Scientific Ink

Tag: Gratitude

  • 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!

  • Happy Anniversary, Janet & Nate! (gratitude #32)

    My in-laws are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary.

    Happy Anniversary!

    True to form, they wanted to celebrate together with us: their daughter and their son and daughter-in-law. After a little bit of discussion, they decided on the location for the celebration – Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It’s a fitting destination, the family camped here together often. Prior to this visit, their last visit was in 1994.

    We found a house to rent via HomeAway and now we’re here. We’ve been enjoying the seafood (oysters, crabs) and the scenic vistas here. We’ve had rainy weather (tropical storm Cristobal, perhaps?) so our pursuits thus far have been largely indoors: oat cakes, knitting, shopping for knitting supplies (Baadeck Yarns and Lorraine’s knitting shop in Neil’s Harbor), and fine dining (the home-cooked variety).

    But, on the occasion of their 40th Anniversary, I wanted to acknowledge the good times and warm welcome they have given me. My sister is moving near her in-laws, and was making a distinction in a conversation between “his” family and “hers.” She kept saying “they’re not my family.” I realized recently, I think when we drove down to visit Dave’s grandparents in Indianapolis, that after 14 years, his family is my family, not by birth, but by feeling and by association at this point, and I am sure it is Janet and Nate’s warmth and generosity that have made it so.

    I don’t want this blog post to be about me, but it is worth saying that, as a child of divorce and as a child in a family where 4 of 5 of my mom’s siblings got divorced, happy marriages kind of boggled me. I really didn’t get the rhythm of them or understand the give and take and the commitment involved. I knew what drove people apart, but not how they stayed together. Many people in Dave’s family, including both pairs of grandparents and especially Janet and Nate demonstrate such deep and abiding commitment to each other it just knocks me over. Last summer, when Dave and I stayed with Janet and Nate, I noticed how much Nate loved Janet. It was a simple thing, she and I had both gone out to run errands, and I had taken her car. I returned before she did, in her car, and after I pulled into the garage, I heard Nate calling to her from the garden. He sounded so happy she was back, it was sweet.

    That’s the kind of love these two demonstrate, on a daily basis, enjoying each other’s company and the company of their children. They’re not sickly sweet, Janet attributes her long marriage to “wine and alcohol” but I know there’s something much deeper that keeps them together.

    These two are a great example, one which I hope to emulate.

  • Gratitude is my top strength, from authentichappiness.com (gratitude #31)

    I took the VIA Signature Strengths test at authentichappiness.com (test is free, but requires registration on their site). Here are my top 5 strengths. The one thing that stands out to me is that my top strength in this survey is gratitude. Since I have been intentionally cultivating gratitude this year, I wonder if I would have tested strongly in it before, or whether I’m farming it in myself. Hard to know objectively, but I’m not sure I mind.

    1. Gratitude. You are aware of the good things that happen to you, and you never take them for granted. Your friends and family members know that you are a grateful person because you always take the time to express your thanks.
    2. Citizenship, teamwork, and loyalty. You excel as a member of a group. You are a loyal and dedicated teammate, you always do your share, and you work hard for the success of your group.
    3. Forgiveness and mercy. You forgive those who have done you wrong. You always give people a second chance. Your guiding principle is mercy and not revenge.
    4. Appreciation of beauty and excellence. You notice and appreciate beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in all domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.
    5. Capacity to love and be loved. You value close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated. The people to whom you feel most close are the same people who feel most close to you.

    I’m curious what some of my close friends and family strengths are. Test yourself and see at authentichappiness.com. For anyone leery, it’s part of UPenn and research on positive psychology, not some wacky Internet test with dancing bunnies at the end.

  • How social networking sites gave me a very happy birthday (gratitude #30)

    I have to hand it to the constellation of social sites to which I belong. All combined to give me a very happy birthday today! I turned 38 today, and I didn’t get the iPhone I was seriously hinting for because of local shortages, and my husband has a summer cold, so has been prone on the couch for two days, barely audible on the cell phone. I was thinking I might just have a lonesome birthday, but no!

    Good wishes streamed in from across the globe, from close and from not-so-close friends via email, twitter, Plaxo, and Facebook. The email friends already knew my birthday, or maybe saw my shame-free birthday-promoting gchat status line. And, at least some of the twitter wishes came in response to my own birthday oriented tweets, but not all. Some came before my own tweets. The other birthday wishers are either uncanny calendar-keepers or may have been reminded of the event by the various methods those sites use to keep friends aware of each other. Facebook and Plaxo did all the hard work for me. I’ve been kind of withdrawing from Facebook, but I got re-engaged with it today, catching up with well-wishers, surfing their profiles. Previous to today, I would have said I wasn’t completely sold on Plaxo. I mean, who needs another place to update your status and befriend the same 30-60-90-howevermany people I’m already friends with elsewhere. But Plaxo seems to really emphasize the birthday thing, and that was amazingly touching to me on this day. Nice to get several well-wishing messages and feel friendship coming through my email all day today.

    I also benefitted greatly from the ArborWiki birthday deals page, which helped me score some great (and free!) Zingerman’s bagels and a yummy free Birthday cupcake from Cake Nouveau (key lime, mmmm). Thanks to the larger ArborWiki community for maintaining the list!