...there's no place like the Turnpike

Ways to really bug me

2009-06-26T14:54:00.000-07:00

Here are some things you can do if you are ever looking for ways to really annoy me:

1. Cut me off and then slam on your brakes.

2. When I send you a document to review, reformat the whole thing before you send it back to me (my manager loves to do this).

3. In the aforementioned document, correct my grammar so that it is wrong.

4. Leave an empty container of anything put away on the shelf (this pertains to both things at work and home, i.e., empty toilet paper rolls).

5. Park in more than one parking space.

6. Stop moving and have a conversation in a narrow passage or doorway.

7. Be really really late and don't have a good excuse like "My dog was hit by a car."

8. Ask me a question and then argue with me about why my answer is wrong.

The dumbest thing I've done in a long time

2009-05-27T15:36:00.000-07:00

We live in a townhouse. We only have a 6 foot x 3 foot patch of land that is ours to deal with. We are terribly negligent gardeners, so by Monday, when our next door neighbor was out gardening, ours looked like a small jungle. I was embarassed enough that I went outside to deal with it.

About half an hour into the work, I looked at the plant in my bare hands and realized that it looked an awful lot like poison ivy. Poison ivy to which I am exquisitely sensitive. Stupidly, I thought to myself, "Well, I'm already kneee and elbow deep in it, might as well finish the job."

Now it is 60 hours later. I have the worst case of poison ivy I or the physician's assistant in my doctor's office have ever seen. I have rashes fully up to my elbows on both arms and less scary ones crawling up both legs to my knees.

I was dumb enough to wear sandles, so the tops of my feet are red and swollen. I must have wiped my face, because my entire face is covered in a painful, itchy, hot red mask of torture.

The PA had a really hard time not laughing at me. I would, too, if it weren't so uncomfortable.

I kind of enjoyed parts of it.

2009-05-14T16:05:00.000-07:00

Traffic was miserable today, so we took an alternate route home. Along this route, there's a point where the left lane ends and merges into the next lane. It's well marked, you're well warned it is coming up. There's always one "special" person, though, who feels he or she should be able to ride that lane until the last possible second and then bully their way into the lane regardless of the placement of other cars.

Today, that guy really wanted to cut me off.

It was a rainy, icky day and I was in no mood. I held my lane and used the horn to express my displeasure as he tried to force his way into my lane by making me think my only other choice was to be side-swiped.

It worked.

I won.

I kept my lane and he began to rant and rave behind me. He went so far as to lean his head out of his car window to scream and yell at me.

I smiled and waved in the rear view mirror.

He tried to pull up on my right to cut me off, but he was in a dinky little Honda Civic and I was in my Matrix with the rather powerful Toyota Celica engine. While he was next to me ranting and raving, my fellow carpooler smiled and waved. Apparently, the only part of his rant my passenger could make out was this guy demanding that I pull over so he could either beat or shoot me (not sure which).

All of this left me thinking

(a) who would be dumb enough to pull over and let this guy beat or shoot them?

(b) what kind of man threatens a small woman in a car?

(d) how much of a jackass would he have felt like when his first swing landed him on the pavement and not because of the six-foot man riding in the car with me?

Things I Overheard on the Train (Part II)

2009-05-02T12:27:00.001-07:00

1. Some woman somewhere behind me talking very loudly about her son/brother/nephew who's back on the streets in the old neighborhood in Newark and back on the drugs.

2. Three women who prepared lots of gear and power foods for the 5K Revlon Run/Walk for Women...which they were simply preparing to walk.

3. Some woman and the conductor discussing how horrible it was that everyone was so mean to that nice Miss California. Highlights include:

"Nowadays if you're heterosexual you're wrong."

and "I don't care who you think you can love, you still can't procreate."

Things I Overheard on the Train To and From Newark

2009-04-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

1. Three very loud women discussing how loud they were.

2. A discussion of how some woman's fifth grader smells when he comes in from outside.

3. A very involved cell phone conversation trying to explain where to women were to people on the same three-car-long train.

4. Two conductors talking about mini-cheeseburgers.

5. Far more questions about where the only train on the platform goes than is reasonable from a pack of adults.

6. Tales of the girlfriends of the fifth grader in #2.

What is wrong with people?

2009-04-11T16:16:00.000-07:00

When it's pouring rain, and you're in your nice warm, dry SUV and I am walking through the freezing cold, wet parking lot, why on Earth would it be okay to speed up and block my path on my long walk, rather than just pause for a moment and let me keep walking?

Overheard in a bookstore

2009-03-28T19:55:00.000-07:00

Bookstores are sacred places to me, so it really really bugs me when people walk the aisles having loud conversations on their cell phones. Tonight, every aisle I went down I was plagued by a woman with a particularly loud voice having a particularly odd conversation. Here, are the parts I heard.

"Is this person someone you can confide in?"

"Is this the person you're going away with?"

"Why are you being so secretive about everything?"

(At this point, I dodged her for several minutes, so I missed a lot.)

"No. Coming out is very difficult."

"No. I wasn't shocked."

Okay, so here's what I pieced together. She was talking to a friend who was telling her about someone special in his/her life and whomever she was talking to was playing the pronoun game avoiding gender and then the person on the other end of the phone came out of the closet. All this while loudmouth was browsing the shelves in a bookstore...wow.

Downward Trend

2009-03-09T14:21:00.000-07:00

I was left waiting in the exam room at my doctor's office for an inordinately long time today. I always find myself trapped in this position with no good magazines in the room. That's how I know more than anyone over 15 should about the Jonas Brothers.

Today's reading material? Seventeen.

I haven't seen an issue of Seventeen since I was about 15 or 16. I do, however, remember that it was not quite as fluffy as the other teen girl magazines. It had longer articles on topics like health and relationships and things like that. It wasn't just fashion and boy advice, there was actual substance there.

Not any more.

There wasn't a single article over half a page in length. Ninety percent of what I saw was about clothes or hair or makeup or "getting guys."

There was one article about marrying young and getting into an abusive relationship. It was three paragraphs long and took up less than a quarter of a page.

And we wonder why teenagers today seem to lack substance and depth. Maybe we should have more faith in their ability to deal with depth and important issues.

