More Excuses

It's raining cats, dogs and thunderstorms, and I already got drenched once.
So, biking will have to wait for sunnier days.

No excuses left

The cat's eye is installed
The rear reflector is now set.
The batteries are charged.
Tire pressure seems right.
The ambient temperature is conveniently 76 degrees.
The sun makes me squint just the right amount.

No excuses left,
To ride my bike.

Envying the plants on the other side of the fence

Why, oh why,
Do I want a garden so green?
I turn green looking at my neighbor's garden,
And my garden turns brown with shame.

Depressed Bird/ Dumb Bird? Suicidal Bird!

My colleague A- and I, walking from one building to another on-campus, came across a bird. Sort of looked like a pigeon, but we weren't sure. A sitting duck would be a more apt description.

It was on the road, leaning against the edge of the side walk. We walked a foot past it, and it did not budge. Both A and I noticed it, but it did not register in my head till A- said...Woah that is one calm bird. So we stopped. A- touched Bird, but it did not seem to care. No shaking, no palpitating chest.

A- and I circled it twisting our heads this way and that. Was it injured? Was it pregnant? Was Bird suffering from mid-life crisis? Maybe it was just lazy. Maybe it had brain surgery done to it in the lab next door, and had escaped. There were no signs of injury. Very strange. Maybe Bird was just sick, maybe just ate too much for lunch and couldn't move (I know that happens to Phaedrus, but he is human). I also nudged it a bit, and I could swear it gave me a look of utter boredom.

I tried to call a friend who knew about birds (same brain surgery lab ), but couldn't get through, so we were like...okay, guess there is nothing we can do. Sorry, Bird.

Just at that moment, a truck Roared past it. Barely 2 feet away. In fact, we quickly jumped on the sidewalk because we saw the truck coming. Bird did not Move. Not an inch. This Bird was dimwitted ! A crazy, suicidal Bird! That was it. I started pestering A- to pick up Bird from the road and put it on the sidewalk. Since it appeared that I was more scared to pick it up than he was, he agreed.

A- goes and puts his hand on Bird and about to pluck it off the ground, when it takes off and flies away, like any normal self-respecting Bird.

What a birdbrain.

Fighting with Uncle Sam

It took two PhD students a cumulative of 10 hours to Not complete a federal tax return and two state tax returns over the weekend. Phaedrus and I have to file joint state tax returns for 2 states as we are residents of 2 different states, and North Carolina tax instructions are umm, not very clear. So much so, that even TurboTax did some totally whacky calculations and confused us for another 3 hours. How did that get THAT fraction?...we tried every permutation and combination, till we figured that it had got it wrong as well.

After having taken turns nudging each other awake from falling asleep over the forms, we finally called it quits at 4.00 in the morning, broken and defeated by Uncle Sam. Phaedrus, exhausted, cursing my home-state, had a sound, dreamless sleep; I saw line instructions and arithmetic all night. I woke up and zombied over to the computer and tax forms blindly staring at them for another hour first thing in the morning, before Phaedrus came to check if I had died or something sitting in my chair.

Hilarity

After a colleague announced to others in a meeting today that I have a "hilarious" blog, I am forced to fulfill the adjective describing this blog. Here goes.

Playing to the Gallery

Surely you do not think me to be a bad piano
A bad piano throws up when one bangs down on it
I only sputter.

You say, I am off-tune?
Is that your fault or mine or his?

On the other hand, I think you shouldn't sit where you are, up there.
Forcing me to be louder to reach your discerning ears.
I am an instrument, you know,
Not a vocal chord.

On the other hand, vocal chords strain more than I am straining.
What would you do then, compare them to a bad piano?
Like me?

Sob.

Invisibility

You may have heard the news of the cloak.

The cloak - more recently made famous by a privately wealthy school where Harry and the Romulans studied electromagnetics in 400 AD. The school is known for its legendary cigar smoking statue….. captured with its Hogwartian backdrop only in brochures and tourist-clicked photographs. On clear windless days, it is more likely for the statue to be found cloaked by a dimpled brownish orange bouncing sphere, with no wings, and thin black lines drawn across it. The beauty of this sphere, without the color and the dimples, is that it is the focal point of the diagrams explaining how the cloak works…using the black lines to great bending effect.

Surprisingly, the inventor does not have a mane of wild wavy hair and a tongue sticking out. He does not have a cigar, in spite of the tongue not sticking out. He does not have a scraggly white beard and bushy eyebrows, to draw inattention to the fact that his tongue is not sticking out. Why?

But his other-world non-Romulan pate radiates a disconcerting aura of

The Baking Soda that Baked a Bitter Bread

Today, two loaves of bitterly bitter banana bread later, I discovered that baking powder and baking soda are two entirely different, non-interchangeable ingredients. The recipe called for 3.5 tsp of baking powder, and I put in 3 tbsp of baking soda. Wrong ingredient, wrong quantity.

The bread texture is great, it just tastes like it was soaked in neem juice.

So for all ye beginner bakers, here is a rule:
Short cooking times (pancakes and cookies) need baking soda , which is purely sodium bicarbonate.
Long cooking times and high heat, Breads and cakes, need powder, which is a mixture of sodium bicarbonate and cream of tartar. Sodium bicarbonate dissociates pretty fast...and then the cream of tartar takes over.

short and sweet need soda
breads and cakes need powder.


The larger question is what do I do with all this lovely looking, ugly tasting bread?

Crime and Punishment

The crime of rhyme:
there are only so many.
The curse of its verse:
the jails of deja vous.

Burnt Green Postcards

Burnt green postcards

I am sending postcards that are going
all over the world,
asking: what shall become of our dream?
When the army of hollow half-cuboidal horsemen
prepare to war with regimented rectangular footsoldiers;
and all that will be left are tree stumps
of burnt sienna
and dried brick-red blood;
when leaf green and sky blue
will all turn to charcoal black?

Maybe then, you cool dude
with your cool swagger and
cool cheap plastic sunglasses
will freeze and think
why you’ve always put
that 100% compostable and fully renewable cup
in the trash.

And you, miss fake thinker,
in perfect pose for a portrait photo
will move and uncomfortably sigh:
neither did I.

And I,
A de-clawed tiger
A de-olfactorized dog
A blinded vulture,
will smash into these empty spaces
bathed in paraboloids of jaundiced yellow,
and wait and wait
for a timid teal, tapir or tadpole
to come splashing down these
meandering ways again.