Friends

In the midafternoon, as I came out of the grocery co-op with groceries for the week, I noticed something in the co-op's gardens:



I don't actually have any crocuses planted at the house, and maybe I should, just to help extend the spring fireworks show. I am seeing more signs of strawberry plants returning to life, and the very tips of the daffodils. Still, signs that winter WILL end eventually.

Another sign: we put what we call our "bubble dock" back in the water this morning.

That was not completely without adventure. I was originally planning on going to morning rowing practice with the team, but had the complication that I'd brought along a bike trailer so as to bike to the farmer's market later on. With people messing with the stuff in my bike basket when my bike's parked downtown, I was leery about leaving the trailer and storage bin outside the fitness center. Eventually I realized I should just change my plans: I just headed straight over to the boathouse, dropped off my trailer there, and used most of practice time to get a head start on pinning the bubble dock pieces together.

Ultimately I think this was a wise decision. Our coach had everyone do a "Pi Day" workout, and if I'd participated I could easily have overdone it and prolonged the issues I've been having with my hips and lower back (Old Punks Never Die Ow My Back). I did join them for coffee after practice, where everyone was really busy doing a lot of post-practice math:



Then, to the river!

Even with the more involved reassembly, the bubble dock went in much more easily and far faster than the main dock will.



Each of the pieces has labeled tabs at each corner that are supposed to stack in a particular sequence to create a fully interlocked surface. Most of the pieces were assembled correctly, but we did discover a row with a fairly major assembly issue, so we had to take it completely apart after having floated the dock out into the river. This was basically fine, except for some moments where the two sections started drifting apart. At one point I told a teammate, "Grab my foot!" to pull the sections back together, heh. One individual piece also tried to go on some sort of side quest, but was quickly recovered.



It looks so good now!



Even the seagull flock agreed.



With that finished, I biked to the Troy Farmer's Market and picked up the maple syrup bottle prizes for our 5k run/walk event in 2 weeks, along with some of the usual farmer's market staples. After dropping off the maple syrup at the boathouse, I headed home and then back out on the aforementioned grocery trip.

Now I am baking a couple of quiches (pi-adjacent, at least? Except they're square?), roasting some beets, and cooking up some black lentils. Foods for the week are mushroom-asparagus quiche and roasted beet, lentil, and arugula salad (with toasted hazelnuts and cheese, too).

Tomorrow will be really busy with an entomology conference in the town north of here, where two of my students will be presenting their research posters and I'll be running a table at a Bug Expo. So hopefully I can manage to squeeze in laundry, litterboxes, and the cooking of breakfasts for the week in there somewhere.

The cats are now at 4, I am still at zero, according to my arbitrary scorekeeping method.

I had the hypothesis that maybe George had managed to squeeze out through the catio's doorway, so I propped a paving stone against the door. But when I went to check on the cats, there he was, right outside, vigorously rubbing up against the neighbor's juniper tree (marking territory, is my guess).

That means he might have figured out a way to climb out.

He was not very happy when I let Martha stay outside for a bit longer by herself. She was content to sit on the foundation ledge near the window and watch things.

This week wound up feeling pretty hectic, I think because it's the start of registration advising season, and also because I needed to help one of my research students finalize their poster presentation for a regional conference happening on Sunday (on top of wrapping up lab report grading, which was accomplished eventually). I have two students presenting their research, and we are also participating in a Bug Expo event. Good and fun, but busy.

Cats: 3, Rebeccmeister: 0

I think maybe this time he squeezed out near the door? Hard to tell. At least he didn't go very far and he came when I called him?

Oh cats.

It is interesting to observe what's happening globally in response to the abrupt closure of a major global oil shipping channel. The impacts on fertilizer prices and ultimately food prices may wind up being pretty terrible. Of course, at the moment, most people are just thinking about prices paid at gas pumps, and are watching global markets fluctuate wildly depending on incoherent statements made by someone who might not have fully thought through the consequences of the decision to attack another country.

I appreciate the person who created a short video highlighting how much money gets incinerated every time military weapons are fired and/or military assets get destroyed, and contrasted that with the financial justifications used to gut public support programs in the U.S. over the past year and a half. Friends who help with domestic food aid efforts are reporting terrible increases in the numbers of people and families seeking help now.

But suddenly I know so much more about which countries are most heavily dependent on foreign oil imports. I don't know that anyone seeking to get people to decrease reliance on fossil fuels would have imagined this sort of scenario as a way to do that. People REALLY don't/can't do well with abrupt cutoffs.

I had a restless sleeping dream last night that was definitely derived from the awareness of the wanton violence and destruction the United States is inflicting on people in other countries. It was a dream where the violence and destruction had reached the US as people sought revenge. One of the hardest parts about the awareness of this horribleness is feeling powerless to do much about it*.

I thought about that when filling up my dinosaur car's tank yesterday, the first time I've filled it since November. I think about it when I get on my bike to go places; much of the large-scale destruction paid for with taxpayer money is many orders of magnitude beyond what I could ever hope to personally mitigate by biking instead of driving.

