Frieda

Winter Solstice

I love the way that a pot of hot coffee fills up a cold, dark house.

Something Small

Sometimes I read the latest news reports and wonder how a person can engage with the darkness of this world and move with something other than despair? 

The news swells in my head like a colorless fog. And I'll walk around filled up with it, or sink into a swamp. 

But in the end I make a conscious, or somewhat conscious, decision I'll make to stand still and pay attention to something small. The sweet smell of soap, or eating sliced apples with my kid. 

And it connects to me, this small thing, whatever it is. The tie between us like the filament in a lightbulb. It offers a sort of comfort. Allows a kind of goodness to grow again in my brain. 

And after a while, sometimes a long while, the just darkness just doesn't feel so close.

Sky Watching

 Outside Lincoln, NE - December 13, 2012

Sunsets are oftentimes the most remarkable feature of the Midwestern landscape. This one followed me all way home yesterday.

Still Open - Just Moving

http://adrianlovesowls.blogspot.com/

Pepe's Vegetarian Bistro, home of the best tacos in town, is still open Havelock through December.

Owner Pepe Ferito hopes to throw open his doors in a new location (Indian Village at 13th and High streets) on January 4 but guessed it will be February before it happens.

Through December, though, the Havelock location is taking things down, moving things around, but they're still cookin'.

Stop by.
Eat tacos.
You'll be glad you did.

Geminid Meteor Shower, 2012

 Phtoto Credit: Jason A.C. Brock NASA (Dec. 2004)

The last meteor shower of 2012 will be the Geminids, peaking late night December 13 until dawn December 14. The new moon makes for particularly dark skies, perfect for stargazing.

Winter Morning

Freezing cold. No snow. These winter mornings have a bright moon. A blue light that comes up from ground. Vapor that comes from breathing. A hard skin of ice on my windshield just from standing still.

World Travel or Anything

We're standing in the check out line at the Co-op. 

N: So, Mom, what is it you intend to do in raising me?

Me: Whu? Are you asking me what I want to do as a parent?

N: Yep.

Me: Oh. [pause, pause...think, think] I guess I'd like to raise a person who can take care of herself and generally holds the ability to be pleased with her life. 

N:That's it? 

Me: Yep.

N: Nothing like world travel or anything? 

Climate of an American Mind

A sweeping majority of Americans — more than 75 percent — say the President and Congress should make climate change and developing clean energy a priority, according to a survey conducted by researchers at Yale University and George Mason University. 

The growing sentiment is that policy-makers in the United States have failed to meaningfully address the rapidly deepening crisis of climate change. 

The GAO offers our policy-makers a cleaner energy forecast. Exact a carbon tax of $25/metric ton of CO2 starting next year. Increase that carbon tax incrementally over time in order to lead to a steep decline of coal fired electricity. That future lands coal as 4 percent (down from the 48 percent it represents now) of the United States Energy Mix by 2035. 

Conventional political wisdom, though, says, "Oooo....carbon tax...that sounds expensive...nobody, nobody would like that...". But here's the kicker: you know that Yale University survey I mentioned? It finds over eighty percent of Americans support making an effort to reduce global warming, even if this has economic costs.

Maybe the increased cost of a carbon tax sounds more palatable than the $26 to $89-billion annual cost estimated to deal with rising seal levels by the year 2040.  

Majorities of Americans at this point also support funding more research into renewable energy sources (73%), providing tax rebates for people who purchase energy-efficient vehicles or solar panels (73%), regulating carbon dioxide (CO2) as a pollutant (66%), eliminating all subsidies for the fossil-fuel industry (59%), and expanding offshore drilling for oil and natural gas off the U.S. coast (58%).

So, Congress, Mr. President, I believe the message is pretty clear.

What You Have & What You Need

Photo Credit: One Day On Earth

I hope you'll consider participating in one of the most ambitious collaborative film projects which asks people from all over the globe to film and submit "What You Have and What You need". 

