Even in Kyoto

Yesterday a package finally arrived, from Harney & Sons, containing some decaf chocolate tea as well as Greek Mountain Tea. Finding Greek Mountain Tea has been a long-term project; I originally got introduced to it when my PhD advisor brought some back from Greece, but after coming to appreciate how delicious it was I soon found that it can be quite hard to find in the US of A.

During some recent random Internet search, however, I noted this particular tea company, H&S, as a potential source. But it's hard to justify ordering just a single type of tea from a tea company, based on shipping costs. So when I discovered that Stash stopped producing and selling not one but TWO of my favorite teas (chocolate peppermint and the decaf chocolate hazelnut), the quest began for a replacement for the decaf chocolate hazelnut. H&S listed a decaf chocolate tea. Suddenly it became worthwhile to put in an order!

So far it seems that the H&S decaf chocolate will suffice. It does not taste exactly the same as the decaf chocolate hazelnut tea, but it fills the same niche, with a nice aroma. And I am very very pleased to have a stockpile of Greek Mountain Tea now, too.

It also looks like H&S is based out of Millterton, NY, in Fabulous Dutchess County. So I might even be able to pay the place a visit in person one of these days.

And now it is time to sip my tea and read about the state of higher ed.

1. I got the backup battery recharged last night.

2. I am going to learn how to remove and reinstall the main battery so I can bring it indoors when it's ludicrously cold. This is not the kind of thing one wants to try and learn when it's -5°F and dark outside, one would much rather learn this sort of thing in broad daylight and maybe around 10°F? By now, 10°F feels pretty balmy!

3. S says he has a 12V battery charger somewhere in the garage, so I'll also apply that to the battery when I bring it indoors.

4. There's a good chance this one is approaching the end of its useable lifespan, so I'll also start looking around for a replacement (sigh).

Cars, so convenient and inexpensive, amirite?

I am also dreading this month's utility bill, sigh.

Edit: At 2 pm and a toasty 10°F, the car did start again. So I have some homework to do, but not all hope is lost. Just the hope of making it to my erg race scheduled for 9 am this morning.


Well, dang it! I am not very good at this whole "vehicle management strategy during actually cold weather" business, so I failed to set up a makeshift battery warmer overnight and now my car won't start. 😭 So now I won't get to drive myself down to the Bronx to then torture myself with a 2000m rowing machine (erg) race against myself*. BOO!!

There's probably a life lesson in all this somewhere, but for right now, GRRRR!

I did try applying the cats' heating pad to the battery, and also poured warm water over it, for a good long while, to no avail. By now, I am out of time to make it to the race on time.

This is all getting filed in the mental category of: cars: convenient, until they aren't.

And now I have the question of, so now what. Do I torture myself on my own rowing machine at home? Do something completely different?

One thing is certain: if I go for the rowing machine at home, I won't be trying to use it out on the front porch. I did a race piece a week or so ago on the BikeErg on the porch, and it was cold enough then at 20°F for the battery to glitch out.

But that means using the erg inside the house, which sounds unpleasant in other ways (air harder to breathe). Sigh.



*I was the only entry in my age category! It was going to be a guaranteed win!

[I started out writing this bit of preamble below, but as you'll observe, I then found I had a lot of things to remark about, after all!]

It was a busy one, but a lot of the busy-ness wasn't particularly remarkable. I guess some weeks in life are just like that.

Tuesday's lab involved the characterization of breathing in fish and reptiles. It is always a long lab that takes the full 4 hours for each lab section, because it involves gradually warming the animals up to see how temperature affects their breathing rates (fun fact, breathing volumes in both groups don't change very much, so their primary method for getting more oxygen as metabolic demands increase is to breathe faster). We also investigate how hypoxia, and in the case of the reptiles, hypercapnia (elevated carbon dioxide), affect breathing rates. This year I tried to emphasize the distinction between fish and reptile responses; fish show a pretty clear and dramatic response to low oxygen, and in species that can, it will often cause a switch to air-breathing. In contrast, like us and other terrestrial animals, reptiles respond much more quickly and dramatically to hypercapnia.

Wrangling the reptiles is always a wild card. Here's Gary the Gehrrosaurus major with a small piece of tape as a largely symbolic restraint against wiggling:



Sometimes he has an opinion about being cooled down, but most of the time he is exceptionally chill. This year, though, we observed that he has learned my ways when it comes to hypoxia and hypercapnia exposure! The way I expose each reptile to a different air composition is by using a gas pump to flow air through a 60-mL syringe with the plunger removed; I have students put the open end of the syringe barrel in front of the reptile's face for a few seconds at a time so that most of the air the reptile is getting is coming from the syringe. We start out just exposing each reptile to room air, then I plug a gas bag full of either nitrogen (hypoxia) or carbon dioxide (hypercapnia) into the gas pump. In general, our reptiles respond very quickly and dramatically to hypercapnia, but not by breathing faster: they instead hold their breath, aka use apnea to avoid the high carbon dioxide.