The Big Dude and Mini-Me

2009-03-05T16:19:00.000-08:00

There's this guy at my gym that the dear boy and I refer to as "The Big Dude." Funny thing is, if we say this in front of anyone else who goes to this gym, they know who we mean. He's built like an aging linebacker. He always has a weight belt on and usually a chain around his waist with some ridiculous weight attached to it. He is usually found either yelling to encourage whomever he's working out with or grunting loudly so that everyone will turn and see how strong he is.

The Big Dude is usually found with a guy we call "Mini Me." Mini-Me is about 15 years younger than The Big Dude. He's one of those short, thick gym rat types. He's about 5'7" with buzzed, over-gelled hair and ridiculously large arm muscles. The kind that keep you from putting your arms all the way down at your sides. Mini-Me doesn't talk much, he just lifts too much weight while The Big Dude yells at him.

This entire world-view was called into question this week. The Big Dude has a distinctive head full of tight curly hair, a long face and a particularly weak chin. Tuesday night, I spotted a young man on the other side of the workout floor. It was as though The Big Dude of the past had time travelled to today. Same curly hair, same weak chin, but about 25 years younger. I jokingly told the husband, "Look, it's a real Mini-Me for The Big Dude." We laughed from several minutes and then moved on.

15 minutes later, there was The Big Dude. There was Mini-Me. And up walked The Big Dude of the Past. He really is The Big Dude's son. Now what do we do? How can Mini-Me be Mini-Me if there's an actual smaller copy out there?

For now we're calling them The Big Dude, Mini-Me and The Real Mini-Me, but we're taking suggestions.

Apparently it's like riding a bike

2009-03-01T14:01:00.000-08:00

I went roller skating today for the first time in like 7 years. I used to be a pretty avid rollerblader, but then I lived in a series of unnavigable cities and it fell by the wayside. Today, though, through a weird series of events, I ended up at a skating party. One that was pretty much all adults.

I was surprised to find that after a few shaky moments, I remembered how. Completely. It was weird. Other than weak ankles, it all came right back to me.

Characters I Meet At Work

2009-02-18T17:59:00.001-08:00

I make a lot of vague references to people at work on here. I've noticed that a lot of them are pretty funny characters.

* The Intern. Okay, technically, I'm supposed to call her a "co-op" but no one knows what that means. She's a nice kid, but it's a little like trying to manage a puppy. And she's totally naieve. Today, she told me she didn't realize there were still prostitutes because prostitution is illegal. But she's maturing.

* The Temp. He's a perpetual temp. I'm not sure why. Most temps want to get full time positions. He runs out of hours, goes away for a little while and then comes right back as a temp. Oh, and he's a dishonest sneak (see the post below).

* The Belgian. He's 27, but a very young 27. He's also very handsome and very nice. Overall, he's good to have around if for no other reason than he has great stories to tell after the weekends.

* Admiral Crabbypants. He wants you to think he hates everyone and everything. But then you find out that he won't eat veal because the baby cow suffers. He doesn't always wear his crabby pants. Sometimes, they're just crabby shorts.

* Jeeves. She's knows everything about everything and even when she's wrong she'll insist she's right. She's in charge of approving protocols for clinical studies and she likes to make up rules.

* The Boss. She's French. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

* The Pretty Pretty Princess. She's tall and blonde and always well dressed. The only meat she will eat is chicken. And only if it skinless and boneless and looks pretty.

* The Brit. He thinks he knows everything and is better than almost everyone. I think he took me seriously when I told him that Americans will believe anything if you say it with an accent.

* The Guy No One Likes. He once threatened to sue the company for discrimination and now he gets away with murder. He doesn't do any actual work. He stirs up trouble. He gossips. It's like having a 14 year old girl wandering the halls.

This is getting long, so I think there will be a part two in the future.

I didn't even know how to react

2009-02-05T14:58:00.001-08:00

Okay, I'm going to try and explain this in the simplest way possible, because no one cares about the science-y part of this, but some of it is key to the story.

There are four types of bacteria that I grow every day for the use of my entire group. They are always labelled by my intern with the name and then I label them later with the date, so essentially there are four big test tubes of cloudy liquid with two different handwritings on them sitting in the incubator every day. On this particular day, I promised to share one of those with the handsome Belgian lad.

I took what I needed in the morning and left the rest in the incubator for the Belgian. In the afternoon, he went looking for it and couldn't find it. Exasperated and thinking he was just being lazy, I went to look for it myself. True to his word, it was gone.

My first thought was that one of the interns had mistaken it for his boss' and used it. No big deal.

We asked him. He hadn't even touched it yet.

Damn.

The Belgian asked one of the temporary employees if he had it. He said no but offered him some of his own.

As I was marvelling over where on Earth a tube of bacteria could have wandered to, my friend commented that S was doing some work with the temp and she had bacteria. On a whim I went down the hall to see what they were using. There on the bench was a tube that clearly had my intern's handwriting followed by mine on the label.

"S, where did you get this?"

"It was in here. We grew it yesterday"

"No you didn't. That's my handwriting. This is mine. Why would you take it?" This would have been the perfect time to act like it was a mistake, apologize profusely and end the whole matter.

The Temp chimed in. "No. We grew this together yesterday. It was in here."

"Don't tell me I don't know my own handwriting!" I was so flabbergasted that I walked out. Two minutes of seething later, I had to go back and prove my point. I brought two more identically labeled tubes along to make my point.

Confronted with the evidence, they continued to insist that it had magically appeared in their incubator and they didn't know how on Earth it got there. I said, "What's done is done, but this was mine. Don't tell me I don't recognize my own handwriting. The Belgian needed this for his experiment today." And I walked out.

Still no apology. Still no reasonable explanation how something without legs walked down the hall. I don't even know how to react to this.

Why...

2009-01-15T18:05:00.000-08:00

...when the President's farewell address runs long (or something similar) do television networks join shows "already in progress." Is there some parallel universe where the show was already running? Did the recording start automatically down at the TV station and no one knows how to rewind it?

It just seems like there should be a better way to do this.