All submission must be filmed or videoed on 12/12/2012. Help tell the world's story by becoming part of this project in association with the United Nations and other partners. View the video http://vimeo.com/52038148 or go to www.onedayonearth.org for more information and instructions.

Rusty

Tonight I walked onto T's tennis court for the first time in months. Rusty. To use polite terms I'll just say my game was rusty.  Outright awful would be another set of appropriate terms, but, I'll stick with rusty. 

Rusty or not I left T's court with travel advice on the route between Chicago and Michigan, a catchy Jack White tune stuck in my head, and a silly grin smeared across my face. I'm already making plans to come back next week.
________________

Surprised By: How much, after all this time, I still love this poem.

Anxiously Awaiting: The Xmas gig my band has next week. 

Crazy Endeavor: Learning how to mambo.

Recent Goodness: My friend, Leirion, announced her candidacy for Lincoln's City Council.

Sunday

"Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life. All it needs from you is that you take care not to trample on it." 

– Marilynn Robinson, Gilead (2004)

Expansive Sky

It was unseasonably warm today so I went for a hike. This time of year the most striking feature of the Midwest is, without a doubt, its expansive sky. 

I like hiking. My mind works better when I'm moving. I like the way I'll fling ideas around, or just listen to the world outside of myself. This hike was a lovely moment, filled with open thinking, surrounded by greenness. 

As I've grown older I'll shut down certain thoughts as impossible or unthinkable. No. No. Can't. Can't. I'll clam up a good idea before it even gets the chance to fully form. 

So I like hiking. It gets me outside of the usual confines. That wide open sky helps me examine how big I can dream something. From that space no idea sounds too terribly silly or overly-remarkable.

Fog Drip

My Morning Run

Do The Math Tour

This Saturday Bill McKibben and 350.org stop in Omaha as part of an interactive-speaking tour, titled "Do The Math," which essentially jumpstarts the next wave of environmental action on climate change.

Tickets are $10 each. Doors open at six, lecture starts at 7pm. C'mon over to the Joslyn Art Museum and check it out.

Veggie Tacos

I thought I'd check out the Thursday Taco deal from Pepe's on my way home. Fifty-cent tacos sold as they last. You in?

Winter Swim

We ate dinner early. With daylight cut short and the winter night feeling especially long, we ate dinner early.
Hot lasagne, steaming from the oven.  It was good. 

Then the dishes all rinsed and set, tidily, in the sink. 

Homework done. 

We went swimming.
The pool was heated to perfection.
Practically had the place to ourselves so we splashed around and played more than we swam really.
Laughed and sang in loud voices.
Suddenly the dark night didn't feel so long.
The cold weather didn't feel like it was closing in. 

Tomorrow morning I'll wake up and my skin will still smell of chlorine.

Thanksgiving Fieldwork

I'm a frequent viewer of this GOOD community website. It serves some visceral need I have for community action and good news.
 

Today it offered another from it's monthly assignment series Field Work which, this time, asks people to photograph the aftermath of your Thanksgiving meal. 

I think of the way my aunt Jinx (our Thanksgiving hostess) is banished from her own kitchen while the rest of us clean pots and pans. Or the way my family goes bowling each Thanksgiving after the dishes are done. 

Whatever your Thanksgiving tradition, I hope you'll consider photographing its aftermath and uploading the image to their twitter feed or Instagram @GOOD with the hashtag #Pictureshow. 

Keystone XL

One-hundred ninety-four miles of the Keystone XL pipeline route runs through Nebraska. I was combing through the preliminary report from Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality. 

Environmental Quality was tasked, by the Nebraska Legislature, with evaluating the environmental, economic, social and other impacts of the proposed pipeline; determining if the rerouted alignment avoids the sandhills; and providing the opportunity for public review and comment on the pipeline route. 

The final public hearing is scheduled in Albion, Nebraska on December 4th, 2012. In order to assess the impacts I’ve pulled out some of the pipeline numbers: 

• 9 Nebraska Counties 
• 63 acres of wetlands (various types) 
• 163 waterbody crossings 
• 6 major watersheds
• Approximately 1,500 acres of combined ag, grass and rangeland habitat 
• 270 construction related jobs created 
• 110 annual jobs created 
• $37,200 average annual income for pipeline construction laborers
• $31.4 million infusion to the Nebraska economy from construction 
• $278 million in economic benefit to Nebraska from construction 
• 24 hour SCADA monitoring of pipeline for any indication of spills 
• 20 miles the maximum distance between Main Line Valves (MLVs) which can be manually or remotely closed in order to isolate leaks. Additional MLVs located at pump stations, major river crossings and upstream of any sensitive waterbodies. 
• 50 year lifespan of pipeline operations

Leonid Meteor Shower, 2012

Stolen from Facebook. Thanks, J.

Occasionally the Leonid meteor shower could be better described as a meteor storm. Thousands of meteors per hour can shoot across the sky. Grab a blanket,  your warm gloves and check it out.

America Recycles Day

75% of Nebraska's landfill waste could have been recycled.
Enough said.

Moments That Surprised Me

• My mother asked for help in buying tickets from an online scalper to last night’s Bruce Springsteen concert. 
• Paying the registration fee for next week’s tennis tournament. 
• The Final Jeopardy question which referenced, by name, my favorite used bookstore on the planet. 
• My running pace picked up over the past year. 
• That hole that was dug out from the side of my house is all patched up.
• Last Sunday I hosted a lovely gathering of my occasional soup clubbers. 
• A question I posed to Google responds: Loverboy. Yep, Loverboy. The band. 
• There is a long list of arguable points to justify why oatmeal cookies make the perfect breakfast. 
•  A group of ten year olds tasked me with putting the Fonz into context. 
• I’ve been reading Outside Magazine recently. Live Bravely.
• British Petroleum agreed to plead guilty to a series of fourteen criminal charges and pay $4.5 billion in fines and penalties for the fatalities associated with the Deep Horizons drill rig explosion two years.

Climate Reality

Thanks, Al.

Click here and check it out. A 24-hour global webcast focused on Climate Change. A collective conversation about how to push back against the global agenda fighting the most critical threat this planet may ever face.

Rrrribbitt

Photo Credit: ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

I'm headed off to the first of a series of FrogWatch trainings tonight. 

Frogs and toads are indicator species on the health of an environment. Perhaps because they live "on the edge" between water and land, and have semi-permeable skin, frogs and toads are very sensitive to pollution and other environmental changes. They're also rapid responders to climate change. 

Worldwide amphibian and frog species are declining in number so FrogWatch sets out to monitor their populations. I'm told that the most effective way to track changes in frog and toad populations is to listen for their calls during mating season in the springtime.

I'll spend this winter coming up to speed on wetland ecology, amphibian behavior, and...that's right...being able to identify frog calls. Next year I'll go out to a local pond twice a week, just after sunset, track and upload a description of what I hear.

Soft Fascination

I've spent this year purposefully living outside more often.

Less time in front of glowing screens. Less of my brain preoccupied with synchronized calendars and overly-ambitious-to-do list. I wanted to do more. I wanted to worry less. Spend more time with dirty fingernails, less time inside my head. 

So I spent this year outside noticing tree stands and moonlight, leaf veins and fireflies. I watched pine needles fall into ponds. I sat and listened to night noises.

Leafing through a magazine yesterday I found the name for this habit. It's called soft fascination. That washed clean feeling that comes from noticing something like rainfall or a sunset. Something too lovely, too awe-inspiring for your brain to get caught up with whatever else is going on.

The quieting effect that being outside had on my brain. Strangely enough, I found it was entirely disconnected from my life's circumstance. Good day, bad day, feeling fabulous or a failure I found that if I noticed enough of the world that lives and breathes with or without me just being outside had virtually the same effect. I felt small or still and particularly well placed.

Butterfly's Day Out

A yellow butterfly flitted around my sandalled feet today. 

It was as though she was lonely. 

Like she wanted me to play chase-me games across the grass.

