Scientific Ink

Author: Dunrie

  • Add to calendar “apologies”

    I really do like how Google Calendar works, and I like the fact that it tries to interact smartly with my gmail. I’ve been amused at some of the entries it has tried to make. This might be my best yet. Add to calendar "apologies"The funny thing is, it wasn’t a particularly abject or obsequious email thread, but there we have it, apologies, scheduled for 9/12. Funny.

    Particularly as I contemplate moving from being a project manager to becoming an account/engagement manager, I wonder if I’ll have apologies scheduled on my calendar more or less often…I would hope not, but moving into a more customer service role may require a different skillset.

  • Fishing boat improves a marriage (not in the way you might think, gratitude #36)

    This year, my husband bought a fishing boat. "new" boat

    It started a few years ago, when my cousin’s husband Rob brought his boat up to the cabin and they went out on one trip and landed several trout and salmon. Dave was hooked. He always needed to know whether Rob was coming north, and whether he was bringing his boat. Well, this year, he finally just got a boat himself. He is an engineer, and so by nature analytical and thoughtful. He did a thorough analysis of all of the boats available on Craigslist, picked a few, and then passed them by the fishermen in the family for approval.

    One boat made it through the approval process – a 17-foot Monark with two outboard motors (a fast one and a trolling motor) and with all of the equipment he’d need. Of course, that didn’t stop Dave from acquiring additional items from eBay (lures, poles, you name it) and from taking trips to Cabela’s to further outfit the boat.

    Well, he works hard and deserves his fun, so I didn’t complain. And, when we’re both at the cabin without my uncle Bob or my cousin’s husband Rob, I’m his fishing partner. I help him get the boat into and out of our garage (non-trivial, given we have a lovely tree right in the way). I help him get the boat launched from the dock at Dyers Bay, and I help him on the boat itself.

    Now, Dave and I are a great pair. I’m typically wracked with nervous energy and he’s Mr. Relaxed. I married him because I needed him around to calm me down and help me enjoy the moment. Well, the fascinating thing is that on the boat, I’m Ms. Relaxed and he’s Mr. Energy. It’s weird, its as if our roles are reversed.

    As soon as we’ve launched the boat, I’m content to just loll around on deck, even better if I can bust out a flotation cushion, put my hat on my face, and go straight to sleep. I am willing to help steer while he’s fussing with the poles and the lures, but I’m relieved when it is his turn to steer, watch the fish-finder and the depth-raider and have his fun. Too many little screens to watch, too much underwater topography to navigate, when there’s all this lovely water and and a great cushion to which to attend.

    Here’s the important part: I’m happy to be on the boat, watching the shoreline and the homes and the other boats. I’m happy if we don’t catch a fish. In fact, I’m happier if we don’t catch a fish because boating makes me incredibly lazy. I love how lazy it makes me, I’m content to just bob in the water, apply another coat of sunscreen, and hope we don’t catch a fish because that will entail actual work.

    Unfortunately for me, but good for him, we’ve been doing well, fishing-wise. In our last two trips, we’ve landed an 8-pound and a 12-pound king salmon respectively. He hauls them in and I net them. These fish have given us way more lovely salmon than two people can eat. So, we’ve made gravelax, given some to neighbors, and we’ve vacuum-sealed and frozen some.

    But, I had no idea what the boat would do for us – give us some quality time together and give me a chance to catch some zzzzzzzzes under the sunshine while Mr. Relaxed fusses with lures (Kevorkian? Monkey Puke? Always have to have a watermelon in the water, the salmon seem to love that one). He loves getting out there and landing a fish, and I think the infrequent rewards reinforce his ardor.

    Now, I would have thought that a fishing boat might improve a marriage based on the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” adage. Not in this case. For me, it give us time together and a welcome reversal of roles. Now and then it is fun to be the relaxed one, while he does all the work of catching and then fileting the fishies we bring up. So, although I laughed when he bought the boat, and laughed when he got the tow rig for the car, and I laughed when each and every package from eBay came filled with lures and rods and what-have-you, I’m thrilled about the boat. I love seeing the Georgian Bay shoreline of the Bruce Peninsula from the water. I love watching the loons dive and surface, I love seeing the rocky bluffs and forest I couldn’t get to on the land, and I love the time with my husband. Of course, if we caught fewer fish, I might be even more content (and relaxed) but he’s happy this way, so I can’t complain.

  • Beeping mac – why I love time machine and the genius bar (gratitude #35)

    So my macbook was beeping, constantly for a day and a half, like this. Besides my sanity, I was afraid, after hearing the same sound from YouTube videos of pre-hard-drive crash Macs, it was going to take out my hard drive.

