Merry Christmas to everyone!

Or, perhaps we should say Happy ChristmaHanuKwaanzaka to you!

Nah… that’s way too politically correct.

Merry Christmas.

Enjoy good food, but worried about the risk of cardiovascular disease? The Polymeal could be just the diet for you!

Dr Oscar Franco, a public health expert at the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, decided to combine in one meal the foods that have been shown to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke. Using a mathmatical model to determine the optimum combination and proportion of ingredients, Franco and his team came up with what they consider the best meal. The results of eating this meal, combined with non-smoking and exercise: For men, an additional 6.6 years added to their average lifespan plus a 9-year delay in the onset of heart disease. Women could live 5 years longer and delay heart disease by about 8 years.

And what is the Polymeal? Wine, dark chocolate, fruit and vegetables, garlic and almonds eaten daily, plus fish eaten 4 times a week.

The article addes that wine and chocolate should be consumed in moderation. But… I suggest eliminating the fruit, vegetables, garlic, almonds and fish.

Just go for the good stuff.

What if your apartment commanded a 360-degree view, and you never had to move from your favorite chair in order to take it all in? If you lived in Suite Vollard in Curitiba, Brazil, that’s exactly what you could do.

Suite Vollard is a new 11-story apartment building in eco-friendly Curitiba. Each floor is a single, 3000-sq-ft, $300,000 apartment. And each floor rotates independently through a full 360 degrees. Think of the top of the Space Needle in Seattle, except its every floor that rotates, not just the top of the building. The floors can rotate in either direction and at varying speeds. “Slow” speed gets you around the full circle in about an hour.

Each floor is faced in four different colors of glass: Silver, green, bronze and blue. As the floors turn independently of each other, different effects on the facade of the building are created by the changing colors.

The central part of the building, which houses the kitchen, bathroom, and other utilities does not turn. Lights, air conditioning and the revolving can be turned on and off via a control panel, a remote control or verbally.

The building is located in a residential neighborhood of Curitiba called Ecoville. The tower was the latest addition to Curitiba’s cutting-edge urban planning, which includes a much-copied transit system.

Suite Vollard is the world’s only revolving building. And I think it’s pretty cool. Considering what you get, $300K for 3000 square feet seems like a fairly reasonable price. I hesitate to even guess what these apartments would go for here in Stumptown.

Click on the pics to embiggen. More pictures are available here.

Mom’s take on Suite Vollard:

Have you ever just had one of those days? The kind where nothing at all goes right. The kind that go way beyond a bad hair day to the place where everything just merges into one big lump of ickness?

Well… OK… my day wasn’t quite that bad. Not quite.

The day, strangely enough, began around 11:15 pm last night. I was snuggled with one of the cats in my rocking chair in the family room, trying to keep my eyes open to watch a bit of the news. #1 Son paused in his homework to go out to the garage for something. When he came back inside, he called out “Mom! The door won’t shut!”

I can’t recall any time I’ve heard those words when it was a good thing.

True, the door from the house to the garage had been a little sticky lately. Just yesterday morning we’d had a discussion about squooshing a bit of wd40 into the lock. But when I finally got home yesterday, it was late, I wanted to watch Earthsea on the Sci Fi Channel, and I couldn’t find the wd40 in the garage.

The door, in retaliation, went from sticky to stuck. And the following conversation thus ensued:

Mom: Where’s the wd40?

#1 Son: In the garage.

Mom: Where in the garage?

#1 Son: I dunno. I’m sure I put it out there. Look on a shelf or something

Mom: I looked on a shelf. I looked on all the shelves. I looked everywhere. Is it in your room?

#1 Son: Dunno, mom. I think I put it back. It’s not in my room.

And that meant a trip to the store at 11:30 at night for wd40. When I returned, lubricant in hand, #1 Son met me at the door with our existing can of wd40.

It wasn’t in the garage. It was in his room.

