babe, your geekitude is growing

Or so says Kevin. I took a picture of a brown bug the other day, and I’m no longer content to just be calling one of the Universe’s creations a brown bug. I decided to brave the deep waters and fast currents of bugguide.net and ask for help identifying it. So, I’ve spent the last hour or so figuring out that I’d already created a login name for bugguide.net, retrieving my incredibly obscure, satan-created site password from the bowels of my email, figuring out how to reduce the file size of a picture so that the website would accept it, and uploading it. Oh, and this was after having clicked through page after page after page of bugs, hoping to find a match myself.

Within three minutes, I had my answer. And the answer was, “next time, take the picture right, you silly person.”

“Dorsal view critical”. OK, then. I’ll do better, next time. Thanks, v belov!  This reminds me of when I was first learning to identify trees in winter conditions, by looking at their buds. I’d be standing in my snowshoes, freezing my buns off, staring at twigs and buds, taking copious notes, and then I’d go back to the warm indoors to consult various field guides only to learn that I had neglected to look at, say, the pith of the twig in question, or some such. Ah well: the path to knowledge goes straight through the territory of cluelessness, does it not?

We’re in New Jersey, where it’s a million degrees, with a thousand percent humidity. We went to the beach, where it was blessedly cooler, and while I absent mindedly collected snail shells (checking them first for occupancy), I had a couple of long conversations with my sister, and then my best friend. That’s right, I was one of those jerks at the beach, talking on a cell phone. Not how I usually run the show.

But there was a lot to talk about. A very dearly beloved person in our world made the decision to take her life over the weekend. Heavy, heavy, sigh. I have often referred to – not just here, but also just generally – my best friend, as my wife. And Cis was basically that, for my sister. My co-sister, if you will. Cis, I love you, sweetheart. Rest in peace.