Author: Eric

Since it’s usually blastin’ hot here even well into November I’m not accustomed to having to dress warmly. However, since I’ll be visiting the frozen northlands I thought I’d see what the weather is usually like at the end of October. Fortunately for me we have the United States Historical Climatology Network where you can get daily temperature and precipitation data for lots of places including Central Park in convenient comma delimited format. Yays!

The first thing we learn is that looking back more than 100 years it has only snowed within a day of October 31st one time and that was in 1925 and it was very little. So good for me, it doesn’t snow that early. Since it doesn’t really get cold enough to snow how about rain? Really cold rain sucks way more than snow. Looking at those same three days it has rained 79 times out of 316 recorded days, which is conveniently exactly 1/4 of the time. However the average amount of rain is 1/10th of an inch which is barely rain at all. It has rained a half inch or more 27 times and an inch or more 10 times. Rain appears unlikely enough that a jacket that is reasonably water resistant would be sufficient and if it happens to be one of those unlikely days where it actually rains I can buy an umbrella. I would call the precipitation data a gamma distribution but JMP doesn’t like the fact that mostly the measurements are 0″ though I thought that was the point of the whole thing. I guess I need to dig out my probability text book.

Speaking of jackets let’s talk temperature. It gets cold in New York. They actually have seasons other than summer up there. The normality test fails for the temperature data but that’s not hugely important though I am going to treat it as though it was later. The average average daily temperature for October 30th, 31st and November 1st is 53.1°F with std. dev. being 7.1°F. The average maximum temperature is 60°F, std. dev. 7.9°F and the average minimum temperature is 45.7°F, std. dev. 7.1°F. That’s something we can work with. The minimum and maximum temperatures I’m not that worried about, I’m going to be in the city during the day, not at 3AM and I’m going to be inside mostly except for a few hours walking and on the train platform. Only 5% of the time will a data point fall outside of two standard deviations from the mean. That says to me that for the time I’m going to be there I have a reasonable expectation of the temperature being 53.1°F ± 2 * 7.1°F or between 67°F and 39°F. That’s chilly but certainly not parka weather and I don’t think I’ll bring a heavy coat. I’ve been told that I should layer my clothing and that I will need a “fleece layer” and a “wind layer”. I think this means that I’m going shopping. Also, yay!

Previously I had decided that I wanted to go to see the Van Gogh exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. I spent a few days on various travel web sites trying to put together a modest little vacation to The City. I figured stay in a hotel in midtown, fly in Thursday night, MoMA on Friday, the Met on Saturday, fly out on Sunday. It turns out that if you want a hotel room in Manhattan for the weekend you’d better have some spare organs laying around. Heartbroken and defeated I gave up. Today I decided that the chance to see those pieces in one place within my reach would probably not come around again for a very long time and that I should really make the effort. If I could fly in Thursday, stay the night, see the museum Friday and get a late flight out it could cut the cost. I still couldn’t do it for little enough cash to make the extra trouble worth it. Then this evening Mom suggested that I think about flying into and staying in Philadelphia and taking the train in. Turns out that I can get two nights in Philly, the round trip air fare and a round trip to NYC on the train for the cost of one night in a 3.5 star hotel in midtown Manhattan. Go figure. So, I’m going to visit the museum on Halloween. I’m very excited.

I guess. My 30th birthday was Friday. My lovely friends treated me to dinner at Musashino and then drinks at de Ville which was fun. Thank you friends. I also drove down to the San Antonio neck of the woods to visit my family. We had a picnic at the Guadalupe River State Park which is one of the old stand by, day out locations from when I was a kid. It’s largely unchanged and it was uncrowded which is apparently due to the school year having started. It was good to see everyone there too and the weather was great. The icon watch I mentioned previously was bestowed upon me as a gift by my sister. Thank you Eileen. I also got a card describing the world as it was in 1978 (and some candy) from Evelyn. From Caroline, Aunt Helen’s set of dominoes my sister and I played with at her house which are still in surprisingly good condition. A nice shirt from Dad and a water-sprinkler tractor from Mom and Bill to round out the material goods. Of course, I also got a lot of nice cards and Mom wrote all over hers as usual.

