Scientific Ink

Tag: Gratitude

  • Grateful for dial-up – the pleasure of not being connected (gratitude #41)

    So, this past weekend we went up north with some friends. It was a brief trip, much too short for the length of the drive, but it was nice to get away, get up north and relax.

    Breathe in. Breathe out. Appreciate the scenery. Repeat.

    In the summertime, we share DSL and a wireless router with the neighbors. But they locked their place up for the winter, shut down the DSL/wireless, and they won’t be back until the spring. We go year-round. I really love it when it is quiet and the winter woods especially are quiet.

    I did have a bit of work to do, so I had to reinstate our old dial-up service, through Bruce Municipal Telecom. I discovered a few fun facts:

    • My space-age Macbook doesn’t even have a place to plug in a phone line, but
    • My husband’s Dell laptop did.
    • Neither of us had a thumb drive to transfer the file I’d painstakingly prepared to send to a co-worker for the Monday I’d be out.

    I borrowed Dave’s laptop, recreated the spreadsheet on his computer, and dialed in to get stuff into Basecamp for my colleagues. Hooray for connectivity.

    Yet, dial-up definitely put a damper on my online activities. Because I didn’t have connectivity, I let a few things go. I put off work email, Twitter, uploading photos to my flickr account, personal email, blogging, working with my MiUPA colleagues to set up the chapter meeting we had the Monday evening I returned, etc. I could answer some of the email on Tuesday morning during working hours, the MiUPA team is all-powerful and organized without constant input from me. I could upload the few photos I took late Monday. My twitter friends didn’t need instant reporting of my hikes and naps and the weather at Gillies Lake.

    It all worked out just fine. So, even though I’ve loved having the wireless broadband up there, it is nice to disconnect for a while. A real vacation after all. A chance for downtime, not uploading.

  • 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.

  • 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!

  • 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.