Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

We had a great Thanksgiving yesterday with Ed and Gina. This was the first time they had a dinner party in their new house, and we were happy to contribute. We did the first course, Risotto a la Milanese, which is a basic white risotto with pancetta and saffron. We then kicked around pitching in [...]

Esta is doing her Thanksgiving blogging a day early, and gives thanks for a long list, including the keiretsu, our Pop-pop, and Parliament, among others.
I’m thankful too, for:

My loving and patient wife Lisa;
Esta: her encouragement, wit, and blog;
My Pop-pop, for his enduring humor, strength, and everything else;
My parents and in-laws for their love and support;
Our [...]

I think I might have to add another category or else transform “Web Design” into just “Design”. As a result of finding typographi.ca, I’m learning about all sorts of type things that I had left behind over the past few years.
I used to fancy myself a typographer, of the digital sort anyway, because unlike [...]

Seen on typographi.ca: “Sometimes a bad font choice can send an unintended message.”
In case Neiman Marcus takes down the page in question:

Sometimes I think I should rename my Other department Humor and get it over with.

It’s always driven me nuts that the month links didn’t line up properly underneath my site calendar. I figured it had something to do with the way I had defined the div around the calendar, but I didn’t have time to look at it until this afternoon.

The problem was that the div was defined to [...]

Mark Pilgrim surveys a crop of new postings that contrast RSS for syndication vs. semantic coding in the first place and sez they’re all wet. In doing so, he draws a useful line between XHTML theory and blogging practice:

…this latest XHTML-as-syndication movement seems to be based on the principle that “syndication is so incredibly important [...]

Currently playing song: “Funkentelechy” by Parliament on Tear The Roof Off.

Today’s posts from a year ago:

“‘I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life – so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.’” (Matt Cartmill)
“I do have some nifty music that the E-52s will be performing shortly. We’re going to larn [...]

… because the weather here is fine. Cold, maybe, but clear. For the third day in a row. Is this really Seattle in the wintertime?

I feel good this morning. I feel like I could really get some things done today. Unfortunately that makes me want to work on things around the house rather than at [...]

Greg has finally made the move to Mac OS X. He asks for software recommendations. I would start with NetNewsWire Lite. If you like the new Sherlock keeping you from going to a ton of different web sites, you’ll love NetNewsWire bringing all the blogs you read daily to you. Including this one.
After that? Well, [...]

We painted trim last night and today (three window frames, two door frames, baseboards, five windows) in the front bedroom, and put a second coat of paint (“Washed Lemon”) on the walls. We also lost a little of the paint on the moldings to the masking tape. (Aside: when did masking tape become blue? And [...]

A few of you haven’t seen the short little teaser photo album we put together with a few “work in progress” pictures of our home improvement work. So far it shows our parlor after the wallpaper was removed and after the first go of paint.
more…

Finally got around to splitting out all the house related posts into a new department, Houseblog. Just in time for our housewarming.

Annie Zaleski reviews the new U2 compilation, The Best of 1990-2000, with mixed emotions in Salon. “Revisionist history” isn’t a bad description. Certainly ten years ago I would have expected “The Fly” to make it onto a best-of compilation. With that throbbing bass line, nasty guitar hook, and curiously vulnerable chorus vocal, it was the [...]

Driving into work this morning, someone had airbrushed the landscape away. A diffuse glow hung over the creek bordering the park. Seattle doesn’t like to be really cold during the fall, I think. It’s happier chilly and shrouded.
I vacuumed, cursed and picked up wet leaves with my hands last night in the dark. Patches of [...]