Christmas in the flower district, as I was walking across town on the way to work.

Every morning, I walk from 31st street and 8th avenue to 26th street and Park Avenue South. This is almost the same trip my dad took when he lived in Mount Airy, and commuted daily from the North Philadelphia train station to 23rd street, just west of the Flatiron building.

I have my choice of going mostly east and walking through the north end of the fashion district, which in the morning is full of shuttered doors and orange “this premises closed for copyright violation” notices. Or I can go a few blocks south, then east and walk through the flower district. In the flower district, the sidewalks are choked to a narrow path lined with stacked boxes of moss and wheatgrass and waxy cardboard containers of exotic stems just off the airplane, getting trimmed with razors and placed into store windows.

If I go a little further south on eighth before turning, I can walk past the sex-shop district bordering the Fashion Institute of Technology, and I can entertain myself separating the sex-workers just ending their shifts (baggy sweatshirts, ripped fishnet stockings, newsboy caps, jewel-y cellphone, cigarette) from FIT students just beginning their day of classes (tight tank tops, ripped fishnet stockings, newsboy caps, portfolio case, cigarette)

Any further than that, and it’s Chelsea, and I can see the fellows going to and from the small, private gyms set in brownstone fronts. These guys look like they were constructed out of spring steel; you can hear their joints operating smoothly as they walk. And all the ads plastered on the wall are for yoga classes. The trees are surrounded with flowers, and dogs are carefully curbed. BO-ring.

My favorite walk lately has been down 29th street, because I can walk past Blade Fencing, which looks for all the world like what Ollivander’s wand shop would actually look like if it were in NYC: dim light, concrete floor, fifteen-foot-tall steel shelves and lots of bizarre and interesting stuff — carefully made in exotic parts of the world — precisely stacked all the way to the ceiling. While cleaning the basement last week, I re-discovered my fencing mask that I got at Blade, which made me nostalgic for when I took lessons.

But mostly my favorite is one store window on 29th street, which has a rack full of little jars that totally makes me stop in my tracks every time. Here’s a cameraphone picture through the front window:

A small sign says that it’s Kremer Pigments. I assume that it’s where you go when you are mixing your own paint(?) or dye(?), or are generally an utter badass when it comes to color. I am not an utter badass when it comes to color, but I have been repeatedly frustrated by the limitations of gamut. (“Gamut” is the range of colors that it’s actually possible to create on a printed page, using commercially-available ink. Monitor gamut is wider than print gamut, but it’s still very easy to make an eye-popping green in Photoshop that won’t survive conversion to a JPEG.) The oranges and blues in the bottles look magical and pure and visceral. It makes me want to lick the window.

I’m sure that most of those pigments are made of incredibly toxic minerals, so that would probably result in a very swift, unpleasant death.

I spent the weekend cleaning the basement. I really enjoyed doing it . That’s for some special definitions of “enjoy”, of course. I mean, nobody likes crouching behind the furnace with a shopvac, but if you feel like you’re Doing Right by your family, and it’s something you’ve been meaning to do for two years, and there’s a dumpster right outside to make it easy to get rid of the crap you’re sucking up, and — in particular — the shopvac you’re borrowing is basically fueled by a rocket engine and makes anything in a four-inch radius simply vanish, then it’s not really that much a hardship, either.

I’d attach pictures, but they look just like what you’d expect:

• BEFORE: Fairly cluttered basement with rubble in the corners and thirty years’ worth of dryer lint furred on the pipes. Gigantic wing-chair with deep cat-claw scarring sheds horsehair in the corner.
• AFTER: Incrementally less cluttered, with visible corners and clean (but not washed) pipes. Gigantic stuffing-leaking wing-chair still present, after some soul-searching about cat’s single sacred refuge in the wide world.

Nobody’s going to mistake our basement for a freshly-painted rumpus room now, but neither are they going to mistake it for a HAUNTED SPIDER HOLE and start tapping the walls listening for immured prisoners.

Since I felt so virtuous knocking semi-permanent wooden structures apart and carrying them piecemeal, dusty and tainted with cat pee, out to the curb, I didn’t pay that much attention to my Weight Watchers over the weekend, and as a result I got a Big Fat Surprise this morning. Goddamn it. Now I have to eat like a @#$@# squirrel this week if I want to be able to claim any sort of forward progress. The trouble with wanting to be a skinny person is you have to eat like a skinny persion, and skinny people eat BORING FOOD. And not much of it.

Okay, here’s a photo after all:

More to come on this subject, but right now I have to go harvest a hundred and sixty acres of slough hay. Well, actually, I have to sit at a desk and write emails reminding others of version-control best practices. It’s… it’s not quite the same thing.

Kate told me this story on Tuesday:

Lydia [walks into the kitchen, holding a doll]: Mommy, I thought of a good name for the doll that Paula gave me.
Kate: Oh, that’s great, sweetie. What name will you give her?
Lydia [holds up doll]: I will name her VEN-GE-ANCE!

