Marking the Changing Seasons, Hawaii Style
I had a video call with someone this week who, wearing a cozy sweater, told me she’d gotten out her desk foot warmer (a gift created by her engineer husband to warm her feet, not the desk’s.) I think the shirt I was wearing had sleeves. Thanks to climate change, seasonal transitions are getting to be slippery buggers, with seasons slowly creeping into USSC Justice Potter Stewart’s hard-core pornography territory: “I know it when I see it.” (Jacobellis vs. Ohio) But seasons have always been tricky here in East Hawaii, at least for someone used to a temperate climate framework. Read more…
Volcano Field Trip, Without Leaving Your House
I don’t know about you, but I feel like I could sleep until 2021. Our rainy weather isn’t helping. Believe me, I’m grateful (as is our catchment tank) that after what has felt like a dry year, we’re having a winter-ish wet spell. Note, it feels like a dry year, but I have a pile of about three years of rain gauge data I haven’t bothered to enter yet, so at this point a feeling is all it is! The upside of the overcast is I’m not ready to pass out from the heat in our house, or from the Read more…
During the Dark Days, a Bittersweet Smile Will Do
It’s rough out there, folks. At least, I think it is. With the exception of snatched “retail window” moments (post office, library window, grocery checkout), I rarely interact with any non-spouse humans. But I see it in my Inbox and on social media and podcasts—many of us are just hanging on to the non-committed side of the mental health line by the skin of our skinless teeth. [Random digression: I did not know skin of my teeth is a phrase of Biblical origin. Random Digression P.S.: how many of you thought I was going to rant about about pathetic mental Read more…
Emergency Preparedness, Gastropod Style
As I confessed to folks in my Newsletter—which was sent a day late—this has been one of those sluggish weeks for me. (Gastropod folks, please forgive the conflation of snail pics and slug metaphors.) I am far too lethargic to saddle my words with extraneous letters (colour? really?), but the Brits have many other quirks of verbal expression worth adopting. The word treacle comes to mind. This has been a week of wading through treacle to get anything done. (Doesn’t that sound so much nastier than warm and fuzzy molasses? Except—for the record—molasses will mold, i.e. get gray and fuzzy, Read more…
Evidence that The Outside World Still Exists
Anyone else out there struggling with days of the week? I’ll be honest—since I work from home at a vocation that doesn’t much respect the idea of a “weekend,” it’s a crapshoot for me most mornings until I open the calendar on my computer. That red circle highlighting the date seems to mock me (this is TODAY, puny human incapable of accurately measuring the passage of time). It turns out, Today is Friday. (She says, racing to write a blog post!) Shortly after giving my calendar the finger this morning (let’s see you do that, fancy zeroes and ones), I Read more…
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