Well. This time around, when we brought the syringe near Gary's face, before changing the gas composition, he just went straight to apnea. It was a repeatable response, too. I think we tried it three times. So I had to conclude that Gary has learned my tricks over the years, and we had to skip that part of the lab.

Now, in contrast to Gary, here's an Anole:


I have stopped trying to acquire Anoles for now, because it's really hard to keep them happy in our lab setup. I think I just haven't managed to dial in the humidity correctly for them. But they're adorable, and also a lot more wiggly than Gary. So they require both a more delicate touch, and more taping so they stay in place.

The leopard geckos and skink, however, are usually the most challenging reptiles to work with. For several years I've been trying to use some gauze so we aren't directly putting masking tape onto reptile skin, but this year we went back to just straight-up tape, because the gauze method gives the reptiles just a little too much leeway to wiggle loose. We then use mineral oil to free the reptiles from the tape at the end of the procedure.

One of the three leopard geckos was pretty well-behaved this year (Shadow Luna, named by the students). Trinity and Baby Gramps, however...Trinity tried to bite me while I was trying to free her at the end, and Baby Gramps actually succeeded in drawing blood this time around. At least he didn't bite a student!

I kind of wish this bite mark would turn into a scar, because that would make it feel a little more worthwhile: a little, circular gecko bite scar.



I doubt that will actually happen, though.

Anyway, also on the lab front, towards the end of the week, two packages I'd been concerned about safely arrived. Whew. One contained a small bottle of citrated cow's blood, which we're after for the fresh hemoglobin it contains. The other contained two more horseshoe crabs!



These are Gulf crabs, and the styrofoam box they arrived in had a big sign on it that said to keep it at or above 70°F. When I opened the box...let's just say the crabs definitely weren't at 70°F. Sigh. They sat somewhere significantly colder than that for a while on their journey north from Florida. Sigh. After a bit of time to warm up, they started to perk up, so I added them in with the last one of last year's crabs, as pictured above. If Methusalah makes it until Tuesday, that will be the first time I've managed to keep a crab going for the entire year. I'm trying to do the best I can with them, but it's difficult in the midst of 500 other responsibilities.

--

So then on Thursday, my institution had an all-day symposium that's part of a series titled, "Earth's Cry, Humanity's Call," motivated by the Laudato Sí encyclical letter written and released by Pope Francis, calling for people to take action in the face of global environmental crises. I somehow wound up as a faculty representative on the symposium's organizing committee, so it seemed like a good idea to attend as much of the symposium as I could. (As a faculty rep I feel like I played only a bit part in the organizing, but it was still an important bit part because it involved recruiting colleagues and students from our School of Science to participate). The theme for the year was focused on "integral community development," which is also a focus of my institution's Business School, so the sessions were on a series of topics related to business and finance, but notably, NOT "make as much money as humanly possible at any cost." I wasn't able to go to the first session of the morning, but the second session featured a speaker named Kirsten Moy, who has recently been working to apply ideas from complexity science to community development.

So, that got to be pretty interesting. Just to point out why, at one point while she was giving an overview of what complexity science is, she listed "Ant Colonies" as her topmost example of a complex system. I was reminded of the time I spent interacting with colleagues in graduate school as part of our institution's Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity, and I've also known multiple people who have spent time at the Santa Fe Institute engaged in that sort of work. Anyway, here's an interview with Kerstin in the event you're interested in understanding more about her analysis of why lots of community development initiatives wind up having all sorts of unintended consequences (tied to thinking about communities as complex systems).

I could go on, but really, the overall consequence of the symposium on Thursday was that it led to a second weeknight where I didn't leave campus until after 8 pm (also happened on Tuesday because I had a rowing club online Board Meeting immediately after the back-to-back 4-hour labs ended, sigh).

Other than those items, we've reached a point in the semester where a good number of my Animal Physiology students have realized that they could maybe benefit from some more help with their statistical thinking and decision-making. This is really, really great for them to be realizing, but it also means very busy office hours for me. And a lot of what happens in those office hours isn't particularly new or interesting. But hey, that's just often the nature of teaching life.

I rarely acquire new mugs, but a friend just gave me this one, and it is definitely my new office mug now.

It seems to me that 20°F might still be too cold to attempt oar painting on the front porch, so I'm feeling a little stuck on that particular aspect of the oar rehabilitation project.

On the other hand, sanding down the first round of epoxy work and applying the second round of epoxy to the oars in need of repair went very well. I was smart enough to stage all the oars first, before mixing up any epoxy, just to figure out how much I could get done with the number of clamps on hand.

