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This Sunday, January 21st, Charlotte along with 3 other Lotus Girls, Olivia, Jordana and Lucy, will be making a presentation to the San Francisco Metal Arts Guild in conjunction with MAG’s first meeting of the year. This is a huge thing seeing as MAG is such a “serious” organization. It feels like we’re a bunch of race car drivers giving a talk to a group of physicists about the G-forces encountered on the track. ;-)

From MAG’s site:

2007 ANNUAL MAG METALSMITHING DAY
Sunday, Jan 21, 2007 from 2-5 pm

Where: Fort Mason Center, Building C, Room 260 San Francisco

“HOW TO PACK YOUR WORK FOR SHIPPING” – demo by Harriete Estel Berman and emiko oye, jam-packed with valuable info on packing your work for an exhibition or gallery, relative to artists in any media.

San Francisco based FLAMING LOTUS GIRLS will give a slide lecture about their work as well as give a fire art performance (performance outdoors, weather permitting).

MEET THE BOARD – info on upcoming events, opportunities and an open forum for members to become involved with future programs.

Contact: Carol Windsor 650-343-5656

Each Girl will have an 8 minute or so presentation talking about one aspect of being part of a this collaborative art group. I won’t be presenting but I’ll be along to help out.

Carol tells me that we can bring as many friends as we like. If you’re interested in coming to the meeting, seeing the presentations and (hopefully) see us run 2 feathers from the Angel of the Apocalypse, give me a buzz!

We’ll be meeting at the Box Shop at 11am Sunday to finish packing. We’ll go on starting about 3pm.

I bought 2 tickets to Burning Man this morning.

This is what I agreed to:

I agree to read and abide by all guidelines listed in the 2007 Survival Guide, and to the terms on the back of the 2007 ticket, which appear below:
YOU VOLUNTARILY ASSUME THE RISK OF SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH BY ATTENDING AND RELEASE BURNING MAN FROM ANY CLAIM ARISING FROM THIS RISK.
You must bring enough food, water, shelter and first aid to survive one week in a harsh desert environment. Commercial vending is prohibited, as are firearms, fireworks, rockets and other explosives. You agree to read and abide by ALL rules in the Survival Guide and follow federal, state and local laws. This is a LEAVE NO TRACE, pack it in, pack it OUT event. You are asked to contribute 2 hours of playa clean up in addition to your own camp. Art cars, art installations, theme camps and performances are not owned or operated by Burning Man and you assume all risk of injury arising from their operation. You appoint Burning Man as your representative to protect your intellectual property or privacy rights, recognizing that Burning Man has no obligation to take action. All vehicles including trucks, trailers and RVs entering and exiting Burning Man are subject to search by Gate staff. Tickets are nonrefundable even if the event is terminated early or canceled due to harsh weather, acts of nature, governmental regulation or conditions beyond Burning Man’s control. This ticket is a revocable license that may be revoked by Burning Man for any reason. Use other than personal use of images from Burning Man, or of drawings or representations of the Burning Man sculpture on a book cover or in any advertisement, or of the phrase ‘Burning Man’ in the title of any publication or in any advertisement, is prohibited without prior written consent of Burning Man. Burning Man is not liable for acts of God, or actions taken by government agencies. Children under 18 years of age can attend the event only accompanied by a parent or guardian, and any person bringing a child to the event agrees for the child to the contractual terms on this ticket. YOUR USE OF THIS TICKET CONFIRMS YOUR AGREEMENT TO THESE TERMS.

At Burning Man 2006, Nate Smith created an art piece called 2BLEVE. BLEVE is short for “boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion”. It was an astonishing 15 seconds. I saw it from about 1/4′ mile away.

Here’s an excerpt of an email from my friend David pointing to pictures and videos related to it.

2BLEVE. BLEVE is an acronym for “boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion”.
See wikipedia. Also see the BLEVE account in the 1973 section of this.
some interesting quotes: “…two acre fireball…” and “…one thousand feet in diameter…”.

Below are some links that Nate found of the stuff we worked on.

