Journal of a Sabbatical

February 2, 2001

packing peanuts

Let's play find the eyepiece in the packing peanuts! Yes folks, I have given up on the odd hard to work Nikon Field Imaging System and bought a real eyepiece for the new scope. No longer will I be humiliated in the field while trying to identify a black-headed gull with only binoculars. No longer will they laugh at me as I try to adjust the brightness and contrast on the bizarre little monitor instead of squinting and peering into fine optics like a normal person - uh, that would be normal birder ... birders are not exactly normal ... uh, you know what I mean.

I actually ordered the Fieldscope eyepiece about a week ago and since it was being shipped UPS Ground and I didn't need to be home to sign for it, I'd sort of filed it in the upper left hand corner of my brain while I've been dealing with getting the new G4 for the Hungarians. That I did have to stay home and wait to sign for it. It came yesterday. I signed for it and verified that the box contained no illegal Chinese immigrants. Zsolt is terribly worried about illegal Chinese immigrants stowing away in my luggage. This is a guy who mailed a turtle so I guess he has different ideas about who or what can fit in a shipping box big enough for a desktop G4. Any immigrant in this box would have to be a really skinny contortionist.

So today I wasn't even thinking about package deliveries when UPS appeared with the eyepiece. But there it was. I knew immediately it was much too small to be a G4 or a Zip drive or a book... yes, it had to be the eyepiece.

I opened the box and packing peanuts sprang out willy-nilly clinging to everything in sight. Static electricity is a wonderful thing. So like, where's the the eyepiece? I fish around and finally just start dumping the packing peanuts into the trash. Thud. A small cardboard box with the words Nikon Fieldscope Eyepiece on it has fallen into the trash. It's not much bigger than the packing peanuts! Fortunately it landed on packing peanuts and not used coffee filters so it was fine.

I immediately screwed it into the Fieldscope and - voila! - a working scope! Too bad it's dark out...

Later that same evening... circa 9:30 PM...

It has started to snow as predicted. Apparently Busy Body is already in bed (she goes to bed at 7:30 normally) as she is not out there sweeping up the snow as it falls. I think I can safely go to sleep tonight without being awakened at an odd hour to move my car.