But on Friday on social media elsewhere, someone posted an article about the adoption of clean energy by countries in the global south, and that gave me hope.

I haven't revisited the numbers in a while, but my understanding is that more than half of the carbon emissions associated with cars are from their manufacturing and transport, prior to anyone actually driving them. This is a big part of why I bought a used dinosaur juice vehicle instead of a shiny new electric one, even though it leaves me directly dependent on the fossil-fuel industry.

Within the article, it was interesting to read about Nepal, which found itself so dependent on India for fossil fuels that when India cut off the supply, it led to dramatic adoption of electric vehicles in Nepal, far above and beyond what's currently seen in countries like the US. Apparently Uruguay also had the realization that if the country went electric, it would reduce ongoing dependency on foreign oil imports. With the decreasing costs of manufacturing solar panels and batteries, it just makes sense to switch over!

And here is another thing that got me looking at the world a little differently: a video by someone who made a plug for charging his ebike from car charging stations. That's in the UK, but it got me realizing that it is stupidly one-dimensional to think of car charging stations as just for charging cars.

That might sound a little silly, but I'd point out that I often encounter people out clustered at the small handful of unguarded public electrical outlets on the streets and sidewalks of this city. Also think about how many airports have modified their seating to provide "free" device charging stations. Right now, the most predictable electrical sources available to someone while out and about in public are those car charging stations.

One other thing I appreciated from the article was learning that the carbon emissions associated with manufacturing solar panels can typically be offset within the first year of panel use. And many panels have decades-long lifespans - from what I understand, often longer than many people originally anticipated. Compare *that* to the balance sheet for motor vehicle manufacture and lifespan.

My brother has pointed out that large-scale solar operations are often preferable over rooftop (his house in California is adorned with a botched install), but the point still stands.

Anyway, in the midst of it all I got to thinking back to "No Impact Man," a guy in NYC who spent a year trying to live a net-zero-impact lifestyle back in 2009 or so (approximately the same time period as friends of mine spent an Arizona summer with their home a/c turned off). I don't remember all the specifics of No-Impact Man's electrical situation for the year, but I think he had some sort of balcony solar setup going, and it was definitely a challenge for him to juggle household electrical demands. For example, he shifted over to non-electric food storage methods, and indoor lighting also involved a lot of strategy. I don't remember what he did about cooking.

In contrast, 17 years later, my workplace has just now finalized contracts to get all of its electricity from solar sources (offsite for now, but with options to change if on-campus solar installations become desirable). Even with this country's current regime furiously back-pedaling on any and every unfinished alternative-energy project, we just won't be going back. I mean, why would we?

And still - the needless human suffering must stop.



*We are not powerless but the actions we need to take are not fast or easy.

I have been a little nervous about my seed-starting prospects because I haven't been watering the trays at work as systematically as I'd like. But when I went to check on the plant pots today, I was delighted to discover the first signs of germination!



Not only that, but it's the Black Prince tomato seeds that have germinated successfully! These are seeds that I had saved from a previous set of plants and I'm always doubtful of my seed-saving techniques for tomatoes. If the other tomato seeds don't germinate, I have a lot of backup seeds where I can try again. For these seeds, this is my one chance. So, hooray!

Bureaucratic hell got so frustrating today that I decided I should just go and get out of the house to deal with the lingering project of getting updated passport photos. I believe both major drugstore chains advertise passport photos as a service, but from my recent visits to the CVS I was pretty skeptical they'd have things up and running. So I went to the equidistant Walgreens instead.

The Walgreens has a rack for bike parking, right there out in front of the store. (the CVS does have bike parking, too, but it's around the corner). I actually walked this time, but good to know for the future.

The Walgreens has WAY more inventory than that CVS did, and doesn't have weird markups on things like double-sided sticky tape (price checking it because we use it to tape ant heads onto index cards to measure how wide they are). I was even able to find the type of toothbrush I've had on my shopping list for months now, and a phone backup battery and backup charging/data cable of reasonable quality for prices that weren't outrageous! It's ridiculous but it feels like a major breakthrough to be able to walk into a store and buy the kind of toothbrush I want, in this day and age. Far less packaging to deal with, hallelujah.

I still have no love for these chain stores, but at least it feels like slightly less of my soul got sucked out?

It was 50 degrees by the time I got home, so I set about adding more reinforcement netting to the catio so that Martha can join George outside again (she figured out how to shimmy up the wood and escape onto the back porch last fall).



Not the prettiest addition, but it's on there, at least!

This is a good illustration of how Going Outside blows George's mind:


Martha was a little unsure of things, too, but at least the catio's keeping her occupied while I continue to procrastinate from grading grade more papers.

I also finished getting the front porch plant rack set up:


I'm starting more lettuce in the squirrel boxes, finally. Between the seed starting mat underneath and the sun coming in from the window, this mini-greenhouse does all right, temperature-wise.