Nightshade’s photos

http://www.theblight.net/gallery/
http://www.theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/art/slides/PICT6256.html

http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/people/slides/PICT6208.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/people/slides/PICT6209.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/people/slides/PICT6242.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/people/slides/PICT6245.html

boom
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/art/slides/PICT6256.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/art/slides/PICT6257.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/art/slides/PICT6258.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/art/slides/PICT6259.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/art/slides/PICT6260.html
http://theblight.net/gallery/bm/06/art/slides/PICT6537.html

Best still sequence yet.
http://homepage.mac.com/red0x/bm06/

2BLEVE video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9vYE7B1_PU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm5VB7JaJWA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdKYGMaHNqY

really good video.
http://www.fearlesspookie.com/videos/2BLEVE.avi

Fire vortex video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rX4dESXWmQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaX_Hm5Dl5E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtDqRX4duvE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txq-tHOMxAM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkVExGq9U-8

local version:

local version:

local version:

local version:

local version:

What we did this morning:

1 woke up
2 lazed
3 enjoyed the feel of the sheets on our skin
4 lazed in that eyes half-open perfectly comfy manner
5 mmmmmmmm
6 talked about what we might have for breakfast
7 snuggled
7b felt at one with… something
8 lazed
9 snuggled
10 started making the scones
11 started making the bacon
12 fresh orange juice, REALLY fresh, like nectar
13 started the fluffly scrambled eggs
14 steaming chocolate mocha!
15 everything steaming on the table at the same moment (except the orange juice of course)
16 yum bliss

Phew, we’ve had a busy day! Where’s my pillow? And it’s only 1:30pm!

Charlotte and I rushed to Fort Funston to catch the sunset. We both needed the rays. Unfortunately, we missed the sun by 5 minutes. But there were a bunch of folks with fancy camera gear. I kept overhearing them talking about something moving really fast and such. Charlotte finally asked what they were doing. They were looking at Comet McNaught!

It was discovered just last year and it’s orbit isn’t known precicely, though it is extremely eccentric. It won’t be back for hundreds, thousands or maybe tens of thousands of years. NASA site on it’s orbit

I’ve only ever seen a glimpse of another comet, and that was on a hazy night. With my own eyes, I could make out the comet, streaking along just 15 million miles from the sun. And through binoculars, it looked “just like they do in the movies” :-)

So it’s a good thing we showed up when we did!

We’re going to go out just after sunset Sunday night to try and catch it. But it might already be gone.

Last night Charlotte and I went to Poetry & Pizza: Murray Silvestein & David Shaddock. Charlotte immediately noticed Murray Silvestein as the author of the important A Pattern Language. The readings were quite a lot of fun. I found David Shaddock’s readings to be tremendous! Afterward, we spoke with him for a few minutes and he gave us a copy of his “Dreams are another set of muscles”. I’m looking forward to reading it!

It was hel at Escape from NY Pizza downtown. The pizza was excellent. :-)

Afterwords, Charlotte was a bit tired and I was energized so I made my way to a meeting about the Serpent Mother proposal. Worked on it (having a lot of lively and fun discussion :-) til 2am.

On New Year’s Eve, Charlotte and I went over to Shani and Aaron’s place. A couple of Shani’s friends were there. We played some games… Taboo and Guillotine… with lots of screaming fun. Ion and Sherri came over and we went off to the beach! We worried that it would be cold and windy and… well, whatever an ocean beach might deliver on December 31st.

It was beautiful. There were about 20 other groups with bonfires. As we started our fire, the glistening of the moon off the waves a hundred yards away looked like there was a bright light shining up from under the water. The sky was clear, the waves beautiful, the water tranquil, the company exceptional, the s’mores wonderful!

Let this serve as a warning to all who might play Raffi’s Bananaphone song too much.

Charlotte fell in love with this video. You might too. (via)

“It felt like a big truck drove by, only everything wobbled the wrong way.” Charlotte

There was a 3.7 in Berkeley that lasted just 1 second. Charlotte and I were having dinner. It was a bit unnerving being so short. It felt like we were waiting for the other shoe to fall for a minute or two.