Balance

I am every bit as much in need of the dark as you are of the light, and I think we both seek an end to quiescence.

Tryptophan

I am in eager anticipation of tryptophan-induced euphoria and restful slumber. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate; enjoy the day with loved ones for those who do not.

Ten Degrees

There's a bit of a conundrum here: Alton Brown's recipe available online says the internal temperature of the turkey should reach 161 degrees Fahrenheit — but on Good Eats he's said the internal temperature should reach 151 degrees Fahrenheit.

Touch

I'm thinking of getting my son an iPod Touch for Christmas. I know, I know — it's a ridiculous gift for a six-year-old, isn't it? But there are a few movies, television shows and songs he enjoys watching and listening to (particularly during a long car ride), and a few applications he enjoys playing with on the iPhone from time to time, and I think he's old enough to handle an iPod with care when he uses it.

I think the decision will depend on what sort of sale prices I can find on Friday. Anything a good bit below $200, and I'll do it.

Coyote

Several people have reported sightings of coyotes in the neighborhood. I find this all very exciting (if true), but unsettling, as I fear this may provoke some sort of overreaction. Coyote attacks on humans are uncommon (and it's become far too cold for pets to be left outdoors), but people here don't often seem to have much patience for the wildlife whose habitats we share and whose habits we encourage.

Hearing a coyote is, I'm told, much more common than seeing one. I've yet to do either.

The Indomitable Fern!

I was delighted and amazed to discover, during a walk at the edge of the woods in late-November's 30 degree weather — ferns!

Time Stand Still

Freeze this moment
A little bit longer...

Make each sensation
A little bit stronger...

Chalkboard

Did you know you're supposed to "prime" a chalkboard before using it? (No, neither did I.) Scribbling all over it and then erasing is supposed to leave behind a thin coat of dust that encourages the chalk to adhere. I quickly gave up on that — the eraser wasn't really working (there's a slight texture to the ceiling), and I had to use a damp cloth to erase my scribbling, but then you're supposed to prepare the chalkboard all over again after cleaning it with a damp cloth. And I was getting chalk dust all over everything. And the chalk seemed to draw just fine.

In case you didn't recognize it, that's a picture of Jupiter (with the Great Red Spot in the bottom right corner).

Ripples

From yesterday.

Winter

The first snow is falling! (Thankfully, I doubt there will be any accumulation. As much as I love a thick, heavy blanket of snow, I'm just not ready for it.)

Seeing Stars

Attaching little magnets to the back of glow-in-the-dark plastic stars is surprisingly time-consuming.

Where?

I think life is often most rewarding when you quietly ignore the signs, and slip away to find (or make) your own path to travel — don't you?

This day is already off to a wonderful start.

Adventure

I never had an Atari 2600 while growing up, though I had friends who did. (Years later, I eventually bought one as an adult, almost as an impulse.) On those occasions I was able to play, I often found myself strangely attracted to Adventure. Sure, the graphics were unsophisticated (even then) and the dragons seemed to resemble some sort of duck ― but somehow, the simplicity imposed by the limitations of the system became the game's strength. And it could be quite a challenge:

The player's goal is simply to find the enchanted chalice and return it to the gold castle. The player character, represented by a square, explores a multi-screen landscape containing castles, mazes, and various rooms. Hidden throughout the world are a sword, keys to unlock each of the three castles (gold, black, and white), a magic bridge which allows the player to travel through a wall, and a magnet which will pull any of these objects toward it.

Adventure has just been brought to the iPhone, just as I remember it ― and it's free! (And I'm no better at it than I was the last time I played, which must have been 20 years ago.)

Meandering

I've had occasion to be concerned, over the past several years, that my mind seems to be slipping away from me — my memory, in particular. (Do you know that unsettled feeling when you walk into a room, but can't seem to remember why?) Lately I've come to wonder if it might not be a lack of mental activity, but a surfeit of it. That so many thoughts are wandering through my mind at any given moment that I am often easily, temporarily distracted, even in that brief moment it takes for me to wander from one room to the next.

