Bitter Cold and Crazy Hot St Louis: Saturday

I got up early the next morning, ate some leftover chana masala, and returned to wrestling with the Devil's Fold. Before I'd slept, I'd been stuck on the third stage. Now I made it to the seventh. Then I got really stuck. I was still wrestling with it when Bryan and Elissa got themselves awake and collected.

Elissa and I dropped off Bryan at school so that he could work on a lesson plan for the upcoming week, and then we went to see the new museum for The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. My mom had pointed me at a magazine article about this place. The article had said that the museum had great architecture and that you needed a reservation to get in. In the intervening months, the reservation requirement had fallen away (as long as I didn't show up with more than 3 friends at a time), but the architecture surely remained. Though the place had been open for less than a year, Bryan and Elissa had been there a few times each. Fortunately, it's a quick place to see, so Elissa didn't much mind being back there again, even though I spent the most time in her least favorite room. (I was making a note that I liked Juan Gris' "Still Life with Fruit Bowl," which seemed like an important thing to do at the time.)

You're not allowed to take photos inside the Pulitzer Foundation for the arts, only outside. So I took some photos of this big metal sculpture in the back yard. It looked kind of like a big belt coiled on the ground, its brown rust looking a bit like leather. I took this photo because it was raining. That is, to get this photo, I had to haul myself up onto a cement barrier. I figured that there were probably ushers around when the weather was good. Probably those ushers would make sure I didn't jump up on the cement barrier. So I took this photo while I could.

You can walk into the middle of the spiral statue as if it were the world's simplest labyrinth. Because the walls lean at odd angles, it's a bit disorienting. Here's Elissa at the center. Look at that smile. That smile is saying, "Hurry up and take the photo, jerk, so we can get in out of the rain.".

Elissa told me that the Pulitzer was different during the summer. It was more crowded: people had to wait to walk into the spiral metal statue in the side yard. Because it was so hot, sometimes people passed out while waiting. There was another outside area, with a water feature. However, the water feature was drained for the winter; presumably it didn't like being frozen.

After we were done with the museum, Elissa and I headed over to a bakery. There was a party planned for Elissa's birthday, and so we picked up the cake. Elissa seemed surprised at how big the cake was. I wasn't sure what the big deal was. They'd ordered a cake big enough for 10 people. This looked like a cake that would generously serve 10 people. Maybe Elissa was thinking of all of the treats already lurking back at the house. Maybe she was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed.

We went back to the house and put the cake in the fridge. Outside, the wind was blowing and the rain turned into snow. I watched the snow built up in drifts, and then blown off the tops of those drifts. I thought back to the Altay Shan levels of New Legends, the video game I'd worked on. Altay Shan was supposed to be windy, but our snow effect had been these fluttering flakes falling nearly straight down from the sky. Now that I was reminded of what snow really looked like in wind, I was glad that we'd removed the snow. (The awful XBox hardware wasn't fast enough to support it.)

I proofread the introduction to Elissa's manuscript about her "Feelings Circles" lesson plan. Elissa is a Special Education instructor, and her students don't necessarily know how to recognize emotions, their own nor others'. According to her introduction, she'd noticed this one day in class. Kid A had done something mean to Kid B. Kid A wanted to apologize, and did apologize. Elissa had noticed that Kid B wasn't really ready to hear an apology yet, was still upset. Elissa advised Kid A to wait until Kid B wasn't so upset, and then apologize. Kid A wanted to know how to tell when Kid B was ready. Elissa said to check Kid B's facial expression. Then Elissa had turned away to do other things. When she looked back a while later, Kid A was staring at Kid B, and Kid B was getting ready to hit Kid A. Elissa had defused the situation, and then had asked Kid A why he'd been staring at Kid B. Kid A explained that he didn't really know how to tell if Kid B was mad by facial expression.

So Elissa had come up with some lessons to teach these kids about emotions: how to recognize them, what inspires them, and so on. She'd written up her plans, and hoped to get them published. So I read over the introduction and made my suggestions.

Meanwhile, the snow continued to fall outside. People in St Louis have seen snow, but they don't really know what to do with it. Snow on the ground made people skittish about driving. Snow on the ground made people want to weasel out of attending birthday parties. Elissa called around to the invitees, and consensus was that people wanted to stay home. I snorted. These people should be sent to live in Chicago for a winter, to toughen them up. But I couldn't snort too loudly--I had never tried to drive in snow.

Bryan had returned home while I'd been proofreading. Now he and I set to work on shoveling snow and salting the walk. We divided the task thusly: I took care of the slow shoveling, and Bryan took care of the fast shoveling and everything else. It wasn't like shoveling snow in Tahoe. There, you'd shovel a foot of snow out of the driveway, but leave the last couple of inches there. Here, all you had to shovel was the the last couple of inches, but you had to do it without driving yourself crazy with the feel of the shovel dragging over the sidewalk.

The party wasn't absolutely canceled. Greg, another math professor at SLU, lived nearby. There was a restaurant nearby on Sarah Street. (The bakery whence sprang the birthday cake was right next door.) So the four of us would go there without too great a risk of skidding out on an icy road.

The restaurant, the Southern Belle Supper Club, and they were booked solid. Fortunately, one table's worth of people didn't show up--no doubt scared off by that scary, scary inch of snow on the road--and we were permitted to snarf their table. The Southern Belle supper club serves up good food, if you know what to order. I ordered the grilled vegetables, which were good. I also ordered the mashed potatoes, but should have ordered the sweet potatoes instead. The "mixed greens" wasn't a salad, but more like boiled spinach.

At dinner, we talked about a mathematician who'd applied to work at the SLU mathematics department. He'd said that he'd cracked Karateka. Bryan and Greg had conjectures about who in the department would like this in a colleague, and who might not. I wondered how an employer could confirm such a claim. Whoever cracked Karateka didn't sign a real name.

Back at the house, Greg was introduced to the game of Settlers of Catan. I recently ranted about Settlers of Catan, saying that it was a game that rewarded skill, that a first-time player could expect only defeat. Yet Greg won. So maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. All hail Greg, Lord of Catan.

A mystery Bryan wondered at: The carpenters who did the molding didn't take measurements. They'd make pencil marks on the walls and cut wood, but they didn't seem to use tape measures or protractors. All agreed that this was indeed a mystery.

We each had a big slice of cake, but there was plenty of cake left.

We talked about home improvement. Bryan pointed out the Schlüter, the strip of metal which marked the transition from tile to wooden floor. He'd acquired it in a rush, while some guy had been laying the tile. The guy had said, "Too bad I don't have a Schlüter," which of course begged the question of what a Schlüter was, and then Bryan had decided to go out and get one immediately. Bryan may even have explained the Schlüter's purpose, but I can't remember that anymore. All I can remember is the joy of pronouncing the word "Schlüter."

Sunday

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