Author: wideeyedfunk

The moon over my Hammie.

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No, actually Hamish the Corgi was too wiggly. He couldn’t get himself settled enough to peer through the 12mm lens at the moon. He kept trying to put his meaty paw on the telescope tube for balance and he was sort of kicking around in my arms. I know he was disappointed, but he can try again next time. I stared at the craters, I like the ones with the impact cone in the middle. I don’t know why. The WideEyedSpouse sort of pushed at me. “Hey, let me have a turn,” he sniveled. I took one more look and stepped back from the Celestron, immediately looking up at the now-puny moon hanging above my neighbor’s house. It was lame in comparison to looking at it with the telescope. After what felt like A THOUSAND YEARS, I politely asked the Spouse to move. “Come on man,” I whined, “you are totally hogging the telescope.” He engaged the selective deafness protocol. “Come ON,” I stepped into his personal space. He put his shoulder toward me. I …

Dark energy and love.

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Yesterday evening I was reading about the form of the visible universe in my new backyard astronomy book. The WideEyedSpouse was doing something involving dinner while I sat at the awesome vintage kitchen table. Wiggins the Ancient Cat kept trying to put his butt on the page. Tibbit the Useless rested her chin on my knee. She was bound for disappointment, as I was reading not eating. Hamish the Corgi sat looking at me, learning about the universe through our mental link. Stars. Planets. Constellations. Yeah, yeah. Nothing new there. (Except that I discovered that I should be able to see the Milky Way directly above my house right now and all I can see is the glare of my neighbors’ anti-thief lights. Annoying, but what can do you? Cities are creepy.) Then, I looked at a photograph from the Hubble that captured hundreds of whirling galaxies. They face every which way. They are different colors. Big ones, little ones. Galaxies all over the place in every direction. There are billions of them. I felt …

Trash picking for winter lettuce.

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It’s more complicated than that title makes it seem. With some in-between formative steps. The WideEyedSpouse and I walk the Useless Little Black Dog and the Corgi for several blocks through the neighborhood every evening. This is terrible in the winter, mostly. It is nice in the summer, generally. It is ALWAYS great on trash day. Because we live in a neighborhood of historic homes filled with epic volumes of historic junk, someone is always prying something out of the basement or off of the house. I scored a china cabinet that reeked of basement mildew two years ago. It is now my garden tool shack in the garage. Elegant, efficient, free. From Spode to Spades. (I know, right?) The trick is to get there quick. Super quick because as I’ve noted before, Buffalo has an active trash picking culture. My amateur attempts are pathetic compared to the experts. We moved into this house and set up the garden four summers ago. I’ve been waiting for someone in the neighborhood to replace their generously sized …

A Stranger At Home

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The WideEyedSpouse and I grew up with tens of thousands of strangers joining our city every summer. For years I served them, working jobs at the drugstore, a campground, doling out aloe vera and firewood to heal sizzled skin and provide happy vacation memories. It never occurred to me to wonder what they thought about, what they talked about, what they were like. They were just people filling cars, filling the roads I needed to travel, filling lines at Wawa where I bought my coffee and American cheese with mustard and mayo on white bread sandwiches. Now Spouse and I have joined them. We left town by 1990, we didn’t know it was forever. College, grad school, jobs here and there. We’ve walked beaches far away – other shores on continents on other oceans. In places where no one has heard or will hear of our home town and few people speak our language. Yet, when we think of going to the beach, The Beach is the north end of our home island. Everywhere else …

Ten reasons not to buy a used car.

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The plan was simple. Hop in the car. Scoot over the Canadian border to hit the closest Costco and back home for lunch. What? Why Costco specifically? Because friends, they sell Kirkland Signature peanut butter filled pretzel nuggets. And our laboriously imported supply from an Alaskan Costco ran out. Needs must. No other peanut butter stuffed pretzel nugget will do. As the mighty Pathfinder heaved itself up and over the arc of the Peace Bridge, the WideEyedSpouse and I witnessed our doom. Cars. Cars as far as the eye could see gleaming in the summer sun, filled with hopeless dead-eyed passengers, lined up in two endless highway lanes out of Canada. On our side the border lines were short, but leaving…leaving was going to be bad. Once you are on the Bridge there is no turning back, no way home that doesn’t include two border crossings. I looked at the Spouse. “Well,” I said, “I guess we can take our time putzing in Costco.” What we didn’t know? Saturday marked the start of a major Canadian holiday weekend. I …

I dreamed of flesh eating beetles.

