Meanwhile…

At the moment, I’m saddled up in the Explorations coffee lounge aboard the Ms Volendam, steaming north to Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park by way of Juneau while an extremely versatile string quartet plays Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Yes, Toto, we’re not in Kansas, anymore.

Alaskan Inside Passage Cruise

We made way from Vancouver at a pretty good clip last night to catch the tide; the narrows around Vancouver apparently can’t be sailed in a big ship if the tide’s too low, and so our captain put the screws to it. Er, literally, I guess.

This is my first cruise so I don’t have much reference on what’s a good ship and what’s not… aside from the essentials like, a good ship is one that doesn’t sink. (By that token, we’re ship-shape thus far.) There’s lots of wood, and lots of glass, and water, water everywhere.

Tomorrow, there will be glaciers.

• Star Trek Plots in Haiku Form
• Bad Astronomy on Star Trek
• Star Trek: Not So Futuristic

Meanwhile, on with the show.

Mother’s Day has just slipped by, and it appears that Amazon and ProFlowers aren’t keeping promises… the lovely flowers pictured here have *not* arrived. So Mom: here’s what you were *supposed* to have had delivered over the week-end. Sorry ’bout that.

Finished Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book over the weekend. The guy does good stories, through and through. Didn’t read so much like Kipling as I’d been led to believe, but that’s just fine. Not so macabre, either; but emotionally, very honest and true, which, I suspect, is why it won the Newbery Medal. (Note to self: punctuation, much?)

My to-do list is taking an ugly turn. Where normally it would have a bunch of simple tasks to be done and scratched off, now it has entries that read, “Convince you-know-who to do whatsit *this way* and not that way,” and “Arm-twist so-and-so to agree to thus-and-such.” Oh, here’s a simple one: “Create canonical list of origin attributes.” Yeah. And it’s all in need of clearing before I can fly away to vacation-land in June.

On the plus side, it’s warm enough to roast coffee in the garage, again… and I think I will.

For some while my wife and I have known it was nearly Jessie’s time… that the discomfort of living with glaucoma was reaching the point where — despite the medication and treatment — the pain and bother would overcome the joys of a full dinner bowl, of walks in the warming sun, of hugs, and treats, and just hangin’ out with fambly on a lazy Sunday morning. Over the past several months her tail-thumps have gradually lost their vigor, her appetites their keenness. Our overgrown pup — always present, and frequently underfoot — had taken to finding a quiet spot, an out-of-the-way corner.

In retrospect, it’s pretty clear she knew it was time, too.

Most of what I know about being a grown-up — about really being responsible, and accountable, and answerable for what I do and don’t do — I learned from my dog. I learned that you get out of bed in the morning even when you don’t want to, ’cause it’s not just about you. I learned there *are* such things as good habits. And that nobody’s above cleaning up dog poop.

My life has been graced by no small number of fortunate events, and by people with whom I’ve been privileged to share them. For this, I’m grateful. Now there’s a dog-shaped hole in my heart that will never be full again. And for that… for that, I’m grateful, too.

Good-night, Jessie.

This can’t possibly end well.

‘Cause face it — this is Vermont. You get sunny days and seventies in the month of April you’re gonna pay for it. Fire, mudslides, tornados, a throng of poisonous snakes, or maybe lawyers; a werewolf uprising, a zombie apocalypse… Prepare now, for we are doomed, doomed, say I.

How y’all been, anyways?

Seattle remains a guiding star for coffee. From Vivace to Zoka, Trabant to Victrola, Tully’s to Caffe Vita, and — of course — the omnipresent Starbucks and hundreds of happy, independent retailers, coffee houses, espresso carts and hole-in-the-wall walk-ups, the city teems with caffeinated masses, most of ‘em tanked up on some damn fine coffees served by folks who know their way round the business end of a portafilter. I’m impressed as I can be with places like Stumptown that hold daily cupping events so folks just walkin’ in off the street can sample a flight of coffees from all over the world, and compare and contrast flavors and aromas, body and balance, while elbow to elbow with the pros.

I hope I can stay longer next time… provided the place doesn’t kill me, first.

Case in point, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. After completing its original four-year mission, Cassini is now a year into a secondary, extended mission, and still sending back mind-bending images that stretch the imagination.

What’s the big deal, you say… you, who map the way to far-flung coffee shops on your iPhone, while tweeting with your third-graders in the back-seat watching video-on-demand in your minivan.

Try this on for size: Cassini was launched in 1997 (that’s 8 years before Youtube was launched) and is currently operating in various orbits around Saturn and its moons, some 3.5 billion kilometers away. The spacecraft gets by with a mere 885 watts of power for its on-board sensors and camera equipment; it manages its transportation feats by fantastic, gravity-assisted orbital loops… essentially leaching power from the gravity of the heavenly bodies it orbits. And those wondrous crazy photos it takes? Those are the result of two, one-megapixel cameras.

For more of those fantastical photos, see Boston.com’s Big Picture.