all from the 1800's. There were the standard quilts you might find in any older home, but there were "crazy" quilts - ones where the scraps of fabric were used however they came, and quilted together. There were huge quilts made from 1-inch squares, and "charm" quilts, which have no repeating fabrics. One had over 1,000 squares of fabric, none of which were alike! And some of the "whitework" quilts, that are hand-stitched patterns in white thread on white fabric, were so intricate they took years to make. Awesome stuff.

And then there was my favorite exhibit, called the "Book Borrowers". This exhibit was art made from books, inspired by books. It's the hardest one to explain, so I'll tell you about a couple of examples that I found most extreme.

The first was a series of animal books, opened, joined and arranged where the pages faced you as you circled it. The artist had cut out parts of the  pages of the book, such that they showed a particular animal diagram, but in 3-Dimensions. The artist left certain words on various pages as he cut down to the picture to tell yet another story, all from within the book!

Another exhibit looked like a life-sized person laying on their side, sunk into the display table - but it was all made from different height books. Still another, one of my favorites, was a "canyon". The artist took a series of old encyclopedias, and pushed them together to make a row of books about 10 feet long. Then he did the same thing with another set, pushing them spine-out from each other. He glued all this together, and then took a sand-blaster to the top of the books and carved out what looked like the Grand Canyon out of the pages of the book, so you looked at it from the top!

Another one of my favorites was a clock, with all the parts of the clock made from books on - what else - clocks!