A Chemical Affair

M: How does the moon cut his hair? K: I don't know. Sun scissors...something. M: Eclipse it. We bought sun binoculars for the occasion (not too expensive, but made us feel very luxurious). We passed these around to old and new friends and carefully taught people how to look for such a tiny object in a huge black sky. There were 3 sunspots visible, and if you squinted just right an extra one in the bottom left corner. It cooled about 12 degrees. We watched as the sun and moon aligned and we could see small circles where the sun peaked through the topography of the moon. Twilight hit and everyone cheered and got excited and took off their glasses and stared. The corona was visible and I've never seen anything in the sky so beautiful and breathtaking. There are words to describe it, but I likely don't know them or know how to line them up just right to explain. Everything went silent as everyone took pics with their iphones/cameras, or just pondered in how unlikely it ...

It was Herman Melville that  said “All profound things and emotions of things are preceded and attended by silence."  Right now, I am sitting near my front window and watching the most spectacular sunset as it changes the sky from a dusty orange, to dusty rose and now a brilliant neon pink. One cloud is low and back and from the top is flecked with blue and navy while it's underside is fascinatingly flamingo. The clouds are the perfect shape and have metallic linings and texture and there really isn't anything better than a sunset in the west. Couple that with a picture window framing all this splendor above aspens and juniper and I'm arguably in heaven.   I still love birthdays and make a big deal of them for others and for myself.   Of all the profound things and emotions of things that have been attended by silence one is  that I've gotten married.  Of all my years, apparently that birthday at the start of 32 was the beginning of a year that wo...

I don't have many memories of California or of being a kid there. I do, however, have a very vivid memory of the smell of wood being cut in the garage, the sound of the saw, and the distinct voice of Garth Brooks singing out from a tape within a black stereo. My dad was rarely home back in those days, and while he was around I must have liked to be near him. A more blurry part of this memory is my asking what the songs were about, because I could tell they were about a story, but I didn't have enough reading or auditory comprehension to be able to figure it out. I'm sure my dad did his best explaining country music to me. The fact that I have this memory is literally a miracle. I remember almost nothing from California. So when I found out Garth Brooks was back on tour, after being gone for 17 years, I immediately searched for concert tickets. I realized I would have to go to this concert with my dad. We found our way to the concert thinking that it would start at ...

When I moved from Boston it took a while before it felt real. I also had to keep going back to get a quote on an instrument, and then pack and ship said instrument, and recently went back again for a conference. Therefore, with all the flying back and forth, my sense of New England belonging wasn't quite severed. And for at least the first trip back to Boston, it still felt like I was on a prolonged trip to Utah. My mind had framed Utah as a vacation destination for the last 8 and 1/2 years, so how was this going to suddenly feel any different ? It would seem that the job would have helped convince me, but instead it all still felt like just another place to be for a bit before the next segment of my life. I remember flying back from my second trip to Boston and finally having that feeling that Utah was home. The feeling was a sigh of relief mixed with some residual longing. My post-doc was hard, as I've written about before , but it was also amazing. So much of who I have b...

I love birthdays.  Maybe it is in the loving them too much, that this year, I was actually concerned about the planning and execution of this upcoming one. It could be that there was a party in Boston I never threw, or just the sheer adjustments that I'm still dealing with upon the move west and it's been so easy for birthdays to feel special because I had made them that way living so far from home. As a recompense for not being around for any of the family home traditions, I had created my own - and they were often spectacular. New years (places, seasons) require new traditions. This has been making more and more sense as I've settled in better this year and have been thinking about "adult" things such as home-ownership and a long-term career. Now that I live in the west, birthdays can include family again, and in truth, that was one of the things I missed most while living so far away. There were more birthdays than I could count where I wasn't there to...

Summertime is a time when I no longer have TV to keep up with. Luckily there's netflix and redbox. So a couple months back, when I had some time to watch movies, I was surprised by two things. First, I went straight to animation. Second, I found myself emotionally reacting to animated films. A short while ago I had a truce to not see any new animated films. It's not like I watch these movies all the time, but in not watching them, I forgot that I actually really like my kid-flicks. I honestly missed them. I watched Anastasia the other day and smiled like I'd just visited with an old friend.  In terms of emotion, I get teary during Meet the Robinson's and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 1 or 2. Fantasia even makes me feel both joy and sadness. There's something about childhood and these movies and my memories that leave me affected. Maybe it is because there's a part of me that never really wanted to grow up, and that part of me maybe gets to stay ...