The sadder side of snow

2009-01-10T08:16:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning to a light snow fall. The ground was already covered and tiny, tiny flakes were continuing to fall. They're calling for 4-8 inches. Although I'm disappointed that we have to cancel plans to have dinner with my dad, I like snow. This is a happy thing.

Yesterday, on the way to work, though I heard about something sad. One little boy, was probably crying when he saw the snow. In the car yesterday, my fellow carpooler told me that today was supposed to be his son's long planned seventh birthday party. They were going to play laser tag. Because of the snow, they were likely to have to cancel.

I feel for him. I hope his sister at least plays in the snow with him all day.

Shameless

2009-01-01T13:37:00.000-08:00

I just noticed that is has been over a month since I last posted. I could give a million lame excuses why I did (traveling for the holidays, busy with work, nothing to say, etc.), but that just seems insulting. I really didn't have anything all that interesting to say.

Now, it's a new year and I am hoping to have something to say.

The holidays were busy and full: Thanksgiving and my sister's house, Christmas in Kentucky, an ugly bout of some sort of stomach bug, Christmas Day spent driving 700 miles, New Year's Eve in Atlantic City...but I can't say that anything out of the ordinary happened.

So, here's to a new year and hoping I have something to share.

And now I feel really old

2008-11-21T19:25:00.000-08:00

At any given moment, my company is populated by a number of interns from the nearby university. Usually, they just kind of blend in with our temporary employees. Then, a day like today comes along and we are reminded just how young they really are.

I was talking to the sweet young engineering student who has been with us since last spring. He's a geek like me, so we have a lot to talk about. I don't even recall what we were discussing when I said to him, "Goonies never say 'die'!"

"What?"

"Don't tell me you don't know Goonies."

"I just didn't hear you, what was that?"

"Goonie's never say 'die'!"

"What's that?"

"You really don't know Goonies?"

"What's a goony?"

"Damn, you're young."

I actually had to go across the hall and find one of my contemporaries to make myself feel better.

Nice try...

2008-11-20T17:19:00.000-08:00

A guy I did improv with in college is now the warm-up guy for a popular talk show host. He's living this fabulous life out in California, and every so often I get these mass emails with fabulous tales of life in the land of TV. His most recent one involved some pretty impressive one-on-one time with the aforementioned talk show host.

I replied to his email with some comments about how exciting his life is, especially in comparison to the land of the consumer-products company microbiologist. His answer was sweet. He tried to claim that he finds what I do equally fascinating and exciting.

Yeah. Nice effort. Miley Cyrus and Jessica Simpson never turn up where I work.

I'm a geek about everything

2008-11-06T17:45:00.000-08:00

Apparently, my special brand of geek is a sort of well-rounded, broad-range geek.

Tuesday night, while my boy sat beside me watching Indiana Jones, I had my laptop open with not one, not two, but three news sites running. I reloaded each about every three minutes.

I wanted to see every return as it rolled in.

I wanted to rejoice or despair in everyone.

I even looked at the county by county breakdowns.

I figure, if you're this much of a geek, the only thing to do is embrace it.

Commuter Confessional

2008-10-29T19:09:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-25T16:42:00.001-07:00

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

2008-10-23T19:42:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-10-15T19:02:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-06T19:38:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-02T17:41:00.000-07:00

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...

Float like a butterfly...

2008-09-18T17:52:00.000-07:00

I took my first boxing class tonight. There's not actual fighting, but it's actual boxing training.

The Kentucky boy and I signed up for the class at our gym on a whim. It's taught by a mini-Rocky who apparently was an actual boxer for many years. All we knew was that it would be some sort of circuit training involving boxing.

What it was turned out to be an hour long ass kicking. By the end of the shadow boxing, my arms were tired.

Then he said to do three minutes on the heavy bag. Which doesn't sound like much.

Until 45 seconds in when you can't move your arms any more.

It was tiring, but it was awesome. Now I will be badass in two countries!

Does this mean I'm getting old?

2008-09-13T09:11:00.000-07:00

Someone roped me into joining Facebook this week.

It's weird, because I keep getting friend requests from people I haven't talked to since high school. Some by choice.

It was nice chatting with the girls I was inseparable from in ninth grade (we didn't grow apart...just became less unseparable as I went the decidedly honors route and they went mostly just trying to get by...in high school, your friends are whomever you have class with).

What's weird has been the friend requests from (a) people like the girl I only sort of knew because we were in a theater group together briefly her senior year/my freshman year of college (b) people like the girl I've known since we were 6, but not always as friends...she was part of the group that bullied me in middle school...

I accepted the request from (b) mostly so I could see her pictures since she's still friends with a lot of kids from high school that were in my life, but not necessarily friends. It was nice to see that the two boys I had huge crushes on in high school have both gotten out of shape and overweight and kind if ugly now that we're in our 30s. It's also interesting to see if we're old enough now to recognize the horrible things we did as kids and get past them.

I'm waiting for her to make the first contact...

Everyone in the (car)pool!

2008-09-02T16:41:00.000-07:00

In my ongoing quest to do my part (and save some gas money), I started carpooling to work. I haven't been in a carpool since Kathleen Robbins' mom used to drive me to cheerleading practice. It's different as an adult.

I frequently work with my fellow carpooler and we have a good relationship, so we have plenty to talk about on the ride in (at least today), but I feel like we should have a "no talking shop in the car" rule.

But it's weird being in someone else's car (or even commuting with someone else in your car). Do I have to drive safer? Is it okay to openly vent my spleen at my fellow motorists (in a strictly metaphorical sense)? Can I talk back to the radio, as I am prone to do? Have I just given up two precious hours of "me time"?

Fall Return

2008-09-02T16:34:00.000-07:00

I'm finally back from....well....from some sort of moody little cocoon in which I had nothing nice to say so I followed Thumper's mom's rule and said nothing at all.

Wonderturtle posted a list of differences between her life in summer and her life in fall, which got me thinking about my own differences. However, Wonderturtle is a high school teacher, she lives an entirely separate life in summer. I, on the other hand, am a boring corporate research scientist. My days' look a lot alike.

Now that fall is here, my Fridays go all the way till the end of the day. You don't appreciate short Fridays until you lose them.