Trying to feel thankful that the family now possessed probably more wd40 than we could reasonably expect to use for the rest of our lives, I also took the opportunity to mention (once again) that it’s easier to find things when one puts them away in their proper resting place. I was way too tired to make more of an issue of it that that.

At midnight I began squooshing the door lock with wd40.

1:30 am found me still at work on the door. By that time I had squooshed ad infinitum with no result, and was attempting to take the knobs off and remove the latch so that I could close the door. I could get the interior knob off, but the exterior knob was held firmly in place by the frozen latch. It refused to let go even when I left off squooshing in favor of prying with a screwdriver while swearing, and finally jiggling the latch and knob while pleading to both the lock and to any personal deity that cared to answer to please let go.

OK I said finally, I’m getting out the hammer and giving you a good whack.

Hammer in hand, I suddenly felt misgivings. I’d worked for 13 hours on Monday. It was 1:30 in the morning. I could barely keep my eyes open. I knew my judgement was not at its usual peak of perfection.

What if… what if whacking the latch with a hammer resulted in an even worse mess than the one I was in? What if I was forced to call in a locksmith and confess that I’d totally screwed up not only the latch, but maybe the whole door? What if, instead of costing the $100 or so for the locksmith, I had to spend a whole lot more to fix whatever damage might be caused by my well-meaning hammer blows?

I put the hammer away and joined the cats in bed.

Around 11:00 this morning, after my round of early meetings, I decided I might as well know the rest of the bad news and looked up “Locksmiths” in the yellow pages. But, I had the good fortune to call Precision Locksmith. And this was my conversation with the Nice Guy At Precision:

NGAP: How can I help you?

Mom: I’m having problems with my door lock. The latch seems to be frozen.

NGAP: Do you have a quickset lock? You probably do. Their most common point of failure is a frozen latch. We see it all the time. Just bring the latch in. We have replacements.

Mom: I can’t get it out of the door. The latch is stuck in the out position and won’t let go of the exterior knob.

NGAP: Just give it a good whack with a hammer.

Mom: OK… uh, are you sure it won’t cause more damage if I do that?

NGAP: No, ma’am, I’m never known that to happen. We could come out if you want, but really you can do this yourself.

OK… So, off I went, from downtown to Tigard. There was a brief stop at home to remove the interior doorknob, whack the latch a good one with my hammer (most common point of failure, take that!), pop off the exterior knob, remove the latch, and put the knobs back on so none of the pieces got lost. Then a quick dash across Beaverton to Precision Locksmith, where for the paltry sum of $7.50 I was able to acquire a replacement latch. Then back to Tigard to install the latch in the door with the knobs and make sure everything works right. Then back downtown for afternoon meetings. Whew.

But I’d really like to thank Precision Locksmith, because I fully expected to have to pay for a house call. They lost the $$$ for that, but they gained a public thankee and a lifelong customer!

OK… the day looks a little better now.

[ed 12/15/04 6:55 am PT] When returning home yesterday after a hard day’s work, there was not nearly enough appreciation from #1 son of the smooth action of the newly installed door latch. Even when I pointed it out and demonstrated how the door could now be closed with one finger. Sheesh. The children of today…

Yesterday morning I heard that Jerry Scoggins died, at the age of 93.

Scoggin’s baritone, along with pickin’ from Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, brought us The Ballad Of Jed Clampett, the theme song for The Beverly Hillbillies. And since I read this, that’s the song that’s been the background music to the movie of my life that’s playing through my head…

Come listen to my story ’bout a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed
Then one day he was shootin’ at some food
When up through the ground come a bubblin’ crude

Oil that is. Black gold. Texas tea.

Well… it’s better than having Grandma Got Runover By A Raindeer going through my head, which it’s threatening to do…

As you may remember, #1 (and only) Son is now a working stiff, having snagged a gig washing dishes at a local sushi place.

After reading my blog last night, his advice to me is to learn to suck up better to the right people.

OK… After 35 years in the working world, I guess I haven’t figured that out yet. 😀