Scientific Ink

Author: Dunrie

  • My desert island item – a stack of freshly laundered kitchen towels (gratitude #40)

    You might think I’m reaching the dregs in the gratitude barrel, but no, this is actually one of the things for which I’m actually, sincerely, really-really grateful.

    I’m not someone who stockpiles; I’m an under-buyer. Normally, I tend to run out and go run an errand to refill my supply of (important item here). But, along with piles of books, I stockpile kitchen towels. There are few things better or more satisfying to me than a stack of freshly laundered kitchen towels.
    dishtowels

    I haven’t actually bought many of them – several were gifts from my mom, others from friends with various wedding (yes, 8 years ago) presents, my husband’s grandmother wove some of what I use, my mother-in-law likes giving tea towels as gifts – so I can use the excuse that I didn’t intentionally acquire the set I have now. I blundered into my stockpile of dish towels. And they give me a disproportionate happiness. Yes, dishtowels.

    There’s just something abundant in the waiting stack. I like having a stack because in a weekend of a lot of cooking, say my canning fun, I can keep on tossing dirty and sodden dishtowels down into the basement (our staircase is our laundry chute) and reload the oven handle with another clean, dry towel. So, after my weekend of canning, I’d exhausted my stack of towels and needed to launder the set. There was something abundant about that too. Felt like an accomplishment.

    I use one to line underneath the bins that hold the potatoes, onions, and garlic. One is always looped over the handle of the oven, for drying washed hands or wiping up the counter. When we’re cooking, one of us has a dishtowel jauntily tossed over one shoulder, at the ready for drying a hand-washed dish or grabbing a pot handle. I suppose they’re some kind of tangible reminder of the joy we take in our kitchen, in cooking with and for friends.

    So, want to make my day? Give me a dish towel.

  • Going to Podcamp Michigan!

    So, just the other day, with some of my Michigan Usability Professionals Folks, I was wondering about local social media folks that I hadn’t yet met. You know, wondering about who might be good speakers to invite to talk to us, that kind of thing.

    Podcamp Michigan 11/8/2008
    Podcamp Michigan 11/8/2008

    I didn’t even tweet it, though I should have. But, I did find, in my inbox this morning, a twitter notification from, of all things, Podcamp Michigan. Ask and ye shall receive. Or, in this case, “receive even though the ask was inchoate and unarticulated.”

    A podcamp is an unConference focused on blogging, podcasting, and social media. Should be fun. I’m planning to attend. You?

    Coordinates:

  • Not having to blow dry my hair – the power of a well-placed complaint (gratitude #39)

    Hair Drier...!, originally uploaded by murrus

    I really dislike blowing my hair dry. My hair is wavy, and drying it makes it flyaway, but its really about the boredom of drying it more than the end product.

    When I was a kid, I remember going out in the winter with wet hair. Now, my hair was inches below my shoulders, and so the Michigan winter would freeze it into little icicles and then it would unfreeze when I got to school. Little popsicle-dreadlocks. Probably not a good look for me, and I dimly realized that was probably socially unacceptable so I’ve been trying to fit in ever since by using a hairdryer.

    To this day, I can think of little more boring than waiting for my hair to dry under a loud hot blowing thing. Well, I always assumed I had to deal with it, and I suppose in the winter time I do. This summer, I finally thought to mention this to the one person who could do something about it – the woman who determines my hairstyle – my “beauty operator”. Maureen let me off the hook. She assured me that the simple application of some styling goo could free me from the obligation to blow my hair dry. I could style it wet and not look like a resentful 9-year-old.

    It’s funny. I’ve noticed in work that sometimes things that are really basic might feel too basic to be expressed. Yet, expressing them can unlock a thing or two. It’s the little things, I suppose.

  • Canning – a direct experience of the abundance of summer (gratitude #38)

    It’s that time of year, the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market is a study in abundance, and my summer reading, Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, has inspired me to can. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

    So, I took a perfectly good Saturday and Sunday and made two trips to the Farmer’s Market, a trip to the hardware store, two trips to a grocery store, burned many BTUs of gas on our gas stove, and taught myself to can following the Ball Blue Book of Preserving and an article on canning in the October 2008 Bon Appetit.

    This was my discovery:

    • $15 of organic roma tomatoes plus
    • a few dollars of organic shallots plus
    • a few dollars in organic lemon juice plus
    • $30 in canning supplies (jar lifter, magnetic lid lifter, pint jars, canning funnel)
    • labor peeling, seeding, stirring, ladling, and then boiling the jars of sauce

    makes about six pint jars of fresh tomato sauce, something which when purchased would have cost many dollars less than what I spent. Yet, I didn’t burn myself, had some fun cooking and learning, have some lovely jars of pinky-red tomatoes lighting up the shelves of my basement, and I have stored a bit of this lovely summer sunshine for later.

