bctuck

Take a picture, it’ll last longer!

The big three things I’ve ever wanted were a bike, a kayak, and a camera. Through connections I had with a friend who worked at a bike chop shop (legal, I swear, well, I assume) that took bikes liberated by the police, refurbished them, and resold them for fantastically cheap, I got my road bike for about $25. That’s right, my back bike rack cost more than the bike itself. My work here at wonderful Purdue happens to be in aquatic botany, so, therefore, I got my professor to buy lab kayaks for research purposes. So the use of those were free, maybe even negative free, as I get paid for that research.

Which just leaves camera. The only camera I’ve really ever had is my Canon whatever it is that I got because of the 12x zoom and a whopping 5 megapixels! Mind you, that was utterly high tech when I got it, oh, 8ish years ago. It is the next step up from a point and shoot camera, and I have loved it dearly for that whole time. Loved it dearly unless I wanted to a) take clear pictures in pretty much anything but direct sunlight, b) take pictures at any particular distance, and most importantly, c) spend less than 10 seconds pressing two buttons at the same time and guessing in order to get objects in focus. Needless to say, this upgrade was a long time in coming.

I’m looking at this little beauty – http://imaging.nikon.com/products/imaging/lineup/digitalcamera/slr/d3100/

a digital SLR with 14 megapixels, interchangeable lenses, infinite control of exposure and everything you’d ever want to control, HD video, fast processing time (meaning shorter wait between shots, meaning 3 shots per second or so), and lots and lots of other fun things. Yes, this fun isn’t cheap, but I’m considering it an investment for my future. Who knows, maybe I could use it for some part of my next job! The only big decision I’m facing right now is figuring out when I want to go start that next phase of photography… Really, it’s a matter of how patient can I be right now, as this is the carrot I’m dangling in front of myself to finish my thesis. We’ll see…

Until then, here’s a song from an old friend –

March 20, 2011 0

Holy shit it’s supposed to be 70 tomorrow…

I’m done with “winter”. For a while. And I think I’m allowed.

Having grown up just south of the “Great Nort’ Woods”, I’ve had my fair share of winters. From minus who knows what wind chills, snowbanks at school so high that we could only play “King of the Mountain” after school because otherwise we’d get yelled at (as in, “get down from there you hooligans, you’ll fall and break your necks”, or something), forts dug into the packed snow mounds that we knew wouldn’t collapse because the walls were so damn thick, ice skating at recess, sledding on the golf course, and watching all the cars and shanties set up shop on the lakes, waiting for their tip ups to, um, tip up.

These last three winters in Indiana haven’t been as extreme. They’ve been moody, with snow coming and going as the rain saw fit, but no real accumulation, no minus 20 wind chill, and no particular reason for the below freezing temps. I think I went sledding maybe twice the whole time. So, in my definition, winter without the use of the snow is relatively pointless. The two super cool things I saw here, and they were darn awesome, was the river freezing then thawing, breaking off huge icebergs that would race under the bridge so I could follow them like Poohsticks, making wonderful music in the quiet morning, and also the hoar frost that formed along said river before the bright sun came all the way up and melted its fun.

As of right now, I’ve experienced two types of winter in North America: very cold with lots of snow in which to play, and mildly cold enough with not much snow to speak of but an occasional fantastic but short lived feat of winterness. A third type does exist, and it’s called “warm”. You know, the kind of winter where it’s the rainy months of the year for that location, things are green and growing, and you can still wear sandals the whole way through without being harassed by co-workers for being nuts.

I want to experience that third type of winter. Soon. You know, so I can be well rounded and complete in my wintery experiences. And so I can wear sandals all year round. And not get the wonderful “cabin fever” I’m so accustomed to once a year. And so I can bike all the time, without having to worry about weather my break lines are going to freeze shut. And maybe so I can learn how to surf, and be really really good at it. Is that too much to ask?

March 16, 2011 1

If I ever get a dog, I’ll need a bigger bed.

First off, it’s Spring Break (woooo). The only difference that makes for me is that the campus, which I have not left, is now fantastically empty, and that all my roommates are gone but their pets aren’t. Meaning, I am taking care of said pets. Said pets being a dog (beagle, Stella), a guinea pig (crazy haired, Jurassic), and a fish (beta, who the hell knows its name).

Two of the three little beasties are pretty darn labor free, just make sure they’re fed and that one of them gets scratched on the nose enough and the other has its light on (you can figure out which is which). One, however, is more work. That’d be the 9 year old little pup.

Stella’s a great dog. Doesn’t bark at anything besides squirrels and other dogs when on walks, only gets hyper when its walk time, only occasionally does things on the carpets that needs to be cleaned up, and never chews on shoes or cell phones. She does, however, insist on sleeping on your feet and snoring the entire night long. Which does not work when your bed is tiny, and you have slight insomnia in the first place. And by you, I mean me. I tried to sleep on the couch last night so she could be in the same room as me but not on top of my feet. Do we think that worked? Not as such. Giant couch length wise, but she insisted on using my ankles as a pillow. I would just kick her out of my room at night, but that would lead to scratching of the door, an angry roommate later on (as it’s her parents house Stella would be destroying), and no sleep for me anyway.

So. If I ever get a dog, I’ll need a bigger bed. Or, and here’s a new one, a bed for the dog. Or a dog that sleeps at the foot of the bed, and not on the feet of me.

March 15, 2011 1

More remembrances of awesomeness.

