All posts tagged: Buffalo

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 …

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 …

The eerily prescient fortune cookie.

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I love fortune cookies. The way they snap and crumble into shards of fresh tasting, sugary crispness. That crunch. Learning to say a word in Chinese. shí liú. grape. I hold fortune cookies in my hand and think about the fortune before I crack them open. Will I meet new people? Should I trust the man with green eyes? Will monetary advantage be mine? Does adventure keep the heart young? Should I learn to dance? What are my lucky numbers? 15. 22. 37. 8. I never pick the fortune cookie, I let it pick me. Yesterday a long delayed, blizzard-stuck package arrived at my snowy door. The boys (dogs) and I dumped it in the front parlor, which is our official package opening location. Rejected items never make it out of that room. Dirty antiques found in other people’s estates begin new lives in the WideEyedHousehold there. It is the ante-chamber to my life. It’s the room where I let guests linger until I decide if they are permitted to participate in my greater homestead. Sometimes …

Lemme me see the other side.

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I’ll tell you what. I have lived in Minnesota. I know what cold feels like. I spent a couple of winters in Anchorage. I know what big snow looks like. I grew up at the South Jersey shore.  I am familiar with bone cutting, sand carrying, January winds that administer the midseason microdermabrasion treatments. Stings a bit when the feeling comes back into your cheeks. Now I’m in Buffalo. And I am becoming expert in the wintry mix. Sloppy.  Gusty. Raw. The Christmas pine garlands are flopping all over the place. And dog walks are wretched. “Yeah.” Sorry, that was Miss Tibbit interrupting us. This afternoon she pranced onto the back porch, got blasted in the face with a sleety snow, and turned around to come back inside. Wasn’t worth it. No thank you ma’am. Buffalo winter means that Hamish the Corgi and Sweet Tibbit come home from walkies with salty wet feet. Hamish’s undercarriage is a cindery mucky mess. Every time. (The cat just sneezed in my wine by the way. Just saying. Nice …

Budget Sequestration Made Me Eat Cheap Peanut Butter.

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The WideEyedHousehold must make decisions about financial sequestering by prioritizing categories of expenditure. Just as our Senate is divided in debates about preferential priorities, so we are. Just as our nation must make difficult choices, so we must. “Compromise” in the WideEyedHousehold results in unpalatable solutions, as it does in our nation. As you may know, I dreamed of an exotic winter break far from snowy Buffalo. Last week during spring break, we ate lunch at the Ikea just outside of Toronto for our international vacation. The basic parameters of an exotic, international locale with regional cuisine were met. They were met stupendously if the rumors about horsemeat in the Ikea meatballs are true. How intrepid of us to eat the little meat balls all unknowing, even with an unconcerned panache. As you may know, the WideEyedSpouse likes beer. I like to eat. He feels that beer sort of is food. I feel that food is food. The Spouse prefers good beer. I prefer organic, limited ingredient, small batch peanut butter. Our preferential priorities battled …

No Dogs Allowed? Hamish the Corgi Finds a Way.

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“Where are we going?” Hamish the Corgi asked as he watched me dig the hiking pack out of the coat closet. It wasn’t easy. Five months of hats, scarves, gloves, reusable bags, dog towels, and YakTrax had crammed themselves on top of it. I looked over my shoulder and up the steps to look at Hamish. He stood in the hall, big ears perked wide and high. He was smiling. “Tifft Nature Preserve over by the lakeshore,” I told him. “Awesome,” he said, “that’s not mine yet.” He disappeared into the kitchen and I heard rummaging in the dog cupboard. I yanked the day pack strap and slammed the closet door before all the other stuff escaped. I went up to the kitchen to fill my water bladder. Hamish was waiting by the sink with the dog hiking water bowl and dog water bottle. He looked from me to the treat bin on the counter, me to treat bin, me to treat bin. “Don’t forget to pack the go-go crunchies,” he reminded me, nudging my …

The tiresome collision of skeletons and snow.

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Outside the lab window, above the human skeletons dangling from their cranial hooks, I could see the wind howling snow across the small Fimbulwintered quad. It looked horrible. I put my chin in my hand and gazed into the whirling wretched iciness and thought about a beach. A long, wide beach with nice medium sized waves and only a few other people around. The sun glared off the water and I could almost feel the heat. I sighed and imagined settling my shoulders deeper into the hot sand. It was great. I smiled. I heard a faint, wah, wah, wah sound off to my right so I turned my head, idly wondering what it was. Oh. It was one of the grad students in the lab. He was describing his research project to me. To get my input. Which I really wanted to give because I like that part of my job. I tuned back in, sighing to myself. I’m tired of winter. Temperature at posting: 16 degrees F, light snow, wind ~15mph.

Snow trash is the best.

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Gloriously foul and endlessly fascinating, snow trash happens when the deep snow melts and reveals the urban detritus of weeks. It is a special seasonal process to be enjoyed only a few times a year. Because I happen to be a professional studier of the material remnants of human activity, I can’t look away from a nice nasty city snow bank. I like them to be really full of good stuff and I stop for particularly rich ones to be sure I’m seeing everything. This isn’t the WideEyedSpouse’s favorite activity, but the dogs sure don’t mind. Dog dookies are ubiquitous in the melting snow banks. Big, small, dark, light. You can really see the variety of diets fed to the neighborhood canines. Here in Buffalo chicken bones also are typical in the melting snow mounds. Perplexing. Yes, Buffalo Chicken wings, but does everyone eat them all the time? They must fly from car windows like confetti. I see newspapers, catalogs, dryer sheets, and Kleenex that appear used but may just be wet from the melt. …

1,500 miles of family, Or, Caviar tastes like chicken pox.

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Stop 1: Scottsville, Esmont, Charlottesville Virginia WideEyedFunks: I was spooning caviar onto a smear of cream cheese at the pre-Christmas dinner snackie spread. Sister-in-law L. and Older Brother set us up with fine cheeses, Dracula’s Dilemma pickled garlic, some kind of awesome aged herbed salami.  And caviar. Our WideEyedParents were across the room and from around the Christmas tree we could hear dad shouting at mom: “Do you want some cold cuts?” “A cool one?” she said, “no, I don’t want a beer.” Heh. Might be time for hearing tests. Sister-in-law N. pushed through Sister-in-law L. and me to get to the snackies, “Quit snack blocking,” she told us. I inched my counter stool over an inch or so, but not really too far. I hadn’t tried all the cheeses yet. I lifted my caviar cracker to take a bite. “You eat that stuff?” Older Brother asked, clearly doubtful. I shrugged and ate the cracker. Older Brother watched me chew. “I don’t eat it,” he said. “Good,” Sister-in-law L. said, “more for the rest of …