One of the five oars I'd been repairing on is now done and ready to be painted. I have a sixth oar I need to look at again more closely; it might also be ready for painting, or it might need another round of epoxy work. I just don't have enough clamps to repair six oars simultaneously.



Check out how worn down this blade is:



Hopefully some fresh epoxy will help extend its lifespan.



A set of new sculling oars like these costs around $800 these days, so there's some incentive to keep these oars going. Given the work involved in repairing and repainting them...I also have some major incentive to teach people how to do a better job of taking care of our oars during daily use.

Since I'm temporarily stymied on the actual oar painting, I then switched to working on some other projects instead. One project involved going through my collection of dead bike wheels, to determine which ones to cannibalize in the name of an art project. That project has been very slow moving, so it felt good to keep it going forward, however incrementally.

Then, back to sewing and mending projects. I had a small bag repair project I really wanted to tackle, but it was a project that would benefit from machine sewing instead of hand sewing. You might remember my other recent machine sewing project, where just getting the sewing machine out and all set up was a real production. It's not ideal for sewing machine setup to be that involved, so I started wondering about whether I really needed to reposition the IKEA Poang chair. But if I left the chair in place, where would I sit to use the machine? Eventually, an idea occurred to me: finally, a highly practical use for a telescoping stool my mom gave me!



I suspect this mended bag isn't going to last particularly long, just because of the material it's made of (thin polyester).



But on the other hand, I like it approximately a million times better with the patches on it, compared to before, and it needed the patching. So at least now I can ENJOY using it for its remaining lifespan! I found it in the boatyard at some point, utterly abandoned and grimy. It's one of those bags that smashes into a little pouch, and those can be really convenient at times.

And with that, time to start thinking about the week ahead. Sigh.

I needed to obtain some crickets and fish from the pet store, and I just didn't think they'd survive if I tried to transport them by bicycle. At least the temperatures were warmer than yesterday, with an afternoon high of (gasp!) 15.1°F. Almost time to break out the shorts!

We have a neighbor who has figured out that we rarely drive, and so when it is necessary to park only on our side of the street, they put their Mercedes as close as they possibly can to the edge of our driveway. I can imagine this is convenient for being able to pull out of that spot. Anyway, it was a harrowing squeeze to extract my vehicle from the driveway without scraping my vehicle across their front bumper, and now I'm glad to be done with car errands for a while. (being the fan of trip chaining that I am, I also picked up several heavy bags of cat litter while I was out and about, too)

I really wanted to go to the local community protest bike ride today, but ensuring the animals got settled in at work had to take priority. Thankfully it does look like there was good turnout for the ride.

Else?

Not much, really. Just a bit of cooking and some preliminary weekend chores.

Oh, this is not related to anything else, but I just discovered that Stash Tea has stopped making a second type of tea that I love, a decaf chocolate hazelnut tea (this is after they stopped making chocolate peppermint tea). Also, their current website design is AWFUL. I have a bad feeling about those things. I have been a fairly loyal Stash tea drinker for a long time but we might be close to the end of an era at this point. I wound up ordering some sort of decaf chocolate-y tea from a different company instead, in part because that other company also carries Greek Mountain tea, which is very hard to find. All told, I find it vexing how finding good tea has turned into such a moving target! I am hoping to increase home production of chocolate peppermint tea in 2026 at least, however.

To begin with, I just want to note that it's insane how quickly 2026 has filled up with various plans already.

But that is what it is. I don't need to do all of everything instantly. I CAN be patient.

So in the back of my mind, I am thinking about one of my longer-term goals, which is to row on the Hudson River from Albany down to NYC, in Petrichor. It will not be practical to try doing this in 2026, but it might be practical in 2027.

I think when I do it, I am going to call the journey, "From Siena to the Sea." That's the college University where I work, where I have colleagues and students who are also interested in things like environmental justice and local/regional water quality issues. So I think there may be opportunities to work with people here on the trip, and make something more of it beyond just "Rebeccmeister goes row-camping on the Hudson for fun." Or, you know, "One Woman in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Cats)" (lololol, still good though; haven't done any sea trials with George or Martha in Petrichor yet!).

I don't want to turn completely into one of the other people I've encountered in the Hudson, writing Books or Poems or whatever about their Voyage. For me I think it would be enough to just learn more from direct experience about the history and pre-history of the river, and to meet communities and people along the way, and to do all that from the perspective of Connections. It also goes with my overall agenda of wanting to say, "Hey, all you waterway advocacy people, pay attention to this part of the river, too!"

Still all very much in the idea phase. But this is the right time to be in the idea phase.

And really, the Idea phase is so much more fun than the grading I'm already supposed to be doing. (deep sigh) Okay, okay, I'll get my grading done.