This awesome, piratical utterance is attributable to a short, yellow-hatted anarchist that we have been reading about recently. I will put her where she belongs, on a Dead Milkmen cover:

From “Madeline’s Rescue“, which both Kate and I had read to her the day before:

Madeline jumped on a chair.
“Lord Cucuface!” she cried, “Beware!”
“Miss Genevieve, noblest dog in France,
You shall have your VEN-GE-ANCE!“

…but, oh please, couldn’t you mistake me for one, for just a moment?

During lunch yesterday, I went and picked up a five pound (or, as I learned, a “20 foot”) bottle of compressed nitrogen from Keen Compressed Gas in West Chester. I love meddling in random areas of industry, since you get to (just for example) WALK OVER A METAL CATWALK in order to get inside. I told the fellow what I was up to, explained that I needed a bottle of gas for [SECRET UPCOMING PROJECT], and then completely ignored his advice to buy the big tank, since it wouldn’t have fit on the motorcycle.

Anyhow, I felt very glamorous and secret-agent-y with my industrial nitrogen bottle strapped to my sidecar, especially when I was chasing down the ice cream truck I met coming the other way, since I’ll need his involvement in [SECRET UPCOMING PROJECT]. Sadly, I lost him around Bolmar street. Apparently there’s some kind of ice-cream-truck batcave around there.

When I was googling compressed gas, I learned a new and interesting section of the yellow pages I had never seen before: “Carbonic Gases.” I also learned the other kinds of people that use them Carbonic Gases:

• Welders,
• West Chester University frat boys (CO2 bottles power their giant basement Kegerators),
• Aquarium enthusiasts (i’m not sure why),

and very occasionally,

• People into [SECRET UPCOMING PROJECT]

We’re back from two whole weeks at a beach house in Avalon, New Jersey, and it was FANTASTIC. We rang all the chimes:

• First week cold and rainy, so we had to entertain ourselves with jigsaw puzzles and a spinning captain’s chair: check. I’m not being sarcastic, here: this is a traditional and important part of any beach vacation, and is designed to test your nerve. The day we drove down was BEAUTIFUL, but we awoke the next morning to weather reports showing thunderstorms as far out as the forecast goes
• Read all of the “Little House” books: check. Almanzo Wilder continues to be my hero, possibly because he is so much unlike me.
• Embarass ourselves with Dance Dance Revolution on the boardwalk: check. Eleven-year-olds have now, it appeared, directly wired their brains into the computer; their feet are moving with unbelievable accuracy.
• See the most terrifying ride you’ve ever seen at the boardwalk, and ride it: check. I rode the “Cyclone Extreme”, which (Google reveals afterwards) is a “Moser Super Flipping Action Arm.” It’s kind of like a fifty-foot-tall industrial welding robot arm with a chair on the end. Did I mention it was fifty feet tall?
• Dig a big hole on the beach; so big that Matt could put his chair and umbrella in the hole: check
• Henna tattoo: check. I got “KATE” tattooed on my left bicep in Olde English Gangsta Script, but my T-shirt sleeve fell down and smeared it, so it kind of looked like it said “CATS”. Sorry, Kate.
• Lots of jumping and splashing in the water: check
• Outdoor showers: check
• Sunburned stomach: check

All in all, it was wonderful, and I’m sitting under Eighth avenue, about to roll into Penn Station and see what the work world has been up to while I’ve been gone. Gulp!

We went to the beach for Memorial Day weekend, and Lydia had a great time charging into the freezing cold water over and over again, and jumping over the waves. Jumping over the waves requires an adult behind her, arms in her armpits, counting one two THREE and bouncing her into the air, then grimacing as the frigid salt water slaps you in the thighs. Why am I complaining? It was a wonderful time. Oh, yeah, I remember why I was complaining: it was COLD! But it was still really great.

Being at the beach made me I realize that a BMW sidecar outfit is awesome, but it is not the ultimate Family Fun vehicle. It is, of course, the ultimate “ride around with your german shepherd in doggles and a red bandanna” vehicle, but priorities change, and so I’m considering selling the BMW and getting something appropriate to this season of life — something where the whole family can ride around and talk to each other. Maybe to Highland Orchards or Dairy Queen, without burning five gallons of high-octane SUV fuel. And it should let you know you’re outside; modern convertibles are too optimized to reduce wind buffet. My old 1977 Land Cruiser FJ40 was a wonderful, awesome ride, but at 11MPG, I can’t justify getting another one. Plus, SUVs make people angry. Be honest, what emotion builds in your heart when you see Fratty Fratterson riding around in a jeep with a backwards hat and a fire extinguisher on the rollcage? God knows there’s enough rage out there, so an uber-jeep is out. And it should be cheap to buy, and easy(ish) to wrench on. So, given my priorities:

• Fun and open to the elements;
• Inexpensive, good gas mileage;
• Does not foster rage in self or others

