26-May-99 Shalom Hunan

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My sister and her husband (see this entry for a picture) came over to get my (our) mom and bring her out to their house for a couple of days, and the four of us (Arlene was at printmaking class) went to dinner at Shalom Hunan in Brookline. It's a kosher Chinese restaurant, and I recommend it highly if you're looking for a kosher restaurant in this area. It's fairly classy, with cloth napkins and tablecloths. The menu looks like a normal Chinese restaurant menu, but of course without any pork or shrimp or shellfish dishes. It was fairly empty when we got there, but while we were eating three busloads of kids, some kind of school trip from an orthodox community in New York State, judging from the bus company, piled into the restaurant. It was packed and noisy by the time we left, but Hanna and Ira were delighted that their favorite restaurant was doing a good business.

Hanna said that when she and Ira were dating they used to eat at that restaurant about once a week. One time, after they had been there eight or ten times, their fortune cookies weren't the regular pop philosophy, one size fits all ones. Maybe the waitress dipped into a secret special bin of fortune cookies, but Hanna's said “You'll never meet anyone more wonderful.”

We got first rubber (semiconductor companies talk about first silicon for a new chip) for our latest stamps on Monday, and I've been starting to index mounts for them. Monday evening I cut mounts to length. Yesterday I sanded the ends. Tonight I stamped the first mount with solvent-based ink and assembled the stamps to use to index the rest of them. With 25 designs, doing six to ten mounts for each, it takes a while.

Oh! About ten days ago I was busy with a snailmail postcard swap. The deal was that people each made six postcards with a handcarved eraser stamp, and whatever other rubber stamps or other media they wanted, and I sorted them out and sent each participant six cards that other people had made (Did I already write this, or was I just thinking of it? It sounds familiar.) Well, anyway, I scanned them and put them all on a web page before I sent the cards out. Up to today I had only given the URL out to the participants, because I wanted them to have the real cards before I told the world about the web page. Enough of them have e-mailed back to say they got their cards that it's time to let you see that page. Warning -- graphics ahead! Secrets of Art History postcard swap. Hey, you can make your own postcards really easily. Any piece of card stock about the right size -- and 4 1/4 by 6 inches is just the right size, a little smaller is OK -- can be a postcard if you address it and put a 20 cent stamp on it. It doesn't have to say "POSTCARD" in the top middle, and it doesn't have to say "This side for address", but it's fun if it does. Bigger than 4 1/4 x 6 officially is supposed to have more than 20 cents postage, but I've sometimes gotten away with 4 1/4 x 6 1/4.

I have a couple of pictures to share today:

They must just speak a different language in northern New Brunswick. I mean, yes, Acadian French, but even the English. We cracked up when we saw this van at a nature reserve near Dalhousie NB about five years ago. Would you want a bunch of bimbos looking after your kid?

Top ten reasons to stay on the trail: reason number 1: Poison Ivy. This stuff grows luxuriantly in southern New England, and it's out in force in Edmands Park by now. I really don't want to fall off my bike on a lot of the trails. Three leaflets, always. Leaves are typically but not always shiny. The notch on the edge of the leaves is typical but not always present. Stories abound of women with rashes on their backs and guys with rashes on their knees.