Ramblings of an itinerant rocket scientist...

It's rainy and cool and overcast here today... my household is going over to the British Bankers Club hangout in Menlo Park from 3-6pm this afternoon to chat, drink cider, and maybe get beaten by Pat in online trivia. Anyone local is invited to drop by at your leisure... :)

To those who observe it, happy Easter. :)

Today may very well be the last Easter that all five of us (patgreene and I and James, David, and Kevin) celebrate together in-person... next year, James will likely be away at college somewhere back East. That didn't stop us from hiding candy in crevices and spots all around the living and dining rooms (with cyan_blue's ecumenical assistance, last night :) and the three boys hunting them with their baskets, this morning. Our church has a chicken-wire and foam cross set up outside the front door on Easter morning, and parishioners are encouraged to bring flowers to insert to fill it with blossoms as the day progresses. I cut some roses and purple irises from my yard, plus I brought a blossom from our salvia divinorum. ;-)

After church, we went out for brunch, and I'll cook a ham for tonight's dinner.

Me at age 10, with microscope...

A physiology experiment in high school, at age 17...red ringlets

I was pulling together several old photos to send to someone doing a documentary, and these were kind of cute, even if they were about me. :)

And then this one, before the rocks started falling, at age 7

Ten years ago at alt.polycon 4 in Chicago, a nervous guy wondered if that lovely woman could actually be interested in *him*... only to discover that she was, surprisingly.

I'd gone to APC4 as a sort of date with Ruth Anne, as we'd had a couple of dates and expected to take things further, away from home, driving back after the con from Phoenix together after I'd bought a car there... I had $2400 in a suitcase. Instead, the transmission of the car in Phoenix died (so no road trip), and RA and I fell heavily for different people (Ruth Anne for my roommate rmjwell, so today is their anniversary too, I guess... congrats ;).

This certainly surprised patgreene upon my arrival home (er... yes I did, but not with whom we expected... ) and a couple of years of difficult poly-transitioning began.

Just as ten years ago, things with Nancy are *easy*... we fall into each other's arms. Still happy and loving and passionate, still intense and funny and comfortable. Still my rock of stability, when every other relationship in my life has wavered or fallen down at times. Still loves me and is loved by me and just... fits. Happy 10th anniversary to us!

Just a note to myself that this bubbly hard cider was crisp, faintly sweet, and a good way to toast the inauguration this morning, in my living room.

I can't get any more of it, since I picked it up in Brittany last summer, but someday...

Not satisfied with simply cleaning and reorganizing the central living areas at home, I've tackled my office. Specifically, I've gone through and put about a cubic meter of mixed paper into recycling (all from my desktop). Gotten rid of acetate slides for presentations from the late 90s. Cleaned out bits of paper, old business cards, and the odd cable or two for peripherals I'm no longer using.

Cleaned my actual desktop... for the first time since sometime in (I think) 2004. Dust, broken bits of wire, dead insects, leafy bits from the salvia plant I had here in 2007... all gone now.

This has also been motivated by eyestrain, using my MacBook Pro 15" laptop for the past few years as my primary desktop computing interface. Now I have room for a new, bright 23" LCD monitor, a real keyboard and a wireless mouse, while the laptop is attached over in the corner.

I've ordered a new desk chair, to replace the one I've used since 1992 (and which itself is broken, with missing pieces, a broken armrest and torn cushion).

Framed photos (kids, Pat, other sweeties and an ex) have gone back around the edges of my desk, along with the hole-punch, tape dispenser and stapler. And the corner closest to the door still has the massive (30kg) 12-apex shatter cone that I brought back in 2002 from Haughton Crater. Along with a dinosaur fossil and a reputed impact fragment, both past gifts. And jumping plastic lederhosen, an origami shuttle, and beaded egg...

At 12:07am, November 20, 1990, my son James arrived in this world... he was unexpectedly calm, wide-eyed (after a painful, 30-hour induced labor for his mom patgreene) and looking fascinated by all of *this* around him in the delivery room, as I held him closely.

He's still a very observant and analytical, even philosophical person today, with the same wide-eyed blue gaze at times. I'm very proud of him and how he's grown and developed and matured, and today he is legally an adult. We're going to go get his driver's license at the DMV office this afternoon, and will have cake at home around 9pm. Happy birthday, James!

much love, your father...

I've had several discussions lately with folks about relationship labels. For myself, I tend to view friendship and relationship as part of a continuous spectrum, with friendships simply being a kind of incomplete/damaged/otherwise-constrained relationship (if close) or else simply a non-hostile person (if not close). These are mine, for my own historical reasons, and I am not trying to persuade anyone else to use them. Only perhaps to better understand what I say, at times?

sweetie: someone with whom I have emotional closeness and affection, a loving relationship. And typically some degree of attachment, and/or ongoing communication with each other. It is regardless of whether there's been any physical play or intimacy in the relationship, of whatever sort. Someone I trust and can have fun with.

lover: is someone with whom I've been some form of physically intimate, ironically whether or not there's any ongoing emotional attachment.

partner = sweetie + lover, plus a deeper ongoing commitment or attachment.

friend: is generally someone with whom I've mutually agreed to not be hostile. Closer to me than an acquaintance, but the term doesn't carry any connotation of openness or safety or support. If someone says "let's just be friends", I hear "we'll agree to not be enemies in the future, but not necessarily anything more." Not a love-relationship, per se.

friend-with-benefits: = friend + lover, without ongoing attachment

ambigu-sweetie: from radven originally, for me this is vaguely friend+sweetie, but since those are along the same continuum, it refers to differing connections in different activities.

tocotox, quantum-relationship: these are placeholder names I use for relationships/friendships that don't easily fit in the above categories, or which may function as one thing in some ways and as a different one in others. Or may probabilistically jump between different energy/connection levels over time, in the latter case.

I last visited this topic about 16 months ago, in this thread.

Yesterday we started our main, er, thrust... the primary borehole. One difference from past years has been that we are taking core samples every 20-30cm, for a co-investigator interested in the hydrothermal structural layering. The soil is loose and there is very little ice to consolidate and cement it... so hole integrity and backfill are problems. Every bit or string change causes 5-10cm to collapse back down into the hole, which then has to be drilled out again.

And we found some software bugs... some from integration, others old ones latent in the original logic. Yesterday only the vibration-based diagnostics were working, and we made it to 89cm depth, but we were drilling until 9pm.

Today... compilerbitch worked steadily on fixes and mods in the morning. I saw little use in going back out with known-broken software. And an attempted telecon over lunch... the C-band was flaky, so we had to revert to IM back and forth to Ames. By 3pm, we were back out at the site, and have started drilling again. With full functionality... already have correctly identified and recovered from four different faults, out of six, and gone past a meter. Much improved... it is behaving correctly, but with the new software. :)

We've persuaded the airline to push back S. and J.'s departure by a day, so will extend drilling to Thursday noon instead of ending tomorrow. So I'm cautiously optimistic, after being quite concerned yesterday.