…that pretty much narrows it down to a 1970s Volkswagen Thing, or its French cousin, a 1970s Citroen Mehari:

You can either say “Citroen Mehari” with an American accent, or one hell of a French one: ‘see-troy-‘EH me-‘EARRH-eeeee’ (Gallic shrug)

The Mehari is to the 2CV as the Thing is to the Beetle, so parts are (apparently) not that hard to come by. Plus, CAPTAIN HADDOCK IS PICTURED DRIVING A MEHARI in various Tintin books, so really what more do you want? I just have to convince myself that when people see a Mehari, they will file it under “ooh, what’s that, cool!” and not “YOU GODDAMN HIPSTERS WITH YOUR PROTO-SUV IMPORTS I WILL BURN YOUR COFFEE SHOP TO THE GROUND.” Damn, I guess I spent too much time walking past the Hamptons-bound antique Land Rover set at Cafe Gitane when I lived in NYC. Anyhow, fun summertime car, no rage, will start saving up.

The news at home: Kate and I have been harvesting broccoli from the garden and eating it, and it is really good. It’s a little odd to be eating FOOD that our LAWN made, but when the broccoli actually tastes good, you feel relieved and hopeful that you might be able to live healthy one day. “Oh, I actually LIKE this stuff! Wow!” Kate sewed a really cool tablecloth for the table out back, and I (for my part) hauled the table out of the basement. Kate and I didn’t even get our outdoor furniture out of storage last summer. Neither of us knows why; we think maybe we were recuperating from the first two years of being a parent, or something. Kate’s having a friend over for lunch today, so we stopped by Waterloo Gardens and got some hanging plants for the porch (and I got out the wading pool and fixed the little internal sprinkler thingy.) However, we apparently angered the gods with our preparedness, and so now it’s raining cats and dogs outside.

This is getting long, so I’ll type faster: Kate and I are now gripped by a Playmobil obsession; Kate came back from the toy store on Friday with a Playmobil flower shop, and it was SO COOL that we ran right out on Saturday and came back as the new owners of a dollhouse that looks an awful lot like Marlinspike:

Kate and I spent two hours snapping together its little Teutonic parts, which were satisfyingly and efficiently designed, ja? and now we’re drooling over the catalog. It’s like the Second Coming of Fisher-Price Adventure People.

Almost done with the blog backlog here: yesterday, Kate, Lydia, and I went to the second annual Firefighter’s Muster in West Chester, which reminded me a little bit of a mesmerizing game show I watched on TV in Texas as a young kid. Firefighters had to use leaky buckets to fill a leaky 55-gallon drum, and run up and down ladders wearing full regalia, and man does that look hard. I think it’s also really important to come out and cheer, since isn’t a big part of the draw of being a volunteer firefighter to be generally awesome and heroic? So as a citizen, it’s incumbent upon us to come out and be suitably impressed. I’m not being sarcastic, either — climbing up a three-story ladder in forty-pound pants while carrying a giant, steel-tipped, pointy stick is nothing to sneeze at. For several reasons, including good rasons like “if you sneeze, you might drop the axe on your buddy holding the ladder.”

Also, where else in modern life do you still see Napoleonic heraldry in daily use?

The big leather crests on the front of the firefighter’s helmets should be laughable, but they’re totally not, in context. Come to think of it, I suppose firefighters wear ten-inch leather crests on their helmets for the same reason that nineteenth-century soldiers wore two-foot bearskin shakoes — so you can tell who’s who when everything’s smoky and confusing. Wow, that’s pretty kickass that someone still has a good reason to wear that stuff that does NOT involve sacking villages and commandeering livestock.

Our neighborhood’s fire company, First West Chester, had obviously been practicing for the event. Station 51, which is right around the corner, kicked the asses of the other companies in attendance, just like last year. Hurrah for station 51! Plus, Kate heard them yelling “LEEROY JENKINS!” before charging towards the ladder in the “carry a whole bunch of heavy, pointy stuff up a ladder to the top of the parking garage and back” competition. I wish I had more opportunities to wear a cool uniform and shout “Leeroy Jenkins.” before running somewhere.

Oh, we got a reel mower from Sears — so far, the verdict is: COMPLETELY GREAT, since now one of us can mow the lawn while everyone else is also outside, holding a freaking conversation, instead of cowering indoors watching Angelina Ballerina and waiting for me to finish. So there’s my chance, I guess: I’ll simply need to create a Reel Mowing Uniform, and charge up and down the lawn, shouting my battle cry. My shako will be in the shape of a stalk of broccoli. This is gonna be utterly heroic.

This post is long enough, so I’ll save the part about how I’m using a sixteen-year-old VHS tape to get a cyborg midriff for later.

Francesco, this one’s for you, in response to the New Yorker article you clipped and sent me about Patrick Leigh Fermor, than whom we’ll never be cooler. Oh well: