A Return

In case anyone is wondering, I have not written in my blog for almost exactly a year. This has been intentional (as opposed to just forgetting about it, I suppose?). In a quick recap of this last year, including why I have not been blogging - life sucked. It actually sucked a lot, as implied by the larger print. Things are better now, so no worries, please. But basically, yeah, last year was the hardest period I've been through to date. I'm still processing things and sorting out the life lessons. I'm not going to rehash this past year in specifics. One of the things about your children growing older is that you realize they don't really appreciate having their private lives become fodder for mommy's public musings. I recognize that it's well past time for me to stop blogging about things that are private in regard to them. However, it is important for me to write. I think I have reached a place now where life is gentle again, and I might be comfortable blogging.

So I'm going to try.

Since I've become an adult, it might be an understatement to say that I have not been a fan of summertime. I loved it when I was a kid, of course. My sisters and I spent most of our summers exploring the neighborhood and the empty lots beside our house in rural Texas, completely immersed in whichever fantasy game we decided upon for that day. We might be orphaned children that had escaped from the evil torture of our orphanage, trying (and succeeding) to outsmart Hog-Jaw and the Pig-Snouts, who were policeman-like bad, bad, oh so bad men that were trying to return us to our orphan-prison. The Pig-Snouts were ugly, fairly stupid flunkies who attempted to track us everywhere, including the town down the highway where my grandparents and aunts lived. They were relentless. It wasn't our fault that we very often had to escape through windows and "steal" bicycles to frantically race through the streets to outwit the Pig-Snouts.We headed them off at school playgrounds by deftly weaving through parking lots, and on one occasion, we climbed onto the car shed by my aunt's house and tried unsuccessfully to break into her apartment for cover (I'm not sure that she knows about this attempt. Maybe she figured it out when she found wood chips clogging her keyhole???). We hid from Hog Jaw and his flunkies in the dense, dank forest across the street from our house, which were dubbed the "Angel Grounds" (and which played prominently in various other fantasy worlds we created on other days). On any given day, we might be tiny tiny people living in another dimension - our forests were but tiny weeds to the next dimension of people. Or the jungle gym in our backyard might become an underground cave, and each space in the ladders ringing the cave was a tunnel leading to a different land. This last fantasy was more than a little odd because we'd each embark alone on our on tales, running alone through the neighborhood seeing and experiencing our own version of reality for a good long while, and then return to the cave at some set time to share our adventures with each other in stories. When we weren't designing elaborate stories, we might drive to the town where my grandparents lived to go swimming at the local the swimming pool. The order of business on these excursions was to walk barefoot across the hot pavement from the car to the pool. We (or as my sisters might correct me..."I") decided that we could only enhance the joy of jumping into the cool water if our feet were truly blistering at the point of contact. We had long weekends at the Galveston beach, my memories of which are punctuated with peeling away layers of my sun burnt skin, the taste of saltwater and sand in my mouth, building sandcastles decorated with "quicksand" enhancements (in which quicksand was the result of a saltwater and sand mix, poured into spirals and adornments that would harden within a few seconds of pouring.) We skipped through the waves to avoid the jellyfish while looking for shells, and played dominoes in the cold, cold air of the rental house. My grandfather loved to put his grandchildren to work hand cranking the ice cream maker. I don't ever remember truly hardened ice cream, but I remember the most delicious, sweet creams, occasionally dotted with an explosion of salt from the freezer along with peppermint candy that would come at the end of suppers of spaghetti or hamburgers. Summertime was composed of magnificent camping trips in my family's camper, when my parents allowed us to bring along nearly half of the kids we knew in town. We would set up tents and sit around the campfire telling ghost stories while eating s'mores and swatting the June bugs away from our faces, and then we would spend the days paddling through lakes in inflatable boats, landing on islands that were ripe for adventure making. Summertime was an absolutely titillating, glorious and entirely sensory experience.

As with so many things, the process of growing up has tended to dampen my imagination-driven enthusiasm for summer. These days, when I think of summer from my middle-aged and so very mature perspective, I envision bugs and heat and dirt. I see the weeds overtaking my flower beds because it is too miserably hot and humid to spend any more time outside than it takes to walk from the car to the door of my air-conditioned house. I resent the disruption to my schedule as my kids become fluid creatures that sleep for periods that may vary to be any period within the diurnal cycle. I view summer as the necessary evil to get from spring to my beloved fall. I have envied people living in the Pacific northwest or the far north, as in, Nova Scotia, for not being forced to endure the humid torturous conditions that define my summers in southeast Virginia.

So, back in the spring this year, when things in my life still sucked, I decided to start practicing meditation and I started to attend a weekly sangha (Buddhist meditation group). One of the major focuses in Buddhism is mindfulness - simply paying attention to the present moment.  I decided it would be a very good idea this year to practice mindfulness of the season this summer to try to re-embrace some of the things I used to love about it. I decided to slow down and try to return to the perspective of a child. (I want to take an abbreviated aside at this point, and point out that one of the things I have realized from my work at meditation and mindfulness, is that we are very good at this as children. Sometimes when I am meditating, and I feel like I have reached a good solid point of being in the present, I am flooded with memories and feelings from childhood. I think that time went so slowly and things seemed so much more significant in childhood because we were naturally mindful. I think this is a skill that we forget as we assimilate into adult society). To a large extent, this has worked. I have had a much more enjoyable summer than I've had in a very long time. I have stopped on my walk from the car to my air conditioned house to watch the butterflies at our butterfly bush perform their exquisite dance of tasting each tiny bud in the flowers.  I have tried to remember to savor each unique moment - my daughter overflowing with joy at the connections she made at a camp and my son exploding in growth at being in a leadership role in his band. I savor the flavor of the tomatoes we get from our CSA. I savor the growth. Summer is alive in so many ways.

And yet.

I was driving down the winding road to my house today and I saw 4 yellow leaves fluttering by the side of the road. I noticed this and looked to the sky. It was clear and bright, yet there was something- the sense of the imminence of  fall was there. My stomach did a flip-flop. I checked weather.dot.com and saw that we have a cold front scheduled to come in tonight. My son has started marching band rehearsals. I am starting to pencil in fall activities in my date book. I can smell the fires and I can feel the cold air. The school year is starting (I have a Junior and an 8th grader this year!!!). Football. School. New Beginnings. I am learning to love summer again, thanks to mindfulness. Fall is easy. Fall has always been easy for me to love. It has been many falls, however, since I have had the time to let go and let myself love. This is going to be the year that I can do that.  Live doesn't suck anymore. I am learning to be more mindful. And the earth is turning and rotating as it always does, and autumn is coming to where I am. And I am open for it this year.

Things are good.

in which she pops her head up to say hello...

November. WTF?

At the beginning of every autumn, I tell myself that this is the year I am going to go slow and revel in the change of seasons and enjoy every second of the cooling temps, the fires in the fireplace, the start of a new school year. I'm going to go slow enough to track the incremental changes in leaf color on the trees in my years and I'm going to feel the aura of autumn in every cell of my body. And about this time every autumn, I realize that I've been enjoying it so much that it has flown by unnoticed. I guess that's the point, ultimately, isn't it?

Soccer and baseball for the kids are over now, so my "free time" allotment has just exploded for the next couple of months (until it all starts up again). But really - I complain in jest. I never did sports as a kid and I do wish I'd had the opportunity. The opportunities were simply not THERE for a little girl back in the 70s. I love that E has no idea that there could possibly be any limits there for her because of her gender. It simply doesn't factor into her thought process. She plays soccer for the enjoyment and for the social benefit (very honestly, she has no real love of the game and has inherited my limited athletic prowess, but she embraces her "right" to play simply because she has fun). I LOVE that Q has found a sport that marries athletic ability and intellect. He is a perfect candidate for baseball. I love watching him play and love having him analyze the game for us afterwards.

So what I have had time to focus upon this fall from a personal perspective is food. FOOD!!!!! Food fascinates me. I love simple, plain food - the smell of earth, the warmth, the freshness that I smell on new greens, on onions, on potatoes. I stuck my head down into my CSA basket the other day to just breathe. In retrospect, I'm fairly lucky no one walked in on me. My counter is covered with butternut squash, garlic, honeycrisp apples, and something like 30 sweet potatoes. While I turn into psycho-yelling mom when my counter collects papers and junk mail, seeing all the food spilling over onto every quarter of the counter makes me happy. I'm sure my family will learn these fine distinctions in no time.

I've become quite the convert into eating locally and seasonally and organically, and so far, my family hasn't complained too awfully much. In fact, being the evil mom that I am, I forced my kids to sit through a showing of "Food, Inc." Despite the eye rolls and whining, E has since become a vegetarian, and has stuck to that quite strictly for about a month now. The rest of us have no problem eating meat as long as it's from an animal that resembled what it is naturally supposed to resemble while alive. It's been some work to find sources of healthy foods for the various aspects of our lives (school lunches, quick snacks, etc) but we're making excellent progress. I have a new 9 cubic foot freezer chugging away in the garage filled with fresh tomatoes, tomato sauce, and fruits, and waiting for our first delivery of meat from PolyFace Farm tomorrow. I have a lot of thoughts on my transition into crazy granola mom and why it's really not very crazy or granola. It's actually quite spiritual to me. My spiritual focus is on the way the universe fits together so beautifully, and the transition of solar energy into food into us is ultimately something important. I think the US has been brain-washed by the media into ignoring that natural cycle, or at least brain-washed into believing that the industrial version of that cycle (which is pretty whacked out) is the natural one. Craziness.

In the meantime, it's time to revel in November. October may have slipped through my fingers, but so far November is actually looking more like fall and I'm happy with that.

this is why this man is my hero

">edited: Anyone know who said these quotes? They're all from the same person...

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.

I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion.

holiday fun

Today ended up being the offical start to the winter holiday season for my family. Although we do not consider ourselves christian, we embrace the spirit of this holiday season wholeheartedly. I love the warmth and the focus on family and togetherness and tradition. In the words of Martha, "It's a good thing." Indeed.

We started the day out by helping friends with their llamas in our local holiday parade:





(There are more pictures on my facebook page).

It was a lot of fun! I have to admit that the introverted portion of my nature (which is substantial, even if held in check most of the time) kicked into high gear when I realized that hundreds of parade-goers were watching me. If *I* felt a bit uncomfortable, I can only imagine what ultra-shy son Q was feeling. He put his llama between him and the crowd, and pulled his hat down over his eyes and was fine, however. Good coping skills. I was proud that he wanted to do it.

Next on the agenda was our annual christmas tree hunt.

The hunt:


The catch:


The dressing down:


And the final result:


And in case anyone is wondering what middle school aged boys do during all this:






And the obligatory eating of the christmas village...

my afternoon walk

I spent the afternoon walking by myself at the state park just down from my house. East coast autumns. (sigh)

"If you're walking down the right path, and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress"
(Barack Obama)

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.
(Henry David Thoreau)

"The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration."
(Claude Monet)

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. (Carl Sagan)

"You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here."
(Desiderata)

“Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree”
(Emily Bronte)

"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you."
(Frank Lloyd Wright)

autumn

Our trip to the Graves Mountain Apple Festival marks the beginning of autumn for my family each year. We drove up there today with some friends.


It was pretty warm and the colors weren't all that spectacular, but it was a beautiful day and we had so much fun hanging out with our friends. Here's a photo of the kids eating candied apples while playing in the stream. They spent most of the day digging enormous rocks up from the bottom of the stream. I'm not going to argue with cheap entertainment.


Here's the view I enjoyed a lot of the afternoon from flat on my back on our picnic blanket - after a lunch of brunswick stew, cornbread, applesauce and apple butter.



When they weren't digging rocks out of the stream bed, the kids performed acrobatic stunts off of bales of hay.

what's the payoff?

Amidst the dry leaves and dirt and dead plants that are what make up the terminally neglected, sad "garden" on one side of our patio, I found this little rose. Did you see Wall-E, when the robots discover the one tiny little plant that finally blooms on the abandoned and lifeless planet Earth? That's what I thought of. I thought this picture would inspire hope and make me glad, but I find it quite depressing.

welcome back favorite friend

Today is the first day of autumn!! This is one my most anticipated days every year. I have waxed philosophic and danced with fluffy words in so many past blog entries as the autumn returns that I won't do it again here. At least, I won't do so today. I have been especially looking forward to autumn this year, as I have dedicated this (school) year to myself. I'm no longer PTA president. I have no responsibilities at UU (haven't even attended in 1.5 years). Me and my family - that is the plan for this year. I will make time once again to read and knit and cook and do things with my children. I will finally learn to can and quilt.

So. Today, I will be rushing home from work to attend a Girl Scout planning meeting for a camping trip next weekend - one that I have volunteered to be one of the attending adults - meaning E and I go camping next weekend (!). I will then rush home to host a PTA Reflections planning meeting at my house. Auspicious start.

Here's an autumn project for me:

Lemon basil

I need to do something with this...

my comments on being pro-science

edit: I came in this morning with the intent of taking this post off since it's so awfully fluffy, but Mare had already commented on it so I'm leaving it. Take this as it is - written after a few glasses of wine and after seeing a lovely rainbow.

In hindsight, I suppose it is really no surprise that I ended up as a scientist.

There is one incident from second grade that I clearly remember, and it was certainly suggestive of the fact that I'd end up where I am now. We were learning multiplication and our teacher, Mrs. England, was using flash cards to drill the class. She was sitting in front of the class on her wooden stool and was rapidly flipping through the fact cards, her thin lips pressed into the persistent grimace that was her teacher face. I was not a happy girl. You see, Mrs. England never explained the concept of multiplication to us. We had been asked to simply memorize the facts and the class was collectively reciting them back to her. I felt like a fish out of water. While the rest of the class was dutifully, if more than an little monotonously chanting multiplication facts in unison, I was determined to figure out HOW this new math was working. Unfortunately she and the rest of the class were zipping through the rote memorization too quickly for me to work it out. I was so frustrated that I started to cry. When Mrs. England asked me what was wrong, I told her I was sick, so I was sent down to the nurse's office. I can acutely remember the combined medicinal and musty smell of that primary school's nurse's room as I lay there on the little white cot waiting for my mom to come pick me up. The sick feeling in my stomach was a combination of frustration at not being able to figure out why multiplication worked like it did, and the abject worry about what my mom would say to me when she realized I was faking it. In fact, my mom did immediately know that I wasn't sick. Her response was to give me a big hug and take me home.

At that point in my life, I was only just beginning to realize that beneath every action, there lay a series of logical steps. Cracking the code of logic beneath something magical like why the stars twinkled or why the sunsets are so beautiful only heightens the sense of awe for me. It is what makes me gaze at a rainbow (I saw a 4/5 full one tonight!) and is what makes me hold my breath in reverence at the simple movement of the wind.
I am not an excellent scientist. I'm merely an adequate one, but I do know enough to understand that explanations - logical explanations - exist if you know where to look for them.

I also understand that there is an amazing and wonderful variety of kinds of people in this world. There are many who are not as fascinated by science and logical explanations as I am. Many are quite willing to accept life as it is without feeling the need to search for the "why." And that's fine - that's great. No problem. Variety is the spice of life and all that.

However, I do add the caution that the fact that one does not feel the need to search out and understand the science behind our world does not eliminate the fact that it is there. With a little time and experience, most children figure out that even if they close their eyes, others can still see them. You see, science is not a religion. It is not close to anything remotely resembling a religion. It is not even mysterious. Science is the result of the collective knowledge that is the result of thousands of years of billions of thinking humans. It didn't come about by accident.

There are a couple of things that I've read about Sarah Palin's take on science that are, ehm, confusing.

1) She believes that both evolution and creationism should be taught in the classroom.
One of these is backed by the previously described years of collective knowledge and supported by factual scientific evidence and theory. The other is written in the Bible. One should be presented in the academic environment from which it was born . The other should be presented in the religious environment from which it was born. I do not understand the confusion here. If you do not believe that scientific fact is compelling enough, why on earth would you insist that your religious beliefs be presented as, um... scientific fact? Pick one or the other, and keep it in its respective home. Or, like most of the country, allow for the fact that both can co-exist, but keep each in its respective home (Personally, I do not subscribe to this latter suggestion but realize that the majority of people do.)

2) Governor Palin also seems confused on the issue of climate change.
From the Associated Press:

She has told the Internet news site Newsmax, "A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location.... I'm not one, though, who would attribute it to being man-made."

In an interview with a Fairbanks newspaper within the last year, Palin said: "I'm not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity."

But in a recent interview with Charles Gibson, she said:

Show me where I have ever said that there's absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change. I have not said that," said Palin to Gibson.

and

I believe that man's activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change.

While vague, and only slightly less worrisome from the persepective of a scientist, these last statements seem awfully out of line with her earlier stance. Politics, anyone?

In case you are wondering, I did finally figure out that multiplication was only a fancy way of doing addition. I honestly don't remember if Mrs. England taught me this (doubtful) or if my parents did, or if I just figured it out on my own at last. In any case, I'm glad I did, because I use it an awful lot these days.

photos

I uploaded a few more pictures from our New England vacation to Flickr. If you click on my "Random Sights" link to the right it'll take to you my account. Once there, click on the New England vacation set, (or go to my photostream and click on the set from there).
They're not in any particular order.

slow goodness

I sometimes feel bad that my kids don't get the full "summer vacation" experience that I remember. We had to wake them up early 3 days a week to take them to their babysitter so I could work, and it seems most of the other days we were tightly planned and we were constantly on the go. We really didn't have a lot of slow-moving summertime days. It's that slowness that I remember when I think back on my summers. Summer is synonymous with slow, isn't it?

To indulge my happy childhood summer memories - here are things I remember from my summers:

Shoes were not an option. I had feet that could walk across coals by the end of the summer.


My sisters and I would spend all day outside developing and acting out intricate storylines for tales spanning Alice In Wonderland-like fantasy to dramatic plots involving escapes from orphanages and mobster-like gangs chasing us through our neighborhood adventures. The empty lot across the street was an entire country with jungles and deserts and caves and we were its reigning royalty.

Hand-cranked ice cream. I remember our whole extended family getting together and my grandfather orchestrating which cousin cranked next. It was a pain in the ass, but by the end, that sweet peppermint ice cream was the most heavenly thing I'd ever had. I loved the way there'd be a hint of the rocksalt taste that would inevitably find its way into the ice cream.

Throughout the summer, I remember our Colorado vacations, trips to the beach, camping trips, trips to the zoo and to parks, but I seem to remember that most of our days were of that slow, unplanned variety.

This weekend, we finally seem to be having some of that good summer slowness and unplanned days, and it's been great.

The kids spent all day Friday (ALL.DAY.) cozied up in the massive fuzzy pillows they made with their babysitter earlier this summer, and their feet propped up on the arms of the couch either watching TV or reading. (Kudos to me for letting them be that lazy!!! After all, that's the point, isn't it?) That evening was spent in the driveway of dear neighbor M sitting around their firepit after indulging in chicken wings and beverages of choice. Saturday was defined by slow evolution. E had a Girl Scout camp clean-up at the camp down the road from us, along with sweet neighbor-girl "Treehugger." I was driving them home, and they convinced me to let it evolve into a trip to the swimming pool, afterwhich evolved into a trip to Wendy's for frosties and chicken, afterwhich evolved into lounging on the playroom together playing with toys, afterwhich evolved into a sleepover.

Aside - I find it so interesting to watch E these days. She is equally happy hanging out with 13 year old neighbor girl listening to music and talking about boys, and hanging out with 7 year old Treehugger, playing with Littlest Petshop toys and living in a world of Let's Pretend. What a great place to be!

This afternoon, we're having a family from down the road over for s.l.o.w.l.y smoked ribs (yum) and peach cobbler. This is a family I've been wanting to get to know better for a while, and funnily enough Linda (the mom) and I simultaneously told each other we'd like to get our families together sometime soon. We have absolutely no plans for Monday (Labor Day) at this point. I'll let the day tell me what it should be.

School starts Tuesday, and we'll be back in our fall routine. I'm looking forward to it - I've written before about how much I love the start of autumn. But for now, it's summertime and we're going to take it out with one big slow hurrah.

some more photos from our trip

The whale-watching trip we took into the Gulf of Maine was fantastic. We sited several humpbacks, a couple of finbacks, a shark and several porpoises.

As we were heading back, the marine biologist on our boat mentioned that we might enjoy stopping by the Whale Museum in Bar Harbor. I assumed it was a plug for the gift shop there in some sort of consumerist-based agreement with the whale watching company. My E, however, was adamant that she wanted to go. We found the museum on our walk back to the car - it was a smallish looking place in a strip of shops. Despite my preconceived bias, I was pleasantly surprised. It was, in fact, one of the best small museums I've seen. In particular, I was very impressed with their complete and quite accurate section on climate change. The museum was created by students and faculty at the College of the Atlantic. Excellent. If you're ever in the Bar Harbor area, it is definitely worth a stop.

More wildlife:

At Halibut Point State Park, Cape Anne, MA: A baby seal came up on the seaweed to hang out with us while we explored the tidal pools (seastar).

Scrambling to more tidal pools in the fog and rain at Acadia...

And of course lobster in Kittery, Maine...

we're home

at the beach near J's home...

Acadia National Park on a wonderfully foggy morning.

I'll post more about the trip later. Suffice it to say that J and Asli and their families were the most wonderful hosts ever. Maine/Acadia was as wonderful as I remember. Even with all that vacation wonderfulness, I have to say that it's also very very good to be home.

From Alberta to Virginia

I'm home from Alberta. It was an interesting trip - I'm glad I went.

On the work side of things: it was successful. The goal was to sample boreal fire plumes and we got them. (Holy moly! There are a lot of stories about this mission out there on the internet! I knew Jim and Daniel seemed to be called away for a lot of interviews, but jeez. Funny side-story on that note. Daniel is a Hvd professor and he had a couple of his grad students there. One of them came into work all freaked out one day because her radio alarm went off right during the middle of an interview with Daniel, her advisor. Can you imagine being woken from sleep with the voice of your advisor? She thought she was in the middle of a nightmare. Daniel had a good laugh out of it.)
There were some frantic days out there - some low-on-fuel-driven last-minute flight planning sessions, extra (unplanned) days in Thule, Greenland for the instrument guys, a broken DC-8 windshield, and some close calls weather-wise. But overall, we got what we needed to.

Other side of things: I learned that nice things happen when instrumentalists and theoreticians are essentially held prisoner together at an isolated military base in the middle of nowhere. They begin to talk. And play pool. And snooker. And shuffleboard. And foozball and crud and darts. (and drink- errr- network, too).

Here's a photo of our loverly pool hall, which closed at 8 pm UNLESS there were 10 people there, in which case she kept it open until around midnight. The bartender hated us. She obviously did not like her job and was anxious to leave. We had several tight moments of pulling unsuspecting scientists who were simply strolling along the sidewalk into the pool hall at 7:59 in order to meet the quorum. Invariably, we'd have huge numbers of folks there at 9:30 or 10. 8:00 was just slightly too early to get the 10 quota. We gave her big tips, but she was still grumpy. Oh well.


I like this photo mainly because you can't see any faces so I don't have to worry about folks getting mad at me for putting them on the internet. We really had a nice time hanging out. More than one scientist commented to me that it was like being back in grad school, but better (no one ever articulated why, but I'm thinking that we're just all older and that's why it's better). I had some nice bike rides down to Cold Lake, through fragrant clover and prairiedog towns. Don't romanticize it, though. It really isn't very pretty out there - though the lake was nice.



Here I am playing shuffleboard. Who knew I'd actually be pretty OK at it? And at darts, too? I guess I shouldn't have given up on "sports" when I realized I sucked at softball and basketball.












Here's a rainbow I saw on the bus ride back to Edmonton yesterday. Texas family/friends - see what I mean? It's Texas up there!!!!
(Actually, I had a Canadian friend tell me that that part of Alberta is called "Texas north" so I wasn't making it up. They even have oil wells out there.