That’s right, I’m not done expressing how warped my childhood was. Warped in a great way, mind you, I wouldn’t want it any different. Here’s a furthered list of fun stuff that is normal for us Tuckers, and rare for the rest of the Norms out there.

Monty Python –

Red Dwarf –

Faulty Towers

Mr. Bean

Blackadder

Keeping up Appearances

Are You Being Served?

Chronicles of Narnia (the good versions)

Box of Delights (every damn Christmas)

Walker Texas Ranger (muted) + Jazz on Saturday nights when Dad had a gig.

Think that about covers it for now. Oh look, a thesis to write…

March 10, 2011 2

Harry Bellybutton.

Children are molded by those who raise them.

I was raised by NPR, PBS, and parents who thought those things were good. NPR meant lots of classical music, endless “games” of name the composer / time period, Car Talk, Whad’Ya Know (not much, you?), and I shudder to think of it, Prairie Home Companion. PBS meant Nova, Nature, Mystery, and Muppets.

And by “molded”, I mean warped.

It’s more fun to learn things when they’re funny, hence the endless “memory devices” utilized in my childhood. Happy Birthday to You was “Hippo Birdie Two Ewes”, Rimsky-Korsakov was “Rip-your-Corset-off” (as in Flight of the Bumble Bee is so fast…), you know this is what it is because it sings “Oh, my word, it’s Beethoven’s 3rd”, and that this is what it is because it sings “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a Mozart”, this goes “Old Mozart’s in the closet, let him out, let him out, let him out”, and that this is the “Pathetic Symphony”.

I also knew that Harry Belafonte was obviously “Harry Bellybutton“. The Muppets did this all the time. You have Alistair Cookie, Placido Flamingo, Polly Darton, and an entire list of famous people that children don’t know but their parents do. Jokes that the adults get and the kids will if a) their parents are weird or b) the kids actually pay attention and therefore learn things later on when they get to be weird adults.

There’s so many more examples like this, but I’m sort of trying to write a thesis… Don’t even get me started on Victor Borge.

March 8, 2011 2

Cricket.

One of my professors recently had the opportunity to teach a class how to play cricket. He started out with the generic explanation of “it’s sort of like baseball, but you play for five days” which really doesn’t tell you much. He then put up a slide which went something like this –

“You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side thats been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!”

I thought it was funny, but mostly because I’d seen it before and knew it was a joke. The rest of the students sort of just sat there, one even asked a serious question.

The context for this lesson in sport and in comedic timing was the class for the study abroad to Trinidad and Tobago that I somehow was given the privilege of instructing. One of the things we may be able to do while we’re on those Caribbean islands is get our asses royally kicked by locals in a game of cricket. All the students in the class are fantastically white, and I doubt that any of us has touched a cricket bat in our lives. Should be interesting. I doubt my bowling skills are any good, but I really want to see if I can knock the bails off the stumps with a frisbee from the same distance the ball would be bowled from.

Point is, one of my goals from my UK trip was to get a cricket ball. That did not happen. Maybe it’ll happen in May…

March 5, 2011 4

Maybe you had to be raised by music majors…

but this makes me happy. Yes it does.

March 4, 2011 0

Greeting cards.

I haven’t been feeling well. This post is not about that, but about the greeting card I got from Grams because I wasn’t feeling well. The card reads –

“Here’s a card that’s sure to cheer you up. It doesn’t poke you, prod you, shove a popsicle stick in your mouth, a thermometer in your ear, or a needle in your butt… It just sits in your hand and tells you to get well.” (Grams added two !! at the end just for good measure).

How simple is that? Really simple. Simple and fun. Fun and well-getting. Some say that the greeting card industry is just a useless set of hype that exits for Valentines day and Christmas. I say its a nice way to let someone else know that you are thinking of them. Sure, someone else has made up the cute little dog getting pretend poked in the ass by needles, (and actually in this case, the cartoon dog has managed to escape that fate with a comical puff of running away smoke) but it was you that picked it out, lovingly wrote a little after punch line sentiment, put three stamps on it, and sent it off.

I think that’s pretty nice. Don’t you? I’m going to go call my grandma now.

March 3, 2011 0

Dreaming of other places.

It’s not that hard to figure out that although I came to Purdue for the people, the project, and the degree, I didn’t really come here for the location. Admittedly, I don’t really explore too much beyond town, and maybe that’s my fault. But I don’t feel like I fit here, land wise. There are no views, few trees, even fewer streams (one river, which I’m thankful for), no rolling hills, no sheep. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of little things that make me happy about being outside here, I don’t feel connected to my space.

Wisconsin will always be home, and Minnesota too, it’s pretty similar I suppose. I want to go back there eventually, but I want to find my own spot before that. This isn’t it. I’m confident that I will eventually find a place that feels like me. I got close once, without being so foreign (i.e. tropical) that everything was too exciting and unfamiliar.

Regardless of where I go next, it won’t be here after this summer. I have my goals, I have my dreams of where I think I want to be. In order to accomplish those goals and get somewhere I feel connected to, to give me back my sense of place, I need to graduate. And to graduate, I need to write. Write then defend what I write.

I’ll get it done, I know I will. But no wonder I’m not sleeping.

March 2, 2011 3

what Was, what Is, and what Will Be

I am the sum of what I produce.

Author

bctuck

Take a picture, it’ll last longer!

Holy shit it’s supposed to be 70 tomorrow…

If I ever get a dog, I’ll need a bigger bed.

More remembrances of awesomeness.

Harry Bellybutton.

Cricket.

Maybe you had to be raised by music majors…

Greeting cards.

Dreaming of other places.

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