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I dreamed of flesh eating beetles and mortifying tissue and woke with the sense memory of the smell of decay. I blame the Turdus migratorius from yesterday. It wasn’t his fault, poor little robin, that one of the students found him dead on the road and collected him for the lab. It certainly wasn’t his fault that a skilled graduate student showed me how to skin and eviscerate a little songbird using his carcass. We recorded data for science and the permits, and plucked and skinned and removed blobs from inside him using forceps. We wrapped him in cheesecloth (did the cheesecloth company ever imagine such a use?) and put him in the lab fridge to dry out for a couple of days. It made me think of dry aging a nice roast. Might have to hit the butcher later. The dermestid tank, the flesh eating beetle habitat, was right next to us while we worked on the bird. Did they watch us prepare their supper? The larvae will creep through the cheesecloth and snack …

Nuns and the Cosmos.

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I saw two nuns standing outside a condominium construction project that used to be a giant Catholic church. Back in about 1920 Buffalo was rich. Gangsta rich. More millionaires than any other city in the United States and that was back when a million was a million because a cup of coffee was about nickel and that included your lunch. The 1920s gangsta rich families built and maintained what seems like a thousand fabulously vast glories to God and themselves. The blasted, sinking shells of these vainglories litter the urban landscape. This one, the one with the nuns today, at least was spared generations of bats, birds, and urine-soaked crack mattresses. It is going straight from sins to kitchen sinks in a year. So, the nuns. One nun was holding a latte cup and the other had a green baseball hat on over her wimple. Both of them were wearing kicks. Sneakers. And their body postures weren’t all stiff and nunny. One was leaned back gesticulating (with her latte cup) and the other nun sort …

Responsibility avoidance, Or, There are two kinds of spurs my friend.

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The grass in the back yard is long. Mowing has become critical. The new back stoop remains unfinished. The parts are in the garage, some assembly required. The new house colors, still undecided. Stripping the old paint, urgent. But it’s raining. 47 hundredths of an inch today so far in a long slow endless shower. Well now, that’s just too bad. All of the day’s chores were outside chores. Howsoever will I pass the time? I’ll tell you how, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and a lace knitting project. 178 minutes of men of poor moral character. Italian made cotton Tahki yarn in a peaceable spring leaf green, bamboo needles, and a simple leaf lace scarf pattern. A match made in work avoidance heaven. I knit three, and watched Blondie shoot Tuco down from the gallows for the second time… “I’ll keep the money and you can have the rope”. Slipped one purlwise, knit two and passed slip stitch over while Tuco caught Blondie in his hotel room… “There are two kinds of …

Sunday morning in the rain.

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We rented a 2005 Dodge Ram 4×4, grey with a red capper top, from a guy who doesn’t like over taxation and who is concerned that the WideEyedSpouse’s new hologram infused New York state driver’s license will be remarkably difficult to counterfeit. The rental rates were hundreds cheaper than one of the chain operations. The truck is sticky with years of mysterious stains. The side panels are dense with underbrush scrapes. “I buy ‘em prescratched and pass the savings on to you,” the guy told us. For once I feel no fear that I’m going to be fiscally punished for a minor rental car infraction. I didn’t even use a cup holder for my iced latte yesterday. Madness I know. We stayed the first night in an airport Marriott. The toilet overflowed for no reason. The light switches had grime encrustations. The floor corners desperately cried out for a solid vacuuming with a crevice tool. Other guests were also given our room so that the door slapped against the security lock five minutes after I …

Return from Rat Islands

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“Get in the shower Robinson Crusoe, you aren’t in the field anymore,” the WideEyedSpouse sounded a little snarky. “I’m still cleanish,” I whined. So what if I didn’t feel it necessary to shower for the third day in a row. “You know,” I told the Spouse, “you can be too clean.” The Spouse looked me over, “yeah, well, you aren’t.” I took a shower. I’m now two weeks back from living in a remote field camp and running a multidisciplinary research program. I am remembering to flush the toilet regularly and I don’t wake up wondering where I am anymore.  I have been warm, dry, and well-rested for days. I miss the field. The aching beauty of the landscape. Uncomplicated comforts. The pure joy of a job to do, unencumbered by conflicting imperatives. But my gardens here in Buffalo are in bloom . Hamish the Corgi and Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog are here. And the WideEyedSpouse once again has my back against the world’s troubles. Home is good too.