plum pudding, plum lines, plum nuts, no Bs

I constructed a plum pudding or three, and have been sharing them with friends. Some of them like it. The tangerine sauce with Grand Marnier probably doesn't hurt, as long as you have a designated driver. You're supposed to let it age for a year, instead of two weeks, so next year's is going to be constructed in January.

A spiral stairway is being shoehorned into the entry rotunda in our museum, so the halls have been resounding with jackhammers and hammer hammers and saws and scrapers. Fountains of sparks from welding and from the sawing and smoothing of steel of concrete. I can't hear most of it from my office, but this morning there's a particularly loud shrill sound of some oversized dentistry going on. It's been fun watching all of this, and several new concepts have been entered into my mental vocabulary. The electricians repairing the lines cut by the construction crew used rats to slurp wires through conduit. There is much visual poetry in spiral staircases, and having watched the crew cut their way into the building's foundations to pour their concrete footings, I'll never look at a building the same way again. And the lovely tools they use. A sort of powered painter's chisel with teeth looks oh so useful, and then there's the little portable band saw, and a small power saw with a disc that can cut concrete or steel, or be used sideways to scrape welds smooth - now that's a tasty little device.