Kristi Wachter.com

A friend told me Thursday morning that KFOG was shutting down for good - and they were doing a day-long farewell broadcast, featuring lots of Ten at Ten episodes and Live from the Archives sets. Thanks to him, I was able to tune in and listen to almost the whole day. It brought back a lot of memories.

Just before I went to bed, it occurred to me that it might be cool to put together a quick website commemorating the station and especially its golden age.

Friday morning, I registered the domain and started building.

I've been watching some of the SpaceX launches lately, and on the latest one, the announcer kept talking about the satellites being deployed from the dispenser.

All I can think of when I hear the word "dispenser" is, of course, Pez dispensers.

I am quite tickled at the idea of a spaceship-sized Pez dispenser dropping satellites into space.

My random poem for today was "The Australian Dream" by David Campbell - I don't think I'd read any of his work before. I found him in The 20th Century in Poetry. I liked "The Australian Dream" (it reminded me of Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader, which I read recently and thoroughly enjoyed), and I went looking for more of Campbell's work. I found it at The Australian Poetry Library - where a bit of poking around turned up "To the Art of Edgar Degas," which I liked even better.

... because the last time my mom visited, she was wondering about the city's wild parrots.

(Photographed this morning at Fort Mason.)

I was checking Joshua Kosman's blog to see if he'd posted anything lately (alas, he has not), and I was stumped by the phrase "the tentative Alphonse-and-Gaston footwork between Nelsons and the string players " in his entry about hearing the BSO perform Mahler's Ninth.

I've been trying to reinvigorate my language skills, so I've started reviewing some of the languages I've studied, switching to a different one (Spanish, French, German, Italian) each week.

I thought music might help reinforce the vocabulary I was picking up, so I trawled the library for pop CDs in other languages. I had no idea what any of these bands would sound like; I figured I'd just check them out and give a few repeat listens to anything I enjoyed.

Thanks to Google for informing me that today is Alexander Calder's birthday, via a beautiful Google doodle on their home page. I love the shadows.

I was lucky enough to grow up near Chicago, where I got to see the Calder Flamingo every time I went downtown. I've always especially loved his mobiles.

The American Masters episode on Calder was marvellous.