    I realized that canning is kind of like knitting a sweater. It’s not that I saved any money, it’s that I got to enjoy the process and engaging with something concrete – beautiful yarn in the case of a sweater, beautiful produce in the case of canning. That level of absorbtion and attention is almost intoxicating, while my hands were slicing the 50th tomato, my mind was wondering at the variety of shape and color and detail in the box of romas. Plus, I experienced a distinct sense of abundance when processing a big pile of tomatoes- their weight, their texture, their color, bounty. So, after I finished the tomatoes on Saturday, I was up for another round on Sunday. With dinner guests arriving at 6PM, I carefully planned my day of cornbread-baking, coleslaw-making, peach cobbler-baking, and my husband’s slow cooking of the spare ribs with more canning. I discovered that

    • $20 in fresh figs plus
    • zest of two lemons plus
    • sugar and brandy

    makes six 1/2-pint jars of drunken fig jam. It’s tasty, though I’ll have to arrange to get myself invited to sophisticated dinner or wine tasting parties where I can bring this as an addition to a cheese plate…Dear reader, let me know if you’re hosting such an event. I have the housewarming gift ready to go!

    I loved it, I’d do it again, and I realized just how much I love my dishwasher, which I think ran about 6 times this weekend, no fooling, and that’s even after I hand-washed all of the pots.

  • Out on a limb – a friend helps rescue me from myself (gratitude #37)

    I like computers. I have worked in IT since before I left graduate school. I’m comfortable around really technical people: software developers/coders and the like. I am usually careful to say that I know my way around technical folks, but I’m not technical myself. I have an iPhone, I use my laptop wirelessly at work, at home, and even at the “cabin”, but I rely on smart colleagues and family members to give me access.

    All that to say, I’m not really all that technical. I’ll readily admit this, or at least that’s what I thought. A few weeks ago, friends called and asked if I’d help them get one of their computers onto the other’s wireless network. I tried to beg off on the phone, I made excuses such as “my husband takes care of that for me”. They instantly said it was fine if he came too. Sigh. Knowing I’d never get him over to their home, I gave in and went to their place to play computer admin, knowing better.

    Merrivale range, DartmoorYeah, right.

    So, it all started innocently enough. I messed around with their computer and indeed verified that they weren’t talking to each other. At that point, it would have been wise to raise my hands and say, “wow, I’m stumped, I really don’t know how to help. Gotta go!”

    Instead, drawn in by their faith in me and their desperation, I kept trying. You see, the one that wasn’t communicating was a PC, so I looked up various “my PC won’t talk to my AirPort network” and hacked around. Eventually, I had hacked around enough that the AirPort network was completely inaccessible. At that point (thanks to the iPhone) I learned how to reboot an AirPort Extreme network with default settings.

    At the end of the evening, after having torched and then re-setup my innocent friends’ wireless network without having given the PC access, I retreated home. Relieved to have gotten myself out of it.

    That is, until the support phone call. “Hey, so I can’t print anymore, and I’m leaving in 20 minutes to go up north and I need the directions that are in my email”. Ummmmm. Wow. Yeah. Whoops. I tried to help, she elected to just hand copy the directions and said she’d get back to me when she returned from vacation.

    I am guessing her printer was trying to talk to the wireless network I torched, and wasn’t electing to switch to the new network. How to fix that was completely beyond me. I complained to my husband, regretting and lamenting my own foolishness. He recommended I call a friend who actually is good at this kind of thing, and see if I could wheedle him into helping me. Eric agreed to help. The two of us went over, I stayed for a while, and then I left while I got it sorted out. I am grateful I didn’t do more harm, and grateful for Eric to have saved me and my innocent friends from my “helpfulness”.

    I think the lessons I learned were:

    1. Be more clear about my limits.
    2. Ask for help.
    3. Eric rocks.

    Thanks Eric!

  • A seed inside a peach pit

    So, today I got a 1/4 peck of peaches at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market. I wanted to make something with them, wasn’t sure what. A year or so ago, my brother-in-law put a tiny bottle of bourbon into my husband’s Christmas stocking, and it’s been sitting in our liquor cabinet ever since. I decided to make a bourbon peach cobbler. The dish (and I) received accolades from my husband. Eating it was fun. Also fun was prepping the peaches for the cobbler. I don’t think I’ve ever seen inside a peach pit before, but one of them opened in my hand. Reminded me of my more botanical days – Prunus persica, has a drupe or stone fruit. Pretty cool.

    Peach pits and a peach seed