Anyway - all done. I'm back home with my hubby and kids (heart, heart, heart). We went and picked blueberries today, grilled chicken and eggplant and onions for dinner, and are watching the Red Sox play tonight. Life is good. Abundance.

again with the 100s

For part of this incredibly hot hot hot scorcher of a day, I was smart. During this part, I took the kids to see "Wall-E." Other than my silently bursting into tears at the movie's depiction of the fate of the earth and at the way this gift of the earth was presented as an awesome and precious thing to be cultivated...other than that, it was a nice and good (and cool) time. (If you are wondering, I hid my tears by making the kids stay and watch the credits. They didn't care. It gave them more time to finish off their SECOND tub of popcorn. That was today's lunch. My summer mom-persona is a tad more relaxed about these sorts of things than my normal mom-persona is.)

The other part of the day, however, I wasn't so smart. Daughter E wanted us to take Roxy out to "fossil beach" (a stretch of beach along the river out at the state park). I told her in my most patient mother voice: "Well, dear, it's probably too hot for that." But like a wuss, I allowed her to talk me into it, basically because she's been all about "mommy connection" lately, and I'm trying to soak it up as much as possible. (Q stayed home in our new papasan chair watching TV in the air conditioning, clever boy).

Anyway, here are some photos from today. While they may look happy and cheery, in reality, E and I were snarking at each other most of the time, and Roxy was about to collapse from the heat. We carted in plenty of water (and a dog dish) but honestly, 100 degrees is way too hot for hiking. I knew that already, but proved it once again. (I had fun trying out the new camera).

Requisite wildlife close-up: (this was one I took up by the Visitor's Center where I had to make an emergency run to fetch paper towels because E let Roxy poop at the main path, despite my warning her to PLEASE watch out for that. I was still pissed so was wasting time, making E wait a little longer. I am a very mature mother.

Barnacles.

I liked the birds in this photo, but wasn't able to snap on my zoom lens quickly enough to get them. I love this whole beach, with the grasses and fallen trees.

I love, love, love this little cove. It is straight out of my kid-daydreams. This is the place I would make my camp when I was thrust cruelly and suddenly into the world to survive on my own. There would be a bubbly spring back out in the woods withe cool and fresh water to drink. Crabs and sand fleas did not exist. It was never 100 degrees there, either.

Easily the most amazing, beautiful and awesome thing on the beach today.

This is what the bluffs look like all along the way. It frightens me.

My girl and her dog.

esoteric

Well now. This is something I actually know something about.

If you're not so inclined, that link leads to a post on RealClimate.org which comments on a recent scientific paper in the journal Nature that looks at boundary layer ozone loss due to halogens and how chemistry-transport models could be overpredicting ozone (a greenhouse gas) in these sorts of regions if they don't include these reactions in their simulations. This sort of issue is something that we looked extensively at during our recent foray into the Arctic. Satellite measurements have suggested that in the Arctic, regions impacted by halogen-driven ozone loss could be significant. It wasn't quite so clear based on the in-situ data, but whatever, we'll see. If you're really interested in this sort of subject, keep an eye on papers from ARCTAS. I tend to think that in the Arctic, this is a localized (regional) phenomenon. This current paper is looking at different regions of the globe - and it's interesting that they find an impact there. In any case - the point here is that this is an interesting subject for me in my daily research but I never would have guessed that it would have made "news." It is ultimately of unknown/insignificant consequence speaking in the broad climatological, increasing temperature context, I suspect. Yet, if you click on the link and read, you'll see what the media is reporting and the spin being put on so-called "deficiencies" of climate models as a result of this, which is most certainly not what the authors intended to be pulled from their paper, I suspect.
Eh.

Atmospheric and Climate scientists are ill-prepared for the magnifying-glass nit-picking of our normal day-to-day business that global warming has thrust upon us.

detox

I felt the need to detox today after too much greasy fried chicken and macaroni and cheese and too much wine yesterday. So here's my/our lunch after trekking up to the Farmer's Market this morning.


Yes, dear neighbor M, that is a plastic bag. I took all my cloth ones with me. To buy the beans, they had to weigh them, and all that they had available to hold them in for that purpose were plastic bags. Next time, I'll bring some smallish paper bags with me. That's the ONLY plastic bag I used, despite the gentleman there insisting I needed other ones for the potatoes, the radishes and the cucumbers. (!!)