    So, i moseyed on down to the Genius Bar at Briarwood Mall, with an appointment. And although the diagnostics the technician ran said my hard drive was fine, he did say that hard drives can “chirp” before going out. So, he replaced my hard drive, and -aaaaaaaahhhhhhh- no more infernal beeping.

    I came to work the next morning and I started to download my backup from time machine and was amazed that everything except the things I’d excluded at the urging of our IT guy (applications and my music) came back after a few hours of pulling down the backup from the server.

    This is the second hard drive to go on my MacBook. I got it last June (2007). Last July, I did drop it from a few feet above the ground (long story), so I’m directly responsible for the first hard drive crash (about six months after the drop), but I don’t know what I would have done to cause the second….

    Last time, I said it was the best ever hard drive crash. Now I think it was another level easier.

    I am thrilled to be able to recover so quickly through time machine and grateful to be up and running again. Now if only my iPhone would allow me to sync my music from the iPhone to my laptop. Looks like I’m going to have to re-rip the CDs I’m interested in having there…

  • Michigan Tart Cherries make for great pie and “cherished” memories! (gratitude #34)

    I received a subscription to Bon Appetit Magazine, and the cover of the June issue was a spectacular classic sour cherry pie with lattice crust. I read the accompanying article, and I learned that Michigan produces about 75% of the tart or sour cherries in the U.S., and they’re hard to get outside of Michigan.

    I love summer pies, and blueberry pie has been my favorite. I love fresh black cherries, but I particularly dislike cherry flavoring in other things. I defy family tradition by detesting black cherry ice cream, for instance. But, I was intrigued, sour cherry pie might be worth trying, because a bit of tartness really helps make a tasty pie.

    So, I tore out the recipe and saved it. Today, I went to the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market with my mom and my aunt (visiting from NYC). We picked up 2 quarts of sour cherries for the pie.

    The cherries brought back memories. My mom told the story of pitting cherries with a hairpin with her mom. I didn’t have a cherry pitter, so we stopped by a drugstore and got some bobby pins. And then, my mom, my aunt, and I sat on my back deck and pitted 2 quarts of cherries with 3 bobby pins. It worked great – the cherries were perfectly ripe.

    My mom reminded me that my dad’s old office had a sour cherry tree behind it, and then I remembered picking cherries from it by sitting on the fence.

    My mom then told the story of how on July 4th weekend the year I was born (that would be 12 days before my birth), her father came to town. My mom’s mom had passed away years before, and my grandfather attended to my mom by working beside her. They picked buckets of cherries, sugared them, and froze them, laying in some summer sweetness for the year to come. I suppose I come by my cherry snobbery honestly.

    Tonight’s pie was fantastic – the tartness of the cherries required a big dollop of vanilla ice cream as a balance. It’s as good as my favorite, blueberry pie.

    But even better than the pie was feeling connected to my mom and my aunt as we sat around a table and worked together and talked, and feeling connected to those that have passed on – my grandmother with her hairpin pitter, and my grandfather offering his labor to ease my mom’s.

  • Rope Yoga at RussaYog in Ann Arbor (gratitude #33)

    After my first experience of Rope Yoga at Vie on S. Ashley Street in Ann Arbor, I’ve been going to the RussaYog studio on S. State Street. There are only a few blocks in between them, but I thought that I would experience the classes taught by the founders, Jasprit and Teresa Singh.

    I’ve really enjoyed my classes there. I like the music they play, I like the challenge of the classes and how soundly I sleep afterwards. I like the athletic and diverse posters on the wall (from Marilyn Monroe to Scotty Pippin (I think).

    Even better, my massage therapist has reflected back to me that my upper back and spine really seem to respond well to it. She essentially told me that if I knew what was good for me, I’d keep going back to the RussaYog studio. Happy to do so!

  • Wise words on meditation

    I was trying to explain meditation to a friend the other day, and I found myself struggling. She asked how I quiet my mind in meditation, and I said, well, I am not always successful, but that meditation gives me a set time to practice. She asked what it was like, I said it varied. But I said that I knew that whatever happened when I sat down for meditation, no matter what it felt like, was meditation. That was hard to get across, and I’m not sure I did.

    It had taken me a while to get to this understanding, and I think it came through watching the effect of the meditation on myself and on my day to realize that even if the meditation felt choppy or even not like meditation at all, sitting down for it always benefitted me.

    So, I was thrilled to see this passage in The Heart of Meditation, confirming this experience.

    Much of the work of meditation takes place underground, and much of it is imperceptible. That is one reason why we measure our progress in meditation not so much by what happens during a particular session of meditation, as by the subtle ways in which a regular meditation practice changes our feelings about ourselves and the world. p. 273. The Heart of Meditation: Pathways to a Deeper Experience.

    The Heart of Meditation: Pathways to a Deeper Experience