This late in the year, the weather so warm, it's as if we were living outside on borrowed time. 

I giggled and chased after her a little while. 

My feet rushed with all of the sweet feelings I have for this particular song.

Last Saturday's Hike

Fontenelle Forest - Fall Back

Good Riddance

Just as I was feeling threadbare with this election cycle my kid took an interest in politics. 

She stirred up dinner table conversations about the Presidential contest, Natural Resource District Board races, state legislative seats, stormwater bond issues State Supreme Court appointments. Unsurprisingly she had questions and offered up opinions about all of it.

We were talking last night about the tipping point of this particular election cycle. Past the 2012 General Election pollsters will no longer be able to group “minority voters”. There’s a particular distaste I’ve had for the sentimental media message that Governor Romney offers up the last campaign of its sort. That there won’t be a Presidential candidate that unabashedly courts white voters to the exclusion of other groups. 

I’m not the least bit nostalgic about it.

My hope is that the strategy and message employed by Governor Romney is retired due to natural causes. Less a matter of demographics and voting blocks. More a reflection of this campaign's stance on climate, immigration, women's health, and the 47% of Americans...

The white voter campaign strategy offers the weaker argument, the dimmer future, the narrower alternative.

We clinked glasses around my dinner table last night upon the occasion of this 'last campaign of it's sort' and said: Good riddance.

Indoor Cloud

Photo Credit: Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk

As a life long cloud gazer I was awestruck to find out about the indoor cloud creations of Dutch artist Berndnut Smilde earlier this year. 

Take some detailed readings of a room's temperature and humidity, add fog from a smoke machine, some back-lighting, no small amount of magic and...poof...indoor cloud. 

It dissipates after just a few moments.

I get a lift from knowing certain things are out there in this world. That they exist. They're part of the same space we walk around in. This indoor cloud was like that for me.

Person You Hide

Thanks, D.

G'night

I arrived home to a quiet house. Kicked off my girlie shoes and warmed up a slice of pie from the fridge.

My cheeks hurt from laughing and my heart hurt a little from an evening with David Sedaris and the lovely Ms. B.

Sigh.

Weekend Numbers

Owls Encountered: 1 
Moon Views Admired: 3 
Laser Tag Tally: 209 points 
Traveled by Foot: 13 miles 
Traveled by Bike: 26 miles 
Tennis Matches: 2 
Wine Bottles Uncorked: 1 
Spent Herbal Tea Bags: 6 
Laundry Loads: 4 
Beds with Fresh Sheets: 2 
Anti-Wrinkle Treatment(s) Purchased: 2 
Time Spent Pajama-ed Up And Reading or Lolling Around: 8 hrs 
Homespun Costumes at Prescott’s Halloween Event: 13+
Hurricane Status Updates from My FB Friends: 42

Hardest Things to Realize

                                                                        Thanks, L. I needed this!

Peak Water

It’s no secret that 2012 was marked by a record-breaking drought in the United States. The drought first materialized as smear across the map along the southeast region this spring when the lack of snow made for low soil moisture levels. Ultimately the drought engulfed 80% of the contiguous United States.

Two years ago Europe saw some similar drought conditions which prompted a series of programs and policies aimed at conserving water. Irrigation was the biggest conservation target for European Union programs. Agriculture accounts for approximately 64% of water use on the continent, followed by energy (20%), public water supply (12%) and industry (4%). 

An annual international conference, held in Sweden this year, took place at the end of August just as drought cut its largest swath out of the United States. 

Crop yields across the Midwest of the United States shriveled up, barge traffic was limited along the Mississippi River basin because of low levels in-stream, urban and some rural water restrictions were put in place, and across the ocean this water conference took place. 

A lot of the international conference focused on agricultural water issues. Drip irrigation systems, food security, etc. But there was one term ‘peak water’ that began to bubble up from several presentations and out of the mouths of the participants.

The term ‘peak water’ refers to a turn of phrase coined by Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, back in 2010 with his colleague Meena Palanippan. Gleick and Palianippan made the case that many areas of the world may have already surpassed the greatest possible rate of water consumption. 

The concept is focused more on the geographical issues related to water rather than actual water supplies. It's not that the world is running out of water but that water isn't located where people need it, or where it can be easily transported. 

The rapid population expansion in the desert southwest region of the United States along the Colorado River basin, for example, has grappled with this problem for almost years. 

The thought behind ‘peak water’ suggests that the world has surpassed the sustainable development of water resources, similar to oil supplies. For the time being  we make up the difference by pumping groundwater. As a resident that sits atop the Ogallala Aquifer, I'm no stranger to conversations about groundwater depletion. 

In the United States groundwater offers a source of drinking water for about half the total population and nearly all of the rural population, and it provides over 50 billion gallons per day for agricultural needs. Rainfall will replenish some of the water reserves, but not at the same rate they’re being depleted.

The 2012 Drought conditions shone a bright, hot light on the fact that water is essential to food security, public health, and promoting economic development. More than that water the underpinning of environmental sustainability.  

I'll be interested to hear more bubblings  about 'peak water'. I'll be more interested, however, in some of the solutions offered. 

Dia de los Muertos

Artwork by Jan Deetz

Clear your calendar because you won't want to miss this weekend's Dia de los Muertos celebration at Sheldon Art Gallery.

Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a colorful celebration of late loved ones. One of the most important aspects of the celebration is feeling the presence of your loved ones both those living and those who have departed. 

The event is free and open to the public this Sunday from noon to 4pm with music, food, and performances. There will also be a community ofrenda, art-making stations, and a silent auction.

Abundance

Marinara Sauce - In Its Elemental Form

I've developed a weekday infatuation with my slow cooker.  The relationship is especially nice when daylight is short, the workday is frustrating or long. My slow cooker offers some comfort at that first push through the front door.  Somebody has already thought about dinner. The house already smells delicious.

Autumn Weekend

Arbor Day Tree Adventure, Oct. 2012

If joy can be imperially measured I would express it in the layers of mud caked against my shoes at the end of a day.

Paying for Green Energy Without Complaint

Last week I came across a news blurb about the German electricity tax rising 50% to support renewable energy. It's a green bump to the average cost of electricity. The cost to a family of four is about $324.00 (U.S dollars) annually.

The customer base, essentially, subsidizes green energy. Green energy providers (hydro, biomass, wind, solar, and methane gas systems) grab an above-market rate for their  electrical output in an effort to ensure their investment will be profitable.

The whole point of this renewable energy surcharge is to conserve fossil fuels and promote further development of renewable resources. The German Renewable Energy Sources Act (2000) aims to increase the share of renewable energy available as part of their national energy mix. And they attach numeric goals to the task: 35% of electricity production from renewable sources by 2020; 50% by 2030; and 80% by 2050. 

As a result Germany leads the continent in solar development, and they generate a surplus amounts of wind energy. Nuclear and coal-fired generation serve up smaller and smaller pieces of the pie.

It's no surprise to me that dedicated money along with a healthy set of measurable green energy goals has proven to be effective. But in the face of economic indicators that smack of a double dip recession I was expecting some, arguably well-deserved, consumer push back. 

But that's the gotcha data-set. 

On Sunday Focus, a German news magazine, published their survey findings that despite the rise in their electricity bills 72% of people continue to support the country's switch to green energy. 

The data indicates that even with a blow to a person's pocket book, the resolve to support greener energy options remains strong. And I thought...well...now we're talkin'.

Lake Street Dive

6.3-miles Outside

Rock Island Trail, 33rd & Sheridan

I went for a run this morning. Laced up my laces. Pulled back my hair. Flicked on the coffee pot to brew while I was gone. Threw the door open and ran, ran, ran outside.  

______________

Currently Reading: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett 

Recent Goodness: N gave public speaking a whirl last weekend. In Mandarin. 

Anxious to Attend:  Pirate Weekend at the Renaissance Festival in K.C.