Now that fall is here, I have a lot more traffic (and school buses) to contend with in the morning.

Now that fall is here, my co-op student is around a lot less. Less time with the extra hands; less time spent trying to manage the scientific equivalent of an un-housebroken puppy.

Now that fall is here, the gym is crowded with teenagers convinced that this year they will make varsity.

Now that fall is here, maybe I will go back into my cocoon.

Why I have been silent lately

2008-08-14T19:02:00.000-07:00

An experiment that required three straight days of in at 4:30 a.m., stay still 6 p.m. coupled with a three day marketing heavy class...

If I didn't really like my manager...

Things I wish I'd never heard on an airplane

2008-08-03T17:22:00.000-07:00

I always thought that the time last summer when I heard the extremely young pilot on the extremely tiny plane from Bar Harbor, Maine say "Oh, that's what that does." would be the most discouraging thing I'd ever heard.

Then, I was sitting on a plane in Bozeman, Montana praying I would make my 20 minute connection at O'Hare when the bursar said, "Folks, we've got a minor mechanical issue that's being checked out so in the mean time, I'm going to start a movie here." If it's going to be a major repair, they don't leave you on the plane and if it's going to be a quick fix, they don't start a movie.

The other thing I didn't want to hear, about halfway through the flight, "Okay folks, I have some connecting gate information here for you, but first, can my passenger who's going to Philadelphia please raise you hand." It's a bad time to be the passenger going to Philadelphia. Turned out, they were so certain I wasn't making my connection that they had rebooked my flight before we even left Montana.

When we finally got to Chicago, I sprinted towards the gate for my first flight because the very kind bursar had suggested I try to make it. The plane was still there, unfortunately they had already closed the doors and used my seat to make some standby passenger very happy. I got to wait three more hours for the next flight and not even get to Philadelphia until midnight...

One more thing I am too high strung for

2008-07-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

I just got home from seeing The Dark Knight (It. Was. Awesome.); I loved it. However, much like with reality TV, I spent a large portion of the movie stressed out.

I am not cut out for suspense. I am not cut out for difficult situations that I can't change. I apparently can't even handle fictional situations. I'm sure there are plenty of psychologists out there who could write entire dissertations on what it means that television and movies stress me out.

Oh, and if you want a weird experience, go out and see The Dark Knight and then come home and watch the 1989 Batman with Jack Nicholson as The Joker. The contrast is so stark it's making my brain hurt.

Frightening things I have seen my fellow motorists doing

2008-07-18T18:34:00.000-07:00

1. Applying makeup. While in motion.
2. Reading the newspaper. While in motion.
3. Turning completely around to yell at children/pets.
4. Clearly not wearing seatbelts.
5. Eating, drinking, smoking and generally not watching the road.
6. Driving with one foot up on the steering wheel.
7. Studying for an exam. On the interstate. At 80 mph.
8. Cleaning ones ears. For like 15 minutes in morning traffic. It was gross.

Signs I'm Way Too High Strung

2008-07-09T19:11:00.000-07:00

I realize that I seem to comment on reality TV far too often, but this time it's a show I actually watch by choice. My sweet little Kentucky-bred mechanic has a secret passion for Gordon Ramsey and has passed onto me an interest in Hell's Kitchen. Last night was the finale.

I have no personal investment in this show. I don't know anyone who has ever been on it. I've never worked in a professional kitchen. I will probably never go to the restaurant the winner will work at. And yet, I was completely stressed out the entire time.

I know that these shows are edited to turn what is usually dull (real life) into something exciting and dramatic (a TV show). And, still, I get sucked in. I can't take the tension. I get upset when someone makes a huge mistake or when one of the returning losers seems to be sabotaging the whole thing.

I can only imagine what would happen if this were my life, and not TV.

Do you think they'll notice I'm not Bengali?

2008-07-05T17:02:00.000-07:00

For the past two days, my dental conference has shared the Toronto Convention center with the North American Bengali Conference. Never even occurred to me that they would have one, but I guess there's a conference for everything.

I have to say, they seem to be having a lot more fun than we are. We have poster sessions on gingivitis and oral cancer in the exhibit hall at one end of the convention center; they have Bollywood movies in the other exhibit hall. We have oral sessions on mouthwash and dental needs of the elderly in our small meeting rooms; they have kids doing bright colorful paintings and rooms full of really good-smelling food. We have hoards of Japanese dentists in dark suits; they have hoards of 70-something Indian women in brightly colored saris.

We considered trying to sneak in for lunch. We were willing to pay for it.

The one group that doesn't seem to be enjoying this event is the large number of first generation American and Canadian children that have been dragged along by their parents and grandparents. Most of them are tugging at their traditional clothes as though they are hoping they will turn into shorts and sandals. As they sit around eating their delightfully spicy lunch, they are staring longingly out the window at the hot dogs and french fries on the lunch trucks outside.

I considered paying one of those kids to trade places with me.

Oh! Canada!

2008-07-03T19:27:00.000-07:00

I got to Canada for a conference on Tuesday. It was Canada Day. We joined in the celebrations by going to a place called The Loose Moose and having a few Strongbows while amusing ourselves at the expense of a very nice, very cute bartender.

I could move to this country. The bartender told us "It's just like the States, but with fewer guns." If the guns are the only difference, then we should seriously consider tighter controls. The people here are so happy and so friendly.

So much so, that I have decided to think of all of the things besides fewer guns that would make them so much kinder:

1. Peacekeepers, not peacemakers. Fewer people try to get revenge on you when you're just maintaining the status quo.

2. Close ties to jolly old England. What's not to be happy about,

3. Hockey. It's fun to watch and a good, healthy way to blow off aggression.

4. Not despised by nearly as many countries as we are.

5. Something like 70% of the population lives within 200 miles of the US border (don't quote me on that), that means there are lots of nice empty places to "get away from it all."

6. Taking real action on the environment. I reads somewhere that Toronto is the greenest city in North America.

7. Rick Moranis, John Candy and the Kids in the Hall.

Flashes of a young jerseyaikidogirl

2008-06-30T19:19:00.000-07:00

I don't know why this came back to me suddenly.

