“i’ve been practicing the behavior of when something happens, what can i control and what can i influence? this has helped immensely. for example, i can control not bitch slapping a co-worker.”
— jenn jumper
Restraint
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Monthly Archives: February 2026
Bone structure
Robert: She’s a pretty girl.
Sunita: I don’t call that pretty, I call that beautiful.
Chancellor of the Exchequer: What do we think the difference is between pretty and beautiful?
Sunita: Well, something to do with bone structure. Pretty is pretty while young, beautiful will stay beautiful forever.
— Richard Curtis,The Girl in the Café
Doonesbury, “air pudding”
Lexicon. Music that blends into the background. Originally used by Trudeau about New Age (or newage, rhymes with sewage), but Classical, or Jazz, or coffee-shop guitar… All will do. (Which only reminds me of Larry Niven’s bon mot, “The applause should be louder than the music. Play better, or softer.”)
Scott Kemp interview collaborative design
This is mostly to provide links for myself.
Anyway… Dami Lee has a great interview with Scott Kemp, and his design process with First Nations throughout British Columbia. What’s notable, to me, is not only how this creates good buildings, but it appears to emulate processes recommended by Christopher Alexander. Just a really, really interesting interview all around.
Midnight Manhattan
When the Bistro by Airways Brewing closed in downtown Kent, I wrote an email asking for the recipe of one of my favorite cocktails (brands in parentheses):
Hi, Hal. It’s one of my favorites, too. Glad you like it, and thank you for coming in and supporting us. Here is the recipe:
MIDNIGHT MANHATTAN
Glass: Coupe
Ingredients:
- 1 oz. (Blue Spirits) Rye Whiskey
- 1 oz. (Sidetrack Distillery) Nocino Walnut Liqueur
- 1 oz. (Dolin) Rouge Sweet Vermouth
- 2 Dashes (Scrappy’s) Orange Bitters
Preparation:
- Add ingredients to mixing glass, STIR with cubed ice.
- Strain into coupe glass, no ice.
- Garnish with a brandied cherry on pick across the top.
Dione Dittmar
General Manager
Both Airways and Sidetrack Distillery appear to be out of business, alas. Airways’ home base was in an industrial part of Kent, WA. That area had a lot of railway sidings, and one can easily see why it might have given rise to “Sidetrack.” My google-fu is too weak to confirm this, but I think Sidetrack was an offshoot of Airways. So they may well have been serving a Nocino from their own still, and when Airways went under, Sidetrack went as well.
Don Ciccio & Figli nocino claims to stick to the tradition of gathering walnuts on June 24th, San Giovanni’s day. The result is very dark, and looks wholly appropriate for something called a “Midnight Manhattan,” so it should work admirably as an alternative.
Minkin, Playing with Money
Back to Gumperstown. The bank. “What’s my balance? I think I’m overdrawn.” Foxes to the right of him, foxes to the left of him. Goddamn branch hires tellers the way restaurants hire waitresses. Sell some tit with the sausages to stimulate appetites, better tips, return trade. But a bank?
“You’re not OD’d.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“You’re not overdrawn. This is your balance.” She passed him a slip of paper that read $126.23.
“Absolutely ridiculous, madam. I haven’t had that much in there in months. Why do I give you my money to play with?”
Lexicon. I usually rephrase as, “Why do I let you people play with my money?”
From Stephen Minkin’s excellent 1979 novel about play (“Ludics”), and Northern California in the late ‘70s, A No Doubt Mad Idea.
Heinlein, Class on Orders
“One of the more interesting and thought-provoking courses given at the Academy was the class in writing orders—the most useful English Department course Heinlein ever got. Each midshipman was given a tactical situation for which he had to write an operations order. Then everyone in the class would pick it apart, trying to find a way to misunderstand the order. This process was called “Major-Browning,” after an officer in General Ulysses S. Grant’s Civil War staff, whose sole duty was to misunderstand Grant’s orders. If the order got by Major Brown, Grant okayed it for release. At Annapolis, the Major-Brown test was pass-fail: if anyone could colorably misunderstand the order, the midshipman got a zero mark for the day. This process, with its panic-making incentive, “gave me a life-time respect for exact meaning of words and clarity of construction of sentences.””
— William Patterson, In Dialogue With His Century, Chapter 6
(This has got to be in one of Heinlein’s novels, because I knew this story long before I ever read Patterson. I just can’t remember which one. Comment below — preferably with a citation — if you know which one.)
Gurney Halleck (Dune), Undressed
”“Someday I’ll catch that man without a quotation and he’ll look undressed,” the Duke said.”
— Frank Herbert, writing about his character Gurney Halleck, in Dune.