Edited to add... I did it! I got my grading done! *pats self on back*

Now, about those manuscripts...

On Monday morning our mayor declared a Snow Emergency, which means that anyone whose car is parked on the street must move their car to the even side of the street for one 24-hour period, then the odd side of the street for the next 24-hour period, so the city can send through its massive snow blower to gather up and haul all of the snow offsite. To facilitate this, the city opened up additional parking in some strategic locations throughout the city. Surely not as convenient as that one spot close to a person's house, but still. I watched a short TV news clip about all this, and all I can think to myself is, so this means that every street parked vehicle in this city requires a minimum of TWO parking spaces for home parking, instead of just one. If I understand correctly, that means that there must be a bare minimum of FOUR parking spaces per vehicle, provided either for free or at a greatly subsidized rate (home, work, third space like grocery store, library, etc).

Suddenly, having off-street parking seems less like a selfish thing and more like a generous thing for helping to keep streets clear and accessible for everyone. The same goes for riding a bike instead of driving. Many people perceive a person on a bicycle as a major inconvenience while driving, but the major inconveniences I observed this morning involved people having badly parked their cars, or buses or garbage trucks having a hard time on narrowed streets.

I haven't shoveled my car out yet, I certainly don't feel like driving around in this stuff.

The bike commute was great, because all of the major roads along my commute route have been plowed. I do have to share more space with vehicles, because in many places the plowed snow is stored in the bike lane. That's why I'm a bike lane skeptic. But the majority of people driving are pretty patient. As you might also know, if you drive or bike around. It still does only take that one asshole, though. This morning that one asshole tried to squeeze me into a pair of trash cans that were sticking out further into the road because of the snow. Fortunately, I was paying attention so I didn't get hit. I did my best to scream at them and gave them a generous gesture with my hand. Not that I expect they noticed, but it at least made me feel slightly better.

And thus, to work.

In mid-December I was asked if I'd be willing to join my institution's Strategic Planning Committee. I ultimately agreed, although not without some reservations. I learned from a previous committee experience that for me, some committees are preferable over others. Anyway, the Strategic Planning Committee is going to be an interesting committee and process to be a part of, although I'll also admit I'm a little sad because it meant I had to give up my seat on a different committee that's more pedagogically focused, and I was appreciating the opportunity to be involved in discussions related to pedagogy. But I may very well get back to that committee once this iteration of the strategic planning process winds down. And both types of work are clearly needed and important.

Meanwhile, there are aspects of strategic planning processes and outcomes that I somewhat viscerally, vehemently dislike. We have been asked to read over our institution's prior strategic plan as an initial homework assignment. That plan was structured around four identified "pillars" and from reading through things it seems I may have some major and fundamental issues with the entire "experience" pillar. And anyway, the strategic planning document is the sort of thing where I can handle reading a page or two of it at a time, then I need to run off and rampage on other things for a while (e.g. blog! Whee!).

In the meantime, all of this is doing some of what it needs to do, to me. I remember hearing about some events and activities during the previous strategic planning process, but at that time I was checked out of that sort of thing so I wasn't necessarily thinking in these broader terms (was paying more attention to things like earning tenure, surviving teaching, rebuilding the rowing club).

Since I have a larger stake now, that means doing things like asking, "So, how have things gone at the large public university where I got my PhD back in the day, where the institution's president showed up in 2003 with a Big Vision?" (short answer, that Big Vision did indeed transform that institution; it does appear that institution is doing fine and/or well, although that's always a complicated matter to answer). Also continuing to keep tabs on the institution where I earned my bachelor's degree, because it, too, has made some major (and effective-seeming) strategic changes over the years (i.e. it's financially solvent and now able to offer a full scholarship to any incoming student with family income under $150k, but who knows where it is with regards to institutional elitism these days).

Now, these are both quite different institutions from my current one with regards to institution size and prestige, but one of my concerns with this committee is making sure to cast a very wide net when we're thinking about what needs to happen in the future, and my observation is there's a tendency at my institution to be WAY too parochial in our thinking (I kind of see this crop up again and again in the northeastern United States; folks, this country is much bigger than that, Los Angeles isn't a quaint Western backwater).

And in the meantime, I'm thinking, I think I personally need to seek out and get some legal observer training. I think I might also want to learn how to become an election monitor. One of the things that stood out to me from reading about my PhD institution is how its leader talks about helping the institution do a better job of responding to the needs of the broader community it serves. (by contrast, my institution's strategic plan is focused more directly on the students themselves, and only talks about "the broader world" in sweeping generalities).

Anyway, I should get back to reading the next two pages of this document. We shall see how it all goes. Hopefully it will have been a good decision all around to have joined this particular undertaking.