You know how little kids will obsess over a movie and watch it over and over and over and over?

When I was seven or eight, that movie for me was the live action musical version of Peter Pan. I used to watch it two or three times in a weekend. Sometimes, two or three times in a day. I knew the words to all the songs and would sing along quietly if my sisters weren't around.

I don't know what caused the obsession and I don't know when or why it stopped.

I do know that it was gone by the time I was 22 and was watching Center Stage every Saturday.

Childhood Revisited

2008-06-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has been on TV a lot lately. The mildly creepy Johnny Depp one and the old 70s Gene Wilder one. It's the old one that got me a little bummed.

The problem with watching things that you enjoyed as a child when you're an adult is that the jaded adult eye kind of ruins the magic of it all. I'm not just talking about how fake things look or the inability to suspend disbelief. I am talking about the other themes that you suddenly get.

With Willy Wonka it's not just the drug-trippy nature of the whole thing or the horrible things that happen to the children. It just all seems...bad. Every detail is suddenly harder to take. I found myself thinking that Grampa Joe sounded drunk the whole time.

I remember a night my freshman year of college when we all piled into someone's dorm room to drink hot chocolate and watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I don't know who started it, but suddenly we turned it from a happy childhood tale into a tale of racism and the man keeping Rudolph and the inexplicably gay wannabe dentist elf down.

It was depressing. I'm afraid to go back and watch Song of the South.

Part of the herd

2008-06-25T19:05:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed how people's moods tend to feed off of each other?

I'm not just talking about how one giddy person can make everyone else silly or how when one person is in a snit the whole office goes down hill fast. Other emotions are catching, as well.

What got me thinking about this was tonight at aikido practice. I don't know who started it, to be honest it might have been me. But I do know that we all had really long days at work and we were all kind of tired. We got going (just three of us and the instructor) and for some reason we all settled into this really intense rhythm. No one cracked a smile for about 15 minutes. We were all staring each other down.

It was scary.

Robbery near the highway

2008-06-09T19:04:00.000-07:00

This is not just another rant against rising gas prices. It's been done to death. This is a rant against a more subtle way the gas stations have started to pillage our bank accounts.

Around here, the new trend is for gas stations to recoup the cost of running your credit card by charging six to ten cents extra per gallon for the privilege of paying by credit card. This pradctice annoys the living daylights out of me so I have been trying to swing my business over to the few remaining stations that don't do this.

As though they know what I am thinking, the gas stations have gotten more clever. I pulled into what I thought was the cheapest station in the area yesterday. It was only after the pump was in my tank that I noticed the (much smaller) sign informing me that it was ten cents more per gallon to use a credit card. This was, of course, after the man had already run my card.

I doubt that central New Jersey is the only place in the world where this is happening. Where is the outrage? Imagine the rioting in the streets if the grocery store or a department store started charging people more to pay with a credit card.

Safety first?

2008-06-06T15:39:00.000-07:00

I returned from a week at a conference to learn that there'd been an "incident" with my co-op student.

She's a nice kid. Really bright, really eager and really careful in the lab. So you can imagine my surprise when I got an email while I was away telling me that she had burned herself.

Apparently the story is that she reached across someone and passed her arm near the open flame of a bunsen burner. It's something I've done million times myself. It never even really gets that warm, and I've certainly never burned myself. But when she did it, her disposable lab coat caught fire. It melted to her arm and that's what caused the actual burn.

Let me explain this again. We don't get permanent lab coats for temporary employees. We give them thin disposable ones. I always knew they didn't do a good job of protecting you from spills and things. You know, what you'd expect a lab coat to do.

Permanent lab coats are also flame retardant. Not only is this not true of the temporary ones, but it appears they are more flammable than regular fabric or human flesh or, possibly, some low grade fireworks.

Who makes these things?

the prodigal blogger returns

2008-06-05T17:44:00.000-07:00

I admit it, I've been a slacker. Big time.

In my defense, I was on vacation (more in a minute) and then I had to travel for work. But now I'm home.

We went on a Mediterranean cruise for eight days. It's always been my dream to go to Santorini and it was the most beautiful place I've ever seen....ever.

I'll write more about it soon. For now, I owe the poor boy that I left for the week some attention.

Flavor of stupidity

2008-05-04T17:46:00.000-07:00

I know. I know. I'm obsessing about bad reality TV on VH1, but I spend a lot of time at the gym and I get bored easily. I just can't understand why season after season these women on Flavor of Love and Rock of Love think that this time the washed-up somewhat icky celebrity will really love them and it will last forever. Despite the fact that these has-beens have been choosing the "woman of their dreams" for three seasons each.

And who would sit there and kiss/romance/lap dance some washed up star just to be on TV.

Are we really supposed to believe that you think Flavor Flav is hot?

Neighbor Kid

2008-05-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

I live in a townhouse in a quiet development. In one of the homes across the street from us lives a teenage boy. Like many a teenage boy, this one owns a skateboard. Like many a teenage boy with a skateboard he spends a lot of time on the road between our homes trying to do tricks.

He makes me wonder something. When you see skate rats out on the street, how come they so rarely have any sort of skill?

My parents live down the street from a church with a large open parking lot. Every day of my life there was a pack of boys with a flipped over picnic bench trying to do skateboard tricks. I can count on one hand the number of times I saw any of them actually land on their feet with their board.

Where are all the skaters with skills and why do the rest of them think they're so cool when they can't do anything?

Too far even for VH1

2008-04-29T16:16:00.000-07:00

I had hoped the reality TV craze would die when the writers' strike ended. And I know I comment on bad TV far too often, but I have a lot of time to think at the gym.

Today, I watched something truly appalling. I think it was called "Celebracadabra." It involved B-list former celebrities trying to eke out five more of their 15 minutes in the spotlight by being trained to be magicians.

Street magicians.

Watching Carnie Wilson and C. Thomas Howell and a Pussycat Doll and some comedian I'd never heard of named Ant duke it out for audiences outside Graumann's Chinese Theater caused physical pain. Seriously.

The actual magic tricks were halfway decent (each "celebrity" has a professional magician as a coach). The sniping and back-biting and showmanship was icky.

The cheesiest part, though, was the end. You are not cut from this show. You "disappear." Literally. Poor, not ready for street magic Carnie sat in an ornate chair, the host put a piece of fabric over her, waved his hands, pulled it off and she was gone.

Now if only that trick would work on an entire television network...

In times of crisis

2008-04-18T19:30:00.000-07:00

I wasn't sure if I was going to post about this, or how, but it's been hanging over me all week, so I might as well. Over the weekend, a coworker lost her young adult son in a motorcycle accident. It's times like this that either bring out the best or the worst in people.

I work in a department of about 30 people and, like any other group of people who spend a lot of time together, we have our ups and downs. For the most part, it's like a big extended family. You like some of your cousins, you can't stand others, but when push comes to shove, they're yours. So, it was no surprise to me how quickly everyone rallied around to support this woman in such a horrible time.

It was a matter of minutes before a collection was taken up and a card passed around. Tuesday, almost everyone went to the viewing, even people who barely knew this woman.

Everyone, that is, except one guy. This particular gentleman always seems to have a complaint about everyone and is, in his mind, always the victim of some sort of discrimination. When he was approached about whether or not he needed to follow someone to the funeral home, he said, "I'm not going. She was never nice to me. She never liked me." Someone tried to explain to him that this wasn't about that. It was about the fact that this could happen to any of us. That, he himself, had kids and should understand.

Not only did he refuse to go. He lied and said he was going and used the situation to leave work early.

This week showed me the kindest, most sensitive side of 99% of my coworkers, but it's that last 1% that has left a bad taste in my mouth.

Does this make me a bad person?

2008-04-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

I normally love kids. Ask anyone who knows me. Unlike many childless people my age, I find it easy to talk to them. I generally "get" them and know how to get through to them. I am far from someone who merely tolerates them.

But there is one particular child, a boy of twelve now, that I just can't stand. I really like his parents and even his older sister, so I will do my best to limit the identifying details. But I have known this kid since he was around eight.

He was always one of those wound up, mouthy kids. At eight, it was almost cute, in a precocious sort of way. You could find ways to find him amusing. Plus, he was little. You always assumed he would outgrow it.

At ten, his behavior was a little immature, but he was the youngest of three children and you could see where life with two older sisters might have made him this way. It was safe to guess that he would calm down over the next few years and, like his sister before him, become a pretty cool teenager.

Now, he is twelve. Unlike most people, this is actually my favorite age. They're old enough to really talk to and occasionally tackle serious issues with, but they're still kids at heart. Despite their encroaching maturity, there is this charming innocence that kids this age try so hard to hide, but inevitably fail.

Not this kid.

What was precocious at eight is impertinent at twelve. Time has not calmed him. In fact, it may have made him a little crazier. He is in little brother mode constantly, at an age when most kids reserve little brother mode for home only. He's downright unpleasant to be around.

Yet, a part of me still feels guilty for disliking him. He's still just a kid.

I am a geek

2008-04-13T15:56:00.000-07:00

This isn't a secret to anyone who has ever met me. It's not even something I try to hide. I subscribe to Geek Monthly, so I think I'm technically a card-carrying geek.

Lucky for me I married a geek.

And this weekend was a thoroughly geeky one. We discussed new cell phones (which we aren't due to get until July).

We played video games (he likes Quake, I like The Sims, we both like anything involving fighting on the Wii).

We watched a Star Wars Marathon on Spike TV. We had a minor catastrophe when our DVD player decided that every DVD we put in it was from the wrong region. We used Google to solve the problem.

Tonight we'll probably eat dinner and then deconstruct the mixed martial arts fighters while surfing on our laptops for neat new gadgets.

Overheard in the airport part II

2008-04-03T19:55:00.001-07:00

A man sitting behind me made a 40 minute continuous string of business phone calls. He was talking about meetings and reviewing things and all sorts of things that anyone who works for any big company talks about. Then I heard this (in a think North Carolina accent):

"I'm just going to call Houston and tell 'em to go get three bottles of Jack and send 'em over to the Girls Gone Wild bus. You get 'em three bottles of Jack on the Girls Gone Wild bus they'll be in hog heaven."

What job other than Jack Daniels sales rep involves this conversation?

Overheard in the airport

2008-04-03T04:58:00.000-07:00

The man sitting next to me on the phone with one of his sons.

He was telling the son that he was on the way to Florida with his sister to help his mother make arrangements for their father's funeral. It was clear that he had passed away after a long illness (there was talk of "not having to tell anyone to turn off the machines").

Fine, so it was not an unexpected death. But, one of the man's carry on items for his trip to his father's funeral? A tennis racket.

Who thinks of these things at a time like that?

Bad Car-ma (sort of part II)

2008-04-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

Just a day after I read here about my dear friend Hulk's bout of bad "car"-ma, I had my own.

In a rare moment, some coworkers and I decided to actually leave the site for lunch today. I offered to drive.

We were on our way down the windy little road that our company is on when a truck driving the other way kicked up a pebble...right into my windshield. It was a tiny little thing, but it hit it just right to leave a BB-sized star-shaped nick in my windshield.

It's also just enough that my car will fail the state motor vehicle inspection if I don't fix it.

Did I mention that my windshield is made of some special sort of glass and the dear husband once priced it and it's like $3000 to replace??

The joys of preschool

2008-03-30T16:16:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law's grandmother, Rosie, passed away this week on her 100th birthday. Today, there was a large gathering at my sister's mother-in-law's house in Rosie's honor. When we arrived, we followed the squeaky voice of my three-year-old nephew into the living room. He was playing Candy Land with his uncle from the other side of the family.

Only a three-year-old would manage to insist on playing Candy Land with two dice and a dreidl instead of cards. Maybe we should all take a lesson in throwing out the rules from him.

Pools of Sweat (literally!)

2008-03-28T15:43:00.000-07:00

I don't really have the attention span for the gym. I can only endure 30 minutes on the elliptical with my iPod in my ears and something interesting on one of the TVs (I read the closed captioning). I usually end up watching something horrible and trashy like "Flavor of Love with Flavor Flav" or "I Love the 80s" or "America's Next Top Model" or "Fox News."

