the life and times of the lesser spotted packet jockey

IN hindsight, I was probably lucky I made it three-quarters of the way through November managing to keep up posting something considering the workload I’m juggling. I had to give a very high priority to my research for school and in the end that just had to win out. C’est la vie. But, abbreviated though it was, It still provided a few brief moments here and there to take a break from that work to jot down a few thoughts and read those of a few friends who were also doing NaBloPoMo.

I did start the Orion questionnaire, so I’ll go ahead and finish that at least, and will try to keep up some kind of trickle of entries as I can, but I’m still deep in the research work, so we’ll see….

Happy belated Thanksgiving and happy upcoming holidays to everyone.

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go astray, and leave us only grief and pain for promised joy.
—John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men

FELLOW blogger Kari wrote in her blog about “an article where louise erdrich [sic] answered questions from the orion website.” The questionnaire is one of those “get to know each other better” sorts of things so I thought it sounded fun to try out as well.

It would be fun to see if any of my friends want to try these questions in your blogs as well. Given the length of the questionnaire, I’m going to split it up over a few posts instead of trying to tackle the entire set all at once.

• Do you knock on wood? As Michael Scott said so famously now as to be a cliché at this point, “I’m not superstitious. I’m just a little stitious.” Except I’m really not at all stitious—I mean, I’m not a superstitious person although it does amuse me to do things like knock on wood ironically for fun or to troll people sometimes. So… sometimes, I might.
• There’s a spider in the room; what do you do? Depends on its armor class and whether I memorized fireball that morning. Or how cool it is. I mean, you can’t deny that an anadi or giant mutant phase spider are pretty neat as species go. But while I may not scream and run from the room per se, I wouldn’t exactly be comfortable sharing my living space with something with just too many eyes staring back at me like that. I’d probably find a way to relocate it so we can both get on with our lives.
• What is your most treasured comfort meal? There are quite a number I could name, but the one that popped into my brain first just now was Mongolian BBQ.
• What is a species you feel is frequently misunderstood? Australopithecus afarensis. While biology, paleontology, and anthropology are not my fields of expertise, I find them interesting from a distance and have listened to what a number of experts in those fields have said. And I have unfortunately heard an awful lot of misinformation about “Lucy” by people who are far less informed than they would like their audiences to believe, when there’s money to be made by spinning conspiracy theories.
• In what environment do you feel most at home? In a quiet place surrounded by computers I can hack on and family and close friends I can be my introverted self around.
• My favorite tree in the world is? No. 1… The larch….¹
• What is something you’re looking forward to? Christmas. I always love the Christmas season, the lights, the food, the celebrations and all, but this year I’m looking most to being back with my family to celebrate the holiday.
• What was your last memorable animal encounter? Snuggling with our kitty Sabrina.
• Do you have any unusual hobbies, hidden talents, or superpowers you’d like to share? Making cool but useless gizmos out of microcontrollers (like quiz shows and computer-controlled Christmas lights) is probably a bit unusual.
• If you could, regardless of the climate, reach out of your kitchen window pluck a fruit from a tree, bush, or a plant, what would it be? Maybe the silver apples from Narnia in The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis.

The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.
—孔子 (Confucius)

I was reflecting today on moments when I’ve felt proud of my kids. There were a number that came to mind. Many were ones that are hard to describe in a way that would make much sense to anyone who wasn’t there at the time but were times they each showed maturity and character in difficult situations.

Of course, the time each of them were awarded their Eagle Scout rank was a moment to be proud of them, because of the level of accomplishment and work that represented.

Educationally speaking, I was proud of both of them when they graduated from high school. They struggled to get through the traditional school structure with their neurodivergent brains, but we knew they were highly intelligent people despite their struggles to make it through school. When they went to get their GED, they each passed it with flying colors on the first try.

But the random thought hit me while I was thinking of these things, in my own geeky brain, of one moment long ago when they were quite young, that was a particular moment of parental pride for me. It was the first time I thought our youngest was old enough to watch The Lord of the Rings movies. Our eldest, who was 12 at the time, had seen it already, and both kids had had the books read to them before as a bedtime story.

Of course, The Lord of the Rings is a long, complex story to track, especially when it’s read to you when you’re falling asleep. How much our youngest had remembered was anyone’s guess. Nonetheless, they wanted to see the films too. To my surprise, as we watched that 12-hour epic, my little eight-year-old kept blurting out, “That’s not how that happened!” or, “No, it was Gandalf who said that, not Gimli!”

Not bad, my young Tolkien fan. Not bad at all.

My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person: he believed in me.
—Jim Valvano