...To The Moon

A Rainy Afternoon We Spent @ SAC Air Museum A Year Ago Today

Test Bubbles

Nebraska Public Power District is going underground. Three thousand feet below ground, to be precise. They're looking closely at some empty salt domes in Deuel County, Nebraska. NPPD is the state's largest electric utility and they plan to spend more than $8 million conducting engineering and geomorphic tests for a Compressed Air Energy Storage project.

The salt domes in this particular Dakota Sandstone formation were mined in the 1950s and 1960's. The same formation was used as a natural gas storage area in the late '90s which means the subsurface 'breathes'. You can get compressed gases in and extract them back out of the formation. On the 'exhale' NPPD would use the compressed air to help power a turbine and generate electricity.

The latest $8 million project offers a series of engineering tests designed to quantify the 'lung capacity' equivalent from the rock formation. Beginning in 2014, NPPD plans to inject 3 billion cubic feet of air into the underground geological formation over a six-month period to develop "test bubbles" and determine whether the formation will hold air stored at 830 to 1,000 pounds per square inch over a long period of time.

The basic idea of CAES involves using power when it's plentiful (and cheap) to drive an air compressor, store air in a geologic formation and draw it back out when prices are high, heat it up, and then supply the compressed air to a modified gas turbine.

NPPD won't make a decision about building or not building a CAES power plant on the site until mid-2015. Construction would start the following year. If approved the turbine would be operational, or on-line, in 2019.

Stress Analysis

Glass Enclosed Display in UNL's Engineering Department

Late Night - Sleepy Morning

After tossing and turning, sometimes, I just give up. I climb out of the crumpled sheets. Slip downstairs.

Otherwise I'd lay in bed and plunk away at my mental calculator, "If I fell asleep right now, I'd get.......five hours of rest. If I fell asleep right ~now~ I'd get..... three hours of rest..."

I can't be too surprised that insomnia strikes this week with finals in one class and my first exam in the second. Wish me luck and coffee...and a little sleep at the end of it. 

XO

11.1-miles Outside

Bison Trail, Pioneers Park

18 Year Defense

I met Jeff McArthur 25 years ago. We were kicking around various Lincoln theater companies and I can tell you that Jeff is a natural storyteller. Recently he focused those talents by publishing a book titled Pro Bono - the 18 Year Defense of Caril Fugate. 

The name Caril Fugate strikes a chord with anyone with parents who grew up in the Midwest. She was tied to a series of eleven murders committed by Charlie Starkweather in 1958. 

The murder spree paralyzed the Midwest. The National Guard was called in by local law enforcement, the schools let out early, whole families slept in the same bedroom hoping to find safety in numbers. No matter who you talk to, what town they lived in the story was the same: there wasn't a cold drink or a shotgun left to buy in town. 

When Starkweather was finally apprehended his 14-year old girlfriend, Caril Fugate, was travelling with him. The killing spree started two days after she had tried to break things off with Charlie.

After he was apprehended one of Starkweather's most famous quotes was to say "When I go to the electric chair, I want Caril Ann Fugate sitting on my lap." 

Pro Bono tackles the legal manuverings to defend Caril Fugate. It's a book that takes on the question of whether she was kidnapped or a willing accomplice. Authored by my friend, Jeff, the grandson of the attorney appointed to the case by the court it's a delicious read. One I recommend whole-heartedly. 

OMA-DEN-SFO

Big Basin Redwood State Park

My California findings:

• This book by Paolo Giordano.
• A quiet hotel in Silicon Valley that offered a delicious, hot breakfast each morning. Every comfy bed had a canopy. Every guest room had a plastic cactus shaped lamp.
• My kid can mass-transit with the best of 'em.
• The Golden Gate Bridge is seventy-five years old this year. 
• Before purchasing your slinky, little blue dress in San Francisco's Chinatown: take a moment to try it on. American dress sizes are not the global standard.
• Skunk patrol among forest rangers is part of the job but it isn't so much living the dream.
• A forest of tall trees is even more magnificent than you'd imagine.
• The only other conversations that tackle the same expanse of time as the redwoods involve rocks and tectonic plates.
• Stop at the mountain-town grocery store. The sign offers liquor, coffee and donuts. In that order. 

