There's nothing like the view

The important thing to remember in all this is nobody ended up bleeding here today. Now, I had never seen the ESPN Classic show Cheap Seats before today, when my houseguest showed off a DVD-R of several episodes. I find it rather fun, which does some repair to the track record of friends recommending stuff to me. It doesn't hurt that these were apparently some of the stronger episodes, including their riffing on the Creative Breaking Championship (while Mike, Crow, and Tom Servo riff on them). It's an alleged sport of breaking things creatively, or at all, though I couldn't avoid noticing how many things were just knocked over rather than broken. Probably the Creative Untidiness Championship is more an ESPN 3 event.

Creative Breaking turns out to be the theme of the day, with first my guest being rather frustrated by his breaking sandals. He didn't have time to buy new ones before leaving the US, and a weak tab was nagging at his foot all day yesterday, but tightening it up seemed to help today, when we walked over the big hill and long road that bisects campus. A little spot of mud on my guest's sandals left him slipping several times, but not enough to actually lose his footing.

However, back home, we had a little incident due to my not being used to there being someone in the kitchen with me -- I left a cabinet door open while getting ice cream, and he ducked around me, and raised his head, and hit it on the open door. We didn't see any signs of bleeding or worse, so we're trying not to think about it. In any case he came through better than the plug for my old power brick, which he was using for his PowerBook. He tripped over the power cord and sent the extension block twirling around, where it basically ripped the plug apart. I'm rather impressed by the destruction -- he didn't think it was possible from the relatively short fall, but with the leverage available I can believe it -- but I have another spare plug. Still, it's only day two of his visit ...

At least we got a replacement to the broken alarm clock.

Trivia: The death of partner John Craig in December 1765 left James Watt scrambling to repay loans of £757 to his estate. Source: Watt's Perfect Engine, Ben Marsden.

Currently Reading: Spaceling, Doris Piserchia.