Compulsive

It's after 3:00 AM, and I'm eating a Fluffernutter, winding down from the long day of work. It's more tedious legal research — I find the web sites of select law firms, and attempt to gather information about the employees. Most important is the e-mail address. For some firms this is easy, and all of the information I need is part of a large listing that I can just copy and reformat. For others, it's not so easy, and I'll have to look at each individual entry (which often means looking at several hundred individual entries.) Then there are some I can skip entirely, when the email addresses are cleverly hidden ― most likely to prevent someone from doing exactly what I'm trying to do.

It's not particularly interesting, not by any means. It can even be a bit taxing. But it pays reasonably well.

It had already been a long day when I was ready to close for the evening, a few hours ago — but, I thought to myself, I'll just check this one last firm, to see what it looks like, and if I can finish it up quickly, I will. And when I did, I checked the next one on the list ― and then the next. And then the next, which wasn't quite so easy, but I did it, anyway.

And suddenly, it's after 3:00 AM, and I'm eating a Fluffernutter. (I'm not sure how this work became such a compulsion.)

Ceiling

If I were much more ambitious, I think I'd paint the ceiling in my office black.

Primer

I'm waiting for the initial coat of primer to dry, so I can apply another. (I don't like waiting.)

Stars

I have promised to paint in my son's room this weekend. He wants the area above his bed ― I'm not sure what it's called, really, but it's set at an angle that follows the pitch of the roof (all of the rooms on the second floor are like this, even the hallway) ― painted black. He wants it to be chalkboard paint (even though most of the ceiling will still be out of reach), and I had the idea to try the "magnetic" primer underneath it. We can attach magnets to the back of glow-in-the-dark plastic stars and decorate the ceiling, rearranging them when they become too familiar, and we want to travel to another part of the galaxy.

Whatnot

Did you know you can build your own Muppet? This is very, very tempting. (I've wanted to do this for years!) But there really aren't enough options for customization, particularly if you wear glasses — you can't even order one without hair! — and the price seems exorbitant.

Life

"I think making plants grow is a good thing for a kitty to do," my six-year-old told me. He knows what happens to everything that was alive, after death. "Yes," I said. "Plants make the oxygen we all need to live."

"Did you know Tigger can still hear me? I told her thank you for helping the plants grow."

Phoenix

Not the best day to have to tell my son that the Mars Phoenix Lander has succumbed to the Martian winter.

Tigger

I've had to have my cat Tigger put down this morning. She had been taking medication for a thyroid imbalance for almost two years, and while her condition had been stabilized, the illness left her weak, vulnerable to other problems. She had lost weight over the past several years, and was feeling the effects of age, but she had just been back to the Vet about a week ago, and seemed to be doing well, despite the circumstances. So it was a sad surprise when she became more seriously ill over the weekend.

We're not entirely sure how old she was, but we have reason to believe she was at least sixteen or seventeen; she had been with us for (I think) thirteen or fourteen years. We adopted her — or rather, she adopted us — when we lived in an apartment in Jersey City. She would escape from her home down the street, repeatedly, inevitably to hide underneath our front porch. Eventually, the people she was fleeing from seemed to lose interest, and we quietly, surreptitiously took her in. She was gentle and good-natured, and got along well with the other cats.

But she never completely lost interest in being outdoors. She was the only cat to jump through the open window when our apartment was burglarized, though she stayed close by when she couldn't get back inside. Many years (and a change of address) later, she would seize any opportunity to dash through the open front door, hoping to elude capture by hiding under the front steps, just out of reach.

When my son was born, Tigger was the first of the cats to express real fondness for him. She was even willing to tolerate the clumsy ways of showing affection that came with his age.

I'm still not sure how I'm going to explain this to him. He knows that Tigger has been ill — I want to find a way for him to understand that there are times, when an animal is seriously ill and with no hope of recovery, in pain and discomfort, that hastening death is the kind and right thing to do. That it's a difficult and painful decision, but important. Perhaps a six-year-old doesn't need to be told the truth in a situation like this, but I think my son will want to know.

Well Said

I just looked up a word using my MacBook's built-in Dictionary, to check the spelling — it was the word "noticeably" — and I was offered a list of suggested alternatives that ought to be used in different situations...

