Scientific Ink

Author: Dunrie

  • 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

  • My CSA share keeps me eating veggies the old fashioned way: guilt

    So, I had a 1-4PM meeting today turn into a 1-6:30PM one with an hourlong trip on each side, and although it was a great meeting, I’m an introvert and was sorely in need of downtime afterwards. So, when I got home at 7:45, I was hungry and tired and would have very happily reached for some comfort food from the freezer or a local restaurant (chinese food? pizza?). But, I have this farm share from a local organic farm, and my fridge is filled with kale, beets, beet greens, green beans, onions, and the like.

    I even considered heating up frozen veggies, just because I didn’t think I could muster anything beyond tossing something into a bowl and punching 4 buttons on the microwave. Then I realized that was completely pathetic, and I couldn’t possibly. I imagined each bean and each beet staring at me, balefully as they wilted, while I feasted on non-organic and less vitamin rich frozen food because it was marginally more convenient.

    And then I recognized the awesome power of the farm share to improve my life. Yes, the veggies were organic and local, yes they were chock full of vegetabley-goodness like vitamins and minerals, but their real power was elsewhere. Yup, those veggies in the fridge could make me eat healthier just by their very presence. I’d already committed to them, several times, by signing up for the CSA share from Tantre Farm last fall, by picking them up this week, by giving them space in my fridge. After all that, how I could waste them? The frozen food would keep. I had to wash and slice and maybe even boil before I’d get my meal.

    I started with the beets. I scrubbed them and cut them into even blocks for a quick boil. But then, because I was crazed with hunger, I tentatively put one in my mouth and bit down. Raw beet was perfectly fine, tasty in fact. I turned off the water, chopped the beets more finely, tossed on a splash of fancy Zingerman’s balsamic vinegar and moved on to the next course. I prepped some kale, rinsing and chopping, and blanched it quickly. Nice.

    In probably 5 minutes, I had two very tasty dishes out of my organic veggie stockpile. Because the healthy food had guilted me out of it, I had protected myself from poor eating. By stocking the fridge with healthy food, I actually ate healthy food. And it was quick to prepare. Imagine, fresh fruit and veggies really are nature’s original fast food.

  • Knitting socks to while away rainy vacation days

    Sock, almost there!What better to do on a rainy day in Nova Scotia than to knit socks? Janet gave me this lovely yarn from Baadeck Yarns for my Birthday – Colinette Jitterbug 100% merino wool. Of course, I went for the fuschia to blue colorway, alizarene. I followed the free simple sock pattern on the yarn’s label, adding a bit for the length of my size 11 1/2 foot. The sock turned out wonderfully, and now I’m looking online at the wealth of Jitterbug colorways available from Colinette, I think everyone will be getting socks this year for Christmas. Let me know if you have a favorite colorway! Sock, front side