Journal of a Sabbatical

January 7, 1999

wasting time at the end of the millennium

There's barely a dusting of snow from last night. I'm starting to wonder when we're going to get a meaningful snowfall. I keep hearing about all the terrible storms in the Midwest and even just slightly north and west of here, but we seem to be trapped in a dry weather pattern. On the whole, we had better weather here in the past month than in many of the places people from here go to to escape the weather. There's been nothing to escape from lately, even the cold only lasted a couple of days in the single digit range.

My face is dry and itchy from walking directly into the cold wind on the beach yesterday, but that seems a small price to pay for the beauty. I could easily stay out there and get frostbitten without noticing. So, why am I not out there today? Good question. I don't know the answer.

I'm supposed to be working on the new virtual forest proposal but what I'm really doing is procrastinating. I'm really good at procrastinating. I don't even need to sharpen pencils or arrange things on my desk, I can just sit and stare out the window and have the illusion that I'm somehow making progress on the task at hand. I need some heavy think time to work out how to present this project so it will attract some funding. Or I could just sit here and chant some newage affirmations: "I have everything I need to put the dendrological archives online. Funding is flowing toward me from every source. Temperate zone conifers are already online." :-)

Wilbur wants to sit either on my shoulder or on my keyboard all the time today. It's awfully hard to type around him. For awhile he sat on the track pad and thumped his tail. Every time his tail thumped the cursor jumped to some strange place so I had words in the middle of other words and all kinds of things until I finally gave up. Wilbur's tail is different from the norm for feline tails. It's short and stubby and sort of flattened in the back. He moves it constantly. He stretches out on the floor and just rhythmically thumps his tail against the carpet for long periods of time. People who visit me all comment on his tail, and say he seems like a dog. The first time anybody sees him they immediately ask "what's with his tail?" even before they say "My god he has a big head!"

Well, Wilbur finally wandered off to check out the sounds of the new neighbors' dog in the hallway. I should seize this opportunity to work on the proposal but it's just so much more fun to browse the web, answer e-mail, look up all the rare books I can't afford on bibliofind...

Later... I finally gave up on the proposal and exercising my procrastination skills and spent some time reading Bernd Heinrich's The Trees in My Forest. He writes about the changes if forest composition over time on a tract of land he owns in Maine. I gather this is the same place he did his research for Ravens in Winter. It kind of makes me want my own personal forest where I can examine every tree and club moss and record where every species of bird nests. Of course, I could do those things without owning a forest. I'm sort of doing that with Watchemoket Cove - getting to know it in detail through all the seasons: my own personal tidal basin. I was driving home from my meeting tonight fantasizing about publishing my research on length of time buffleheads stay under on a dive as compared to hooded mergansers. Strange fantasy...