A scratch on someone's face might be noticeable, while a scar that runs from cheekbone to chin would be conspicuous...Use prominent when you want to describe something that literally or figuratively stands out from its background...Remarkable applies to anything that is noticeable because it is extraordinary or exceptional...Striking is an even stronger word, used to describe something so out of the ordinary that it makes a deep and powerful impression on the observer's mind or vision.

How useful!

Martian Meterorite

I'm thinking of giving my son a tiny Martian Meteorite for Christmas. It's a very, very small piece — only about 3mm, I'm told — but the box can be opened, and it can be touched and handled. I'm trying to decide if the excitement of having an actual piece of another planet might outweigh the disappointment, for a six-year-old, that it's such a tiny sample. (The image above is actual size, more or less.)

He's shared my excitement as we've followed the various explorations of Mars that have been undertaken since he was a toddler. (We watched the Phoenix landing together this past May.) I'll do just about anything to encourage this interest — even if it means spending $39.95 for a tiny piece of rock!

There are pieces from the Moon available, as well, but they're not that much larger and not all that less expensive. There are also slightly larger sections of meteorites of indeterminate origin, but I think he'd have more of a connection to something that came from a specific location.

Ironic

I must confess to being somewhat exasperated by talk of what this election supposedly represents, this naive idea that fear of the unknown and the unlike have somehow been driven back into the darkness, and tolerance and acceptance have won the day. Would that it were true.

Measures passed this year in several states that would prevent same sex marriages from being legally recognized; one in Arkansas would keep same sex couples from adopting children or serving as foster parents (though to be fair, it would also apply to unmarried couples of the opposite sex, as well). Exit poll data suggests that many of these measures were heavily supported by black voters, which seems sadly ironic, somehow.

Who Isn't Voting?

Estimates this morning are that just under two-thirds of eligible voters (64%) participated in the election, which would be the largest voter turnout in exactly 100 years. (65.4% of eligible voters participated in 1908, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census.)

That led me to wonder — who isn't voting?

The most substantial indicators seem to be age and education. According to the statistics from 2004, young adults had the lowest voting and registration rates, though they had the largest increase in both since the 2000 presidential election, compared with all other age groups. (Exit poll data put estimates of voters under 30 in this election at more or less the same percentage as in the recent past.) And voters with a college degree were about twice as likely to vote as those who had not completed high school.

It should be interesting to see how that statistic might change this year, with the efforts that have been put toward recruiting new voters and motivating them to follow through — there was an estimate of as many as 3.5 million new voters this year, according to Associated Press. I wonder — who are they?

Information

I'm getting ready to settle in for the traditional long evening of watching the election returns. Not so much because I'm interested in following the results, but because I've long been intrigued by the way the news is covered, and the way information is presented. It's been fascinating to watch the way technology has changed the method of presentation through the years, though disheartening to see it interfere with the essential need to just get the point across.

Ideology

There is minor controversy here, this morning. The adults of the household are solidly with the Democratic ticket — but the six-year-old vote seems to be with the Republicans. ("I just like the name McCain," he says.) The polls close not too long after bedtime.

Frustration-Free Packaging

This is a great idea. Not so much because of the difficulties you might encounter in opening packaging — a good pair of scissors is enough, more often than not — but because so much of product packaging is designed to be attractive for display at retail, or to demonstrate a particular product feature, or deter theft, or to serve any number of other promotional purposes that are no longer as necessary when you're ordering a product sight unseen, and the decision-making process that such packaging is meant to influence has already been made.

What's important here is that this will reduce waste — for not the least of reasons that printed cardboard packaging generally isn't recyclable in the same way that a plain corrugated cardboard box is. I hope this catches on.

I, Robot

Halloween has now come and gone, for another year. My son and his costume were a source of fascination wherever he went ― I'm fairly certain he was the only robot ― and I believe he enjoyed the attention, though I wasn't entirely sure he would. (He's very much like me in that respect, eager for appreciation but uncomfortable with too much of it.) I hope I gave him everything he had wished for.

The raccoons got into the last bit of candy left outside when it became too late to answer the door. They seem partial to Dum Dums.