Scientific Ink

Author: Dunrie

  • Gifts in lieu of gifts

    Every so often, I get into a fit about how much stuff we have. I just purchased another set of shelves for our basement (buying stuff to hold stuff), just dropped off a bunch of cast-off stuff to charity, and of course there is all the stuff we just bought ourselves (renovated bathroom, new TV).

    I have everything I need: my health, my mom’s health, a terrific husband, loving family, smart, funny, and talented friends, a world class feline, a wonderful home…So, I’d like to declare a moratorium on stuff, at least for a little while. So, I’d like to propose a truce with those who give me gifts and to whom I give gifts: hold the stuff and spread the love a bit wider.

    I propose to give $ to charity in lieu of a gift. For instance, I just got “The Most Important Gift Catalog in the World” from Heifer International, and instead of a tchotchke to my mom, I can give a share of a water buffalo or honeybees or llamas or rabbits to a family in need. I have a short list of charities, but it seems like anyone who wants to “play” should use their own short list, or maybe we could exchange charities (I give to yours, you give to mine).

    It doesn’t seem quite fair for me to give to charity if you expect a gift instead, so I’m proposing to do this only with folks who agree. LMK!

  • Beware of home improvement

    Our renovated bathroom is pretty much done. It is lovely – tile floor, tile up the walls, actual storage. There are a few minor details to complete: towel rack, tp holder, handles on the cabinets, a shower head that is taller than we are, but we’re 90+% done. It only took 8 weeks of construction (on a 4-week plan), 7 weeks of showering in the basement in Dave’s garden-hose-kiddie-pool-and-submersible-sump-pump wonder shower, several contractor bills (no overruns!), and a weekend when my aunt and uncle stayed in our house while the bathroom had no door.

    You’d think we’d be done with home improvement, but somehow the restless energy has spread to adjoining rooms. It happened when we redid the kitchen, too. The nicer kitchen shamed us into sprucing up the mudroom at its end. This time, after we replaced the light fixtures in the hall outside the bathroom, the one in the foyer I’ve never liked had to go too. Dave took the opportunity to finally get the monster TV he’s been needing. And, after the construction crew returned the hall closet to me, I invited some friends over for a reverse fashion show – they helped me decide to finally toss/give away schoolmarmish and unworn items before they rooted in the closet again.

    Now, displaced by the hulking menace of the new plasma TV, I’ve taken to doing my yoga in the study. My DVDs will play on the computer, and on the computer monitor Shiva Rea isn’t the size of a small truck like she is on the new TV. The study is narrower, but at least it’s all mine, and I don’t have risk throwing out my back dragging the coffee table from the TV room into the hall just to make space for my mat. Now that I’m in here, stretching and moving around on the floor, this place could use a bit of renewal too. Maybe it’s time to replace the rug, or the light fixture, gotta be something around here I can change, er, fix.

  • Yoga for Scoliosis workshop

    I travelled to Cleveland to attend Elise Browning Miller’s yoga for scoliosis and yoga for the shoulders, neck and upper back workshops at Evolution Yoga. In lieu of a real post, here are some factoids:

    • 4 – muscles involved in stabilizing the rotator cuff
    • ~40 – the number of women attending the workshop
    • 2 – males attending Saturday afternoon (dad and young son)
    • 558 – miles that the mom, dad, and son travelled from St. Louis. MO to attend Elise’s 3 hour yoga for scoliosis workshop Saturday afternoon before driving back
    • 2 – people who asked me if I worked there
    • 6 – pillows on my bed at the Hampton Inn, all down
    • 2 – meals eaten at Wild Oats grocery store in Woodmere, OH
    • 2 – times I walked into Cold Stone Creamery and decided against getting ice cream
    • 12 – years since I took a workshop from Elise in Kalamazoo

  • Make it suck less

    So, I did it again. I have spent much of the last two days trying to edit a technical document into something that I can understand and that exceeds my standards for clear and informative writing. I’ve been line editing, I’ve been working on organization, I’ve been pinging subject matter experts for examples and to clarify points that do not come across well to me, I’ve been excising passive voice. Essentially, I’ve become a tech writer again. And I’m struggling. The document is due, I’m not happy with it, and I don’t think I can line edit my way to nirvana.

    I came home tonight frustrated, needing a break from the document, but fretting about the looming deadline. And then, sitting on my yoga mat starting my practice, I realized that I was trying to grope my way through this document towards the perfect document. And, I noticed I was wasting energy beating myself up for not knowing which thread to pull or which angle to pursue to get there.

    The place I used to work had several catchy phrases we used when we were stuck: “make mistakes faster” was one, “make it suck less” was another. They’re intertwined – “make mistakes faster” is an acknowledgement that we’ll make errors and omissions, but we can reduce their impact by conducting shorter project iterations and sharing work with each other more quickly. The spirit of “make it suck less” is to find satisfaction in incremental improvements. Instead of pining for the perfect solution, instead of whining about the lack of time, tools, or creativity to accomplish whatever unrealistic goal, take stock, prioritize the options, and make it as much better as you can.

    Basically, for me, the inverse of “make it suck less” is rampant, soul-throttling perfectionism that gets in the way of doing the little things that add together into the big things. It’s analysis paralysis, endless theorizing, pining for some ideal document/software program/website. It is trying too hard. It is Anne Lamott’s radio station KFKD – the double whammy of self-aggrandizement and self-loathing that gets in the way of getting any actual work done.

    Luckily, if I take a rest, go for a cycle ride, or do yoga, I give myself the space to notice that KFKD is on, I give myself the quiet to remember that that all I can do, all I need to do in this moment, is to “make it suck less”, to work with what I have and be patient.

  • Moment of choice

    Over the past few years, my husband and I have had a regular Friday night fight. The source of the friction is a standing Friday night poker game. I’ve tried, but I just don’t like it. Too much drinking, too much focus on poker, just not my thing. I’ve never really liked playing organized card or board games with people. I always lose interest about 60% of the way through and feel very trapped through the last 40%. Dave loves it–the people, the poker, the whole scene. So, each Friday I’d somehow hope he’d want to spend it with me instead of smoking cigars and hanging with the poker crew. Each Friday I’d feel let down and left out. Some Fridays, I’d organize an alternative for the both of us, but if I wasn’t proactive, the default plan was for him to go to poker and me to feel cross.

    (more…)

  • Black walnut bounty

    a photo of a pile of black walnut fruits
    Black walnuts that were “squirreled” away in our garage.

    Today is a beautiful fall day, clear blue skies, high 70s, warm sun. I decided it was time to rake the leaves in the backyard. We have a big, beautiful black walnut tree back there. It has lovely, feathery leaves, and when we fly over our neighborhood, I think it is the biggest tree on our block.

    Every fall, it drops its leaves, its leaf rachises, and its fruit. The fruit is about 1.5-2 inches in diameter, with a green skin, and they drop with a bang onto the roof of our garage.

    This year, the neigborhood squirrels seem to have been especially active. They salted away so many nuts in the planter for my dwarf orange tree that they eventually completely uprooted it, killing it. Today, when I went into our garage to get the rake and the lawn & leaf bags, I saw that the squirrels have decided to take a new tack. They have been piling up black walnut fruits onto a work surface in the garage–they have filled Dave’s old ski boots, filled some ceramic pots, and even started to place black walnuts along the groove in our ski rack.

    After seven years of living here, this is the first time we’ve seen anything like this. Either our squirrels have learned a new skill, have forgotten what they know about burying nuts, or are preparing for a very long winter.