caleb walker

communimacation

A few loosely related things:

• I follow a few friends on Twitter, but I'm thinking about unsubscribing to some of them since recent tweets look a lot like this: "RT @Vandelay @HDoofus @Mulva July 25 #Nothing event at bit.ly/LiNkItY #Whatsit #UmWhatNow." And it's just too much cognitive effort to figure out what's being said. Why not use the 140-character size limit as a challenge? Like the 100-word essays we do in my writing group as an exercise in word choice, in focus, in clarity.
• I got a cell phone last weekend and haven't received any calls yet. I'm not too happy about paying a monthly fee for a digital pocket clock.
• When KR cooks, the dogs like to lay around her feet. I'd think they wanted to catch dropped food, but when she does drop something they're oblivious until she points it out to them. Anyway, they're always in the way when she's cooking and the command she uses is "Get out of the kitchen." Georgia slinks away then, and Kaden stands up, not sure what to do until we push him far enough away. The other morning KR was doing her yoga in the bedroom. This attracts the dogs, too. I was in the office next to the bedroom when I heard her say, "Get out of the kitchen." The results of the experiment were inconclusive; Kaden gave the same slack-jawed stare as when he's actually in the kitchen.

That's about it for now.

fireworks and such

KR and I ventured out of the house last night to drive to Spring Hill for dinner with friends who built their own house, a Bauhausian tower in the midst of a neighborhood of old brick Pittsburgh-squares.

After dinner, from the roof, we saw fireworks in every direction. Though we couldn't see Pittsburgh's main fireworks show (there was a hill in the way), we saw a surprising number of little homegrown explosions along the river downtown. Big round colorful explosions were coming up from the horizon beyond the city and further along to the east. From our vantage point we saw neighborhoods full of houses, lots of lit windows. Among them, little sparkles and flashes off into the distance, like colorful fireflies among the field of lights.

At the horizons we figured we saw Monroeville's show way off to the east and Aspinwall's behind us. Then a luminous jellyfish appeared from between the houses nearby. A single transparent balloon, lit by a little flame inside, rose and drifted to the south. It seems to me now that everything paused as the thing went by, getting higher and higher. We watched until we could no longer see its flicker.

At some point over the Hill or the South Side or maybe even over Mount Washington or further the flame would have gone out and the thing would have drifted to the ground or into a tree. But while it was in the air it seemed magical. Amid the noise and sparkle, this silent thing held our attention for several minutes.