Commuter Confessional

I've been carpooling for about two months now. I alternate driving duties with a coworker from another department I'll call G.

G and I first met in a half day statistics class that all R&D people were required to take. It was the first time I'd met him but far from the last. Shortly after that, he transferred into a more closely related department to mine and he and I ended up on a project together. We were working well together and talking with some frequency, but we weren't what you'd call "friends."

Since then, though, something weird has happened in the car. We've developed this odd sort of intimacy when we're in the car. Oh, we talk at work and clown around when we run into each other.

Once we're in the car, it's totally different. It's like all pretences come off. We don't agree on religion or politics or a lot of other fairly big issues, but we can always discuss them openly. We open up about all sorts of things from work issues to family issues to the debauchery we were a part of in college.

The saving gas and helping the environment is great, but this unintended benefit was the nicest surprise of all.

Kinda sad in this day and age

I'm watching my sister's kids this weekend. Matt is 1 and Jack is 4.
I was putting Jack to bed and reading him Curious George Goes to the Hospital when he said to me, "My daddy is a doctor. Boys are doctors and girls are nurses." I said, "No your mommy is a doctor and she's a girl." He said, "No-oh. My daddy is a doctor and my mommy is a nurse because she's a girl."
I thought we were past that.
At least with little boys whose mommies are doctors.

An observation

Driving on US-22 in Somerset County, New Jersey looks a lot like playing Mario Kart on the Wii. Only with no surprise rewards.

And a lot scarier.

Just thought I'd share.

Where did these people learn to drive?

I think today was National Drive Like a Moron Day and no one thought to tell me. That's the only explanation. It started with a woman in a minivan flashing her brights at me at 6:40 this morning because my car can't go from a dead stop to 65 mph in under two and a half seconds. 

I'm not exaggerating. 

I carpool, so I have a witness.

It ended with three idiots who were so mesmerized by the lights of the highway paving project that they felt the need to do 45 mph in a 65 zone.

I don't think I'm some miraculously wonderful driver, but these people are ridiculous.

Hour of my life I will never get back and how I lost them

1. Those three hours I spent watching consecutive Kelly Martin movies of the week on ABC Family.

2. Time spent talking to the really vapid girl I used to work with in Kentucky.

3. That horrible movie, what was it? Oh yeah, Love or Something Like It.

4. The eight hours I lost coming up with a Halloween costume senior year of college.

5. Any time I spent trying to get my mother-in-law help plan my wedding.

6. Shopping with my sister. She's really indecisive.

7. Most of the sixth grade.

8. Getting on the one train all day that didn't stop where I needed to go.

9. Since June, I have spent about 8 hours listening to excuses why my intern can't/won't/didn't do what I need done.

10. My obsession with beating "My Sims" on the Wii.

11. Many many many reruns of The Brady Bunch and Saved By the Bell.

12. Those two lectures on dirt back in my college ecology class.

13. Time spent trying to convince a certain college roommate that another college roommate's life wasn't "empty and sad" because she wasn't compulsively religious.

Sometimes heirarchies suck

Like most workplaces, mine has two heirarchies: the official one that involves pay scales and reporting structures and official responsibilities and the much more important one that involves actual jobs and who will actually listen when you tell them what to do. That's the one that matters, and right now, that's the one that sucks.

As of last week, there were officially four of us reporting directly to my manager and one person who reported to the most senior scientist among the four of us. All four of us were, on paper, equal. Only on paper. First of all, the one guy, we'll call him D had a direct report. He had also been at the company the longest and was at the highest level. That made him de facto first chair scientist.

That was last week.

This week, D left for another group. 

The rest of us have been left to scramble for our place, and his job seems to have fallen to me. There were two of us at the same level, me and another woman I'll call C. C has been with the company slightly longer, but I have the more relevant background.

Trouble is, de facto first chair scientist kind of sucks. There's no pay raise and no recognition and everyone comes to you with eight million questions an hour.

All I want is to be left alone...