Of lasagna and books

[essentialsaltes]

Saturday involved a flurry of cleaning activity followed by a flurry of cooking activity followed by a flurry of hosting activity. Deb, Kevin and a pair of Becca's work colleagues came for dinner and everything went smashingly, long into the night. We made lasagna (where I used my well-honed skills at making water boil to prepare the noodles), snow peas and shallots (where I used my well-honed skills at making water boil to prepare the peas), a fennel salad and finished off with chocolatey goodness. Everything turned out splendidly, thanks mainly to Rebecca, who has skills far beyond the boiling of water.
Conversation ranged all over the place, well-lubricated by cocktails and wine so that people were making interesting observations and candid confessions that cannot be repeated in a public blog. Things were apparently a little too well-lubricated for Kevin, who once again did his level best to combat Irish stereotypes. Nothing disastrous, but he lay for a while in a quiet, dark room. As is well known, time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. Which is to say, our guests left at 3 AM, and I had just strength enough left to fall into bed.

Had a nice slow day on Sunday. My greatest adventure was going to the LA Times Festival of Books. Now that I see UCLA at roughly annual intervals, there's always a surprise. The long-abandoned frat house at Strathmore/Glenrock has been demolished. On campus, Kinsey seems to be undergoing reconstructive surgery and there are lovely white roses outside Haines that I don't remember being there. I picked up a signed copy of Jared Diamond's Collapse, the El Cholo Cookbook for Becca and a couple Philip Dick paperbacks with neat cover art. That paperbook guy had tons of really cool and swinging 60's spy novels and trashy erotica and trashy erotic spy novels. I was really taken by the Clyde Allison 0008 Series with titles like Gamefinger, Sadisto Royale and Platypussy. I thought to myself, "Haha, how shagadelic! I'll pick some of these up for Becca." Then I saw that the paperback of Gamefinger was $150. Damn! This guy was cranking out one softcore Bond parody a month, and now they're $100+ a copy.

Comments

[therrin.livejournal.com]

What is this Kinsey you speak of? I know of no Kinsey. There are three rooms in Knudsen named "The Kinsey Rooms," but there is no building named Kinsey. Oh wait, you mean that building dedicated to the man who built the UCLA Physics department, and was dean for a number of years. That building is named the humanities building until a donor comes forward and gives enough money to the university to get their name over the door.

Yes, I'm a little bitter.

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

Egad! It's true!
I wasn't going to mention the "Physics & Astronomy Building" - I figured that's a temp name until a donor can be found. But I wouldn't have thought they'd do such a thing to Kinsey.
Since it's the Humanities Building (for now), do you suppose they'll chip off the Faraday quote?

[therrin.livejournal.com]

I love how, "officially," the physics department asked that his name be removed from the building. If it happened through any method that wasn't coercement, it undoubtedly involved a phrase similar to "if you're going to just kick us out of the building entirely, you might as well change the name while you're at it!"

PAB is nice, even if they did fail to build a fifth floor due to budget cuts, and subsequently scrapped the physics library, as it found itself homeless after being ousted from Kinsey.

I have plasma group meetings in one of the conference rooms. They'd never let a student into one of those rooms otherwise. Really nice chairs, all woodworking on the interior of the third and fourth floors. Very nice.

I think whether or not the Faraday quote is removed will depend on what the new donor thinks, and how much it will cost to remove it.

Regardless, facilities is inept, so they will undoubtedly manage to still leave the impression of the quote, so that it can be read for years.