Today, the only elliptical free was way at the back (on a Friday!) so that's where I was stuck. The screens with the truly terrible shows on them (I know I saw Right Said Fred on one screen) were too far away to read the captioning on and the vaguely interesting news programs all had the captioning turned off. I was forced to amuse myself by looking at my fellow exercisers.

I belong to a family sort of gym. The kind of place that has all sorts of activities and classes for the kids and half of the trainers are busy with scrawny teenage boys hoping to make Varsity next fall. This is not a crowd of "the beautiful people." This gym is populated by average people with average lives.

One of my not-so-fabulous-looking fellow exercisers was a man in his late forties or early fifties riding a stationary bike. His T-shirt was soaked through. His face was bright red. His hair stuck to his head at awkward, damp angles.

As I was walking away, headed for the weight machines, I noticed a puddle about half an inch deep on the floor surrounding this guy's bike. It took me a minute to realize that this was a pool of this guy's sweat.

Do you think he mopped up after himself?

Signs you should just go home and crawl back to bed

2008-03-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

I got my morning coffee and I was starving so I got a doughnut to go with it. I put the sugar in my coffee and stirred it.

As I was reaching for a lid, I knocked over the entire cup of coffee. Not only did I make a mess and have no coffee, I spilled it right on the doughnut. I had no breakfast either.

The day went downhill from there.

Population explosion

2008-03-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

I'm in one of those weird phases where everyone everywhere seems to be having babies. I mean everyone. And this isn't just a product of the wave of everyone getting married, considering that (a) that was four years ago and (b) a lot of these are second babies, or babies late into marriages, things like that.

It started with the husband's friend's wife (the couple that had sworn they didn't want children) who had a little boy in early February. Next was a former coworker who had a little girl a few weeks ago. Another coworker is going out on leave next week in anticipation of the birth of her little girl. Then there's the wife of a friend from grad school and another woman at work.

Today, I even got an email with pictures of a newborn baby girl born to a couple that I didn't even know was expecting.

Why do these things come in waves? Do people sense each other's fertility? Is it contagious? If you miss one wave, are you destined to remain childless until the next one comes along?

And then she got political

2008-02-28T16:20:00.000-08:00

This morning I was reminded of why I worry about the power of the religious movement in America today. The following line, from a woman waiting for Singles' Bible Study (um...Singles' Bible Study? Is this to imply we now advertise Bible study as a meat market?) at a Texas Mega Church, was aired in an NPR story on the upcoming Democratic Primary:

"As a woman, of course I admire how far Hillary Clinton has been able to go with this. But I also believe in the submission of women to men. I believe that we need to have a man running this country."

Would someone like to tell all of the female lawyers and executives and professors out there that they (we?) should be submitting to men to restore order in the universe?

The New National Epidemic

2008-02-24T16:54:00.000-08:00

Forget about this year's flu outbreak or tainted beef, the real epidemic is the mini van/SUV craze.

Without fail, five minutes after a coworker or friend announces a coming baby, they are at the Dodge dealer eyeing the new Caravans.

I will admit that with the current car seat guidelines, you really can't have more than two kids in the backseat of an ordinary sedan. But back in the 80s, my parents fit three of us in the backseat of a Honda Civic hatchback. We didn't even have three seatbelts in the backseat, but we all survived to adulthood.

What reason is there for a family with one child to have a seven passenger mini-van. Or, for that matter, when you have two kids who are out of car seats, what need is there for seven seats? I once asked a coworker and mother of two teenagers what need she had for a mini-van. Her argument was that she needed room for friends and things.

Excuse me? You buy a bigger car so your kids don't have to interact with their family members? My parents had three kids of their own to worry about, there were no friends coming along on family outings.

Until you have a need for three car seats, or you have more than three children, no family needs to be in anything the size of a Hummer.

Sometimes, I know too much

2008-02-22T13:20:00.000-08:00

I'm one of those people who remembers every stupid little fact they ever hear.

Sometimes, it's a hazard.

I went to Boston on business earlier this week and for the entire week leading up to it, I kept trying to remember this song my dad likes to sing about some guy who gets on the T and doesn't have enough money to get off, so he has to ride the train forever. I knew the song was from the 60s, so I asked every American over the age of 35 I could find, in hopes that someone remembered.

An awful lot of people now think I'm nuts.

But I had some vindication when I got to Back Bay station and saw that Boston calls its MetroCard a "Charlie Card." I knew the guy in the song was named Charlie.

Still, no one knew a thing about the song.

Then, a break through. We got five inches of snow today, so I got a day off of work. I had time to search the internet for this. And immediately send it to the people who currently think I'm crazy.

Now if only I could find proof of that TV show from the early nineties that only lasted four episodes...

Smoke in the living room?

2008-02-21T19:20:00.000-08:00

The husband cooked tonight. He fried things (egg rolls, to be exact). He swears he remembered to turn the fan on over the stove top. Why, then, are my eyes burning like someone just gave me a raw onion facial?

On a wholly unrelated note, go on over to smash and mediate, the Hulk's blog about law school. Very funny stuff. Funnier than me.

I am suddenly inspired to stomp on the joy of millions of children

2008-01-06T16:49:00.000-08:00

Before I begin, let me say that I like kids. At least the kind that were raised to behave like human beings and respect other people and things. But there is one thing that, when owned by any child on the planet, makes me crazy.

Those stupid sneakers with the wheels in them.

They annoy me.

I just don't think it's okay for kids to skate anywhere they feel like it. And the kids that have them are always doing things like weaving down the aisles of stores. They never pay attention to other people or care if they are in the way or being dangerous. These are also the same children whose parents will sue everyone in sight if their precious angel were to crash and get hurt while roller skating unprotected (I've never seen a kid in a helmet rolling around the mall) in the sort of place where they shouldn't.

I curse the day these things were invented and always applaud stores with signs banning them.

And know I know why I will never be in style

2008-01-01T19:19:00.000-08:00

In the past few years, I will admit that I have been becoming more girly. I carry a purse (something I resisted for years). I dress for work. I wear make up. I splurge on the occasional manicure and pedicure. Heck, I finally have nails to get manicured. But I've resisted all interest in fashion beyond the practical, "I don't want to look completely out of touch when I show up for work."