The other gift I got from Mom was a membership to the also previously mentioned Museum of Modern Art in New York. This means that I now have a year in which to get back up there. I’d really like to go there now though affording the time, tickets, etc. will be tight with the fab closure project coming to a head. The exhibit that opens today is “Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night.” It follows Van Gogh’s life from 1880 when he began his career as an artist to Arles, France in 1888 and the progression of his painting of sunset and twilight scenes and interior night scenes and finally his paintings of the starry night sky. The exhibit includes both The Starry Night over the Rhône and The Starry Night both of which are beautiful and significant in art history. I’ve been told I should just take a day or two off at the end of the week in a few weeks and fly up there to visit the exhibit and the rest of the museum. I may do that. It would certainly be worth it. I could leave on Thursday, get there in the evening, have dinner and sleep early, get up early, spend the day at MoMA and then maybe Saturday at the Met and then come back Sunday morning. Three nights wouldn’t break the bank and if I bought tickets now I could probably still get an ok deal. Regardless of my potential travel plans this year, next spring or summer I’m going to try to take a longer trip up there with Mom and we’ll have more time to go to the museums. Update: Too expensive. I will stay here and cry about it instead.

My gift to myself was having two of the prints I bought at Flatstock in the spring framed. Michael’s sent me a 60% off framing coupon in the mail this week and that’s too good a deal to pass up. Framing is fantastically expensive so really what 60% off means is not cheap framing but rather that you can get what you actually want done for an acceptable price. The framing department at the Michael’s at 1325 and I-35 is good and quick and I’ve been happy with the work they did for me earlier this year. They should be done before the impending dinner party on October 4th though the target display location is my bedroom so if I want to show them off I’ll have to actually clean the entire house, not just the living room.

Now is a dangerous time of year. The East Austin Studio Tour is coming November 22nd and 23rd and then the Blue Genie Art Bazaar starts Deceber 3rd. The shows are still fun even if you aren’t loading up on pretty things though so I will just have to go and have a little self control. I’ve been on vacation for a week and I’ve been making progress on my projects. The weight loss is going well despite the birthday feasting. The air is getting cooler. We’re coming into my favorite time of year. So, I may be old now but I’m pretty optimistic about the near future.

Here’s a neat pixelated looking watch I was pointed to in the Museum of Modern Art’s web store. It’s a shame I don’t wear a watch because that would be a fun one to throw in every once in a while and it’s pretty inexpensive. I’m not really capable of wearing a watch regularly. I fiddle with them constantly and if I sit down anywhere I take them off. I’ve left watches (and rings and my office ID badge, etc.) pretty much everywhere. It’s too bad too because, though the phone serves as a time piece more effectively, watches are essentially art you can wear. The extremely complex ones with a tourbillon and exotic materials are great and sometimes cool modern technology finds its way into them as well. For example, the below is a watch produced by Seiko which has a display that runs around the whole watch that uses electronic ink to write out the time. Sadly it doesn’t appear that they actually put the thing out for sale. I’ve seen comments to the effect that it would be sold for about $2000 but the only places I see them mentioned are in copies of the press releases from 2007 and the various blogs which report on that stuff.

I’ve been trying to take better care of the yard this year. You know, mowing regularly, watering, spraying anti-fungal stuff on the roses. It’s looking better than it did last year certainly. I have completely failed to eradicate the Bermuda grass infestation in the rose bed and the bed under the front windows. It is terrible. I dig down as far as I can and pull out the stupid little root runners and three days later there are new shoots sticking up above the four inches of mulch. I wish the non-terrible plants grew that fast. Hell, the actual grass in the yard has nothing on that. Anyway, there are some new pictures in the gallery.