14.2-miles Outside

Side-trip through Wilderness along Jamaica Trail North

Blue Moon Rising

Sky watchers the world over have the chance to watch the blue moon rise along the eastern horizon tonight.

So, grab a lawn-chair and plop yourself down because the next blue moon doesn’t occur until 2015. 

For those of us unlucky enough to have cloudy skies, there's a Slooh Space Camera web feed streaming a special broadcast of the blue moon on Friday that will begin at 22:00 UTC.

Avoca School House

Morning Fiddling Sessions

The Avoca Schoolhouse (N with Debby Greenblatt)

Summer Saturday Habit

We Highly Recommend the Experience!

Short Stories

I collect stories. Short ones. Small bits about peoples' lives, the places they've traveled, the things they know. I fell asleep last night and mulling over a bouquet of short stories I collected this week.

• D who has researched his mountaineering trip to Tibet. He knows the road conditions to the base-camp of Mt Everest. He has a plan for how to avoid spreading bedbugs upon his return. 

• The B family who just got a government backed refinance for their home after four years of living under the threat of foreclosure. 

• M who had to cancel this weekend's road-trip due to treacherous life conditions.

• TJ who tells me that singing out-loud acts as a mild antidepressant.

• My friend who found out: sometimes, with relationships, you need to give a little. Your husband's bathroom can have the Star Wars theme. It just isn't that big of a deal.

• The distinction, from S years and years ago, that there are friends and there are friends that will help you hide a body. 

• The idea, from T, that we do our best work when we're slightly distracted. The outside influence makes everything richer.

• C who braces physically and financially for her second emergency surgery without health insurance this year.

• My GG who insisted on teaching me to drink black coffee in case of an emergency. To this day I prefer my coffee with cream. But, in a pinch, I can drink it black.

• The oldest woman in the world who attributes her long and good life to minding her own business and not eating junk food.

• My physics guru, K, said he spent twenty years hiding behind the mathematics of his field. Mathematically he was good to go, conceptually...well...he didn't go there. K has a phD in Physics. He's been an instructor for more than a decade and told me that story as he watched me struggle with my latest physics homework assignment. Conceptually I got it, but I just could not get the numbers to hammer out correctly.   It isn't often that someone so accomplished in his field would extend himself with that kind of intellectual generosity.

Wishful Thinking

Sigh. And yet, it was almost 100 degrees again today...

Ribbons & Bows

When I was a kid there was a gift wrapping counter in the basement of every department store. The women staffing this area would admire whatever gift you had purchased and ask after the occasion the package belonged to. Was this a baby shower gift? Somebody's birthday? Something from the wedding registries, perhaps?

In an age of gift bags and slapdashery it was hard to describe the full effect of careful wrapping. The cooing that fluttered around a room at the sight these packages. I was feeling nostalgic for gift wrapping, I suppose, as N prepared for her best friend's birthday party last weekend. I seized the occasion as a teachable moment to school my kid on how you neatly wrap presents. 

N sighed and rolled her eyes as we smoothed out the wrinkles of the paper so the edges fit together just so. She slumped and muttered as she placed each piece scotch tape on the underside of the seams. 

The complaining got so thick that I broke into giggles at one point. N snapped her chin up from her chest.  She glared at me and begged:

          "What?"

"Oh, honey, I was just remembering the time Grandma Mel taught me this same thing." 


          "And?" 

"And I was about as excited about learning to wrap a nice present as you feel right now."

Then I older. I hosted bridal showers, my friends had babies, or we wandered over to console someone who was sick or sad.  My hands weren't empty as I arrived to those occasions. Rightfully so, I was careful with the edges and seams.

N finished up her packaging job. She decorated the gift with ribbons and bows. Delivered it to the birthday girl who, as if on cue, visibly swooned.

True Story

I rolled over in bed this morning and said, “So we have that flying robot meeting at work today.”

And I meant it.

The meeting is to go over a proposed project which marries the University’s robotics and electrical engineering team, some wildlife groups, and wind turbine operators. It's a group of us interested in filling the data gaps when it comes to the interaction between wind turbines and bat behavior.

I suppose we’ll see where following the path of these flying robots leads.  

Unsupervised Recording

Dwyer

Phoenix Convention Center

Andy's Shoe Shine

If you don't already watch Amy Poehler's Parks and Recreation, allow me bluntly say...you should, you should, you shhhhhhhould! 

Obviously, I'm an avid fan of the show. 

Andy Dwyer is among my favorite characters on Parks and Recreation. He serves as the goofy and sincerely lovable slacker who works as a shoeshiner at Pawnee city hall.  So you can imagine my fan-inspired glee at finding a real-life Andy's shoe shine station on a recent trip to Phoenix. Heh.

Night Noises

'Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?'    (Mary Oliver)

_________________________

My mother spends the next two weeks teaching in Cambodia.

I get a vicarious thrill from her sense adventure. Her sense of purpose. I'll catch myself, in the middle of the day, wondering about the view outside her window. The smell that hangs in the air, the chatter of places and people.  

An email from mom landed in my inbox on Sunday afternoon, the middle of the night in Phnom Penh. The night noises so loud she couldn't sleep.

Ever since my brain has been crowded with jungle noises and the sound of a rainstorm from the other side of the world.

Morning Kayak

Lake Wanahoo/Sand Creek Project

I spent Saturday morning on a kayak excursion. 

Slipped the skin of the boat into the water, and remembered the summer habit I used to make of these things. Sometimes I like to lean into the expanse of water.  The funny acoustics you'll find when you're afloat. The far off sounds that seem nearby. The way your noisy lungs seem distant. The splosh of the paddle blade as it disappears beneath the surface.

I spent Saturday morning loving the watery edge and dribbling wet face of anything that came up for air.  

Academics

1st Day of 5th Grade, 2012

1st Day Kindergarten, 2007

Rainstorm

After months and months of drought. After acclimating to the scratch at my ankles of brown and dead grass blades. After the soil shrinks away from the sidewalk and the City has watering restrictions. 

It rained. Small, sharp droplets. A heavy, wet wind.  

I went outside. Sat down. Closed my eyes to have a more tactile sense of what was happening.

Precisely

Something came up at work. 

My task was to dig into the accuracy levels required for environmental reporting. 

I know, it's a glamorous life I lead. 

A life that occasionally dwells in ratios, rounding requirements, and significant digits. 

Anyway I had an intuitive answer, but I'm not at all a math-head, so I needed some objective source to fall back on. 

Enter a multi-hour Internet tour of regulatory and standard laboratory reference documents. 

The details of this event are far less interesting than the glorious conclusion that I was right. That's right. I. Was. Right. Right all along. 

I sort of fluffed up with pride. It was a moment that could only have been made better by a pop-up message that read “OMG, you’re ~so~ smart!” 

Come to think of it, I'll have to work on that pop-up message. 

It might come in handy more often than I think!

Vengence

T Busted This Little Guy For Eating Tomatoes

Summer

My skin beaded up with sweat as I stepped off the front porch this morning. 

No doubt about it: it’s summer. More specifically it’s that part of summer where you wake up with your mouth dry, your head pulsing. 

It’s that part of summer with brown patches of grass dotted along the quiet street. I noticed last night that I haven’t heard kids playing outside in more than a month. 

I imagine everyone inside their house. The a/c wheezing along, trying to keep up without relief. The blinds drawn, every light bulb off, the buzz of a box fan set on ‘high’. People resembling puddles from a dirty mop all over each living room couch. 

Oh, wait, maybe that’s just ~my~ house I’m imagining. In any case, if you’re looking for a couch to puddle up on or a spare popsicle for dinner feel free to stop by.