However, every so often, my mother and/or sisters will hand me an issue of In Style magazine that they are through with. And even less often I will find myself bored enough to actually read it.

Tonight was one of those times. I am happy to report that it served to remind me why it is completely not worth the effort for me to even try to be in style (beyond the fact that I see nothing wrong with wearing white whenever you damn well please).

I am completely uninspired by helpful advice like the following, found in an article entitled "365 Star Style Secrets: Boost your style quotient this year with some celebrity know-how."

* "Nothing is sexier than the red sole of a Christian Louboutin heel." - Lindsay Lohan

* "To make lips look naturally pink, I put on -- then wipe off -- red lipstick and then apply clear gloss." - Halle Berry

* "If I don't wear a bra with a dress, I wear pasties so my breasts aren't like, 'Hello!'" - Gisele Bundchen

* "Bring your hot husband along and you can do no wrong." - Becki Newton

* Try individual false lashes. For a big event all you need to wear are fake lashes to look glamorous." - Daisy Fuentes

Phew! I am so glad to have all of this expert advice at my fingertips.

Back from the abyss

2007-12-27T18:52:00.000-08:00

Okay, I admit it, I've been negligent. Well, more than negligent. Negligent would be disappearing for a week or so. Disappearing for six weeks must qualify as derelict or delinquent or some other tenth grade vocabulary word.

I have no excuses. I just haven't been inspired. Rather than bore you with thoughts that don't even interest me, I decided to stay quiet. But, at last, I have a thought interesting enough to share.

My company has a "use it or lose it" policy towards vacation. As of January 1st, any unused days are gone. It's a lovely company and I love my job, but not enough to work for them for free. What this means is that Since December 21st, I've had to work exactly half a day. I went in for a few hours Wednesday morning and have been off since.

I have learned in this time that I am not cut out for a life of leisure. I am bored out of my mind. I can only play with my Wii and watch TV and read books for so long. And I love to read. But I'm going crazy here. And I have a few days left!

Things you just don't think of

2007-10-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

I got to the gym today and there were signs everywhere that due to a water main problem the building had absolutely no water. I was vaguely irritated by the prospect of working out with no water, but I knew that in a pinch I could buy a bottle of water from the vending machine, so I soldiered on.

Soldiered on, that is, until I was reminded that I hadn't thought to pee before leaving work. I drink a lot of water during the work day. This lack of forethought and fine level of hydration came together to work against me midday through my run.

I decided I was tough enough to keep trying so I went to the ab machine.

After 150 crunches, it became unbearable.

I ended up having to go home and not finish my workout all because I had to pee. Good thing I live close to the gym.

I Was a Weird Kid

2007-10-06T07:52:00.001-07:00

Time for more true confessions.
Reasons that it isnt' surprising that a lot of my childhood was spent alone:

* I didn't just pour salt on slugs, I tried to bring them back to life by putting water on them.
* I was really into Culture Club. I dressed up as Boy George for Halloween when I seven.
* I liked the end of summer because wearing pants meant I didn't have to worry about my socks matching.
* I still had a dollhouse (and played with it) when I was 12.
* I had no interest in reading books like Sweet Valley Twins. I was reading Ray Bradbury books in the third grade.
* I hated gym class and kickball made me cry.

A Word of Advice

2007-10-04T19:15:00.000-07:00

If someone is trying to do something to make your life easier while they are out of town. And to do that something nice for you, they have to go back to work after an off-site meeting that everyone else is just using as an excuse to leave early on a Friday. The last thing you should do is make fun of that person and call them an ass kisser.

Just sayin'.

What's in a name

2007-10-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

I babysat for Katie this weekend and while sitting around with my sister and brother-in-law, Wonderturtle came up in conversation. Last May, following our wedding, WT shared a cab to the airport with my sister and brother-in-law and taught them The Law and Order Game. From that day forward, my brother-in-law declared her one of the coolest people he'd ever met. But, when she came up by name on Saturday, he had no idea who she was. No idea, that is, until my sister said "You, know, Law and Order."

It got me thinking about how the simplest little things can quickly become our identities to people who barely know us. I thought about college. Big Head Girl, who worked on a play with some friends and made a nuisance of herself and had a big head. Willem Dafoe Keychain Girl, who made the mistake of telling a story in class about talking to her Willem Dafoe keychain. The Guy Who Looks Like Danny Siegel, who...well...looked like our friend Danny Seigel. Annoying Question Guy, whose name I learned after several other classes with him but who never stopped asking annoying questions designed to show the professor how much he knew. There were countless others.

The same thing happens now whenever I find myself at a scientific conference with someone I know. We end up referring to other people at the conference by single events or minor physical attributes that become their identity.

Other than the names that are vaguely cruel physical descriptions, most of them were based on a single event, a single comment in class that might have had very little to do with the person's actual character. Yet, its the tiny, seemingly pointless moments in our lives that often come to define us.

A window into my marriage

2007-09-21T19:51:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, my husband and I got new alarm clocks. They were pretty cool for a number of reasons. First of all, they were self setting. You just plug it in and the numbers whir for a moment and then the time is set. The second cool thing was that you can set it so that the display goes dark and you wave your hand in front of it to get it to turn on. A nice feature when you consider how bright that clock is in the middle of the night when you're trying to sleep.

One night, while setting the alarm, I noticed a point on the clock marked "wave sensor." I played with it a bit and realized it was the point to wave in front of to get the display lit. Then I noticed a spot marked "alarm days" and I figured out that you could leave the alarm turned on and have it go off just on weekdays, just on weekends or every day. Then I noticed a button on top that said "alarm off"...that was one mystery solved.

It was as I was finishing up the discoveries that I could have gleaned by reading the manual I saw a tiny spot that wasn't lit up but said "battery". That was the final piece. I knew how it set itself. There is a lithium battery somewhere inside that is capable of storing the time after it's been set in the factory.

All this went through my head in the moments immediately after setting my alarm.

I told all this to my husband when he came upstairs and he said to me, "You know what I think about when I set my alarm? What time I have to get up."

Add one more

2007-09-15T