FUTURISTIC SKY TRAIN!!

I am in Madison, Wisconsin for a conference - I flew in this morning via a connection through the Detroit airport. The connection was tight so I had to hustle between opposite ends of the airport, but I wish I could have lingered because holy cow the Detroit airport is awesome! Check it out, they have a driverless robot train that runs inside the terminal:

Picture from wikipedia because I was running through the airport.

Then, to get between terminals, you go through this groovy underground tunnel that has undulating lights and music as you move through it:

Another google image search picture.

My flight home has a longer connection, and I am dorkily excited to hang out in the Detroit airport!

Morning art walk

Walking past the Kimmel Center this morning I saw there was some sort of hubbub inside, so I went in to check it out. Turns out they were having a small art exhibit in the lobby, featuring busts of famous composers that played recordings of their work when you pushed a button.

The cool part was that the busts were sculpted out of old books:

Not knowing much about classical music, I spent more time checking out the book spines than the faces and recordings. So far as I could tell, they didn't have any relation to the composer they (ahem) composed, but seemed to be chosen based on size and color.

What a nice way to start the day - surprise art!

Belated Pi Day

Apparently cupcakes and donuts have been replaced by baked goods in jars as the latest hip dessert, and Philadelphia just got our first jar-based bakery. In (slightly belated) honor of Pi Day, we went there today to check it out.

Lemon pie, tres leches, and dulce de leche brownie

The tres leches cake was my favorite - all the sweet milk had sank to the bottom and I drank it like ambrosia. Now we have these empty jars in our house, but they offer a 50¢ discount when you bring back old jars - pretty smart incentive for repeat customers!

Guilt Sampler

My friend and fellow Jew at work mentioned that her roof has been leaking, and she was nervous about it ruining all her stuff if it got worse while she was out of the house. I said if it did at least her insurance would cover it, she said she didn't have renter's insurance, and I said she was the worst Jew of all time. I also told her I would make her a sampler if she got renter's insurance to protect it - she held up her end of the deal, so I made her this:

This is a quote from our conversation about why she should get renter's insurance

Yay, adult responsibilities!

Small project

A friend at work has been exceptionally supportive with a challenging situation lately, and she is also obsessed with Harry Potter. Hence, this small weekend project for her:

Nothing like releasing work anxiety in embroidery form!

Compost Cross Stitch

Ben and I started composting a few months ago - we don't have a yard, but we signed up for a service that picks up a compost bucket from our building once a week. They have a list of things that can and can't go in the bucket, which we printed out and taped to the wall above it:

But that was ugly, and I was bored, so I cross stitched the list instead.

This is actually the first of my creations to hang in our house - I usually have a rule that I can only make things to give to other people, so as to avoid filling the whole house with needlepoint. Thankfully, we have 6 weddings on the calendar in the upcoming year, and 2 more engaged sets of friends who haven't picked a date yet, so that should keep me busy enough to avoid the temptation of making more for myself for a while!

Escalation

We have an ongoing pen pal exchange with our friends up in Boston (if you haven't already, read part one, part two, and part three). After a several month hiatus, we got a device in the mail from them. When we plugged it into a battery, this happened:
When decoded, the lights spelled out a URL in morse code (we were about to visit them and go to a Final Fantasy concert together, hence that particular video link).

A while ago I saw a tutorial on making woven bead bracelets, so I decided to give it a go with our response. I wove a braille link into a bracelet, and I think it turned out pretty well:

The whole bracelet

Close up of the pattern

We were nervous about the security of sending such sensitive information in the mail, though, so we decided to send it to them in a locked box. But since we can't trust the mailman, we didn't want to mail them the key. So we mailed it to them like this:

Thankfully, they knew just what to do, and a week later we received it back like this:

(we ended up switching our gold lock to the other side before we mailed it to them)

We then removed our lock and sent it back to them, so they could remove their lock and open it upon receipt:

Thank you, Diffie and Hellman!