the spinal cord has everything under control

Or actually it might not. Because tonight I burned some rice. I didn't even know you could burn rice.

"When I was little, I put a lot of things in buckets." That's how my brother's autobiography should start. Mom was going through funny stories about Aaron's childhood for possible inclusion in some kind of essay, and a surprisingly huge amount of them involved him putting animals (the squirrel and mouse were alive. All of the fish were dead.) in buckets or jars. Also, one time when Mom was sick he made lunch for everyone: chips, carrots, and water. He was five.

Tomorrow begins the real work of upholstering. Yarrgh. (I'm a... re-upholstery pirate? Me left eye got stabbed out in pursuit of... the... elusive white chair? The elusive white man-eating chair! Yarr, I remembers it just like yesterday. It was fearsome in its floral fierceness....)

"For example, it recently emerged that the famous glass artist Dale Chihuly hasn't actually blown glass for 27 years. He has assistants do the work for him. But one of the most valuable sources of ideas in the visual arts is the resistance of the medium. That's why oil paintings look so different from watercolors. In principle you could make any mark in any medium; in practice the medium steers you. And if you're no longer doing the work yourself, you stop learning from this.

So if you want to beat those eminent enough to delegate, one way to do it is to take advantage of direct contact with the medium. In the arts it's obvious how: blow your own glass, edit your own films, stage your own plays. And in the process pay close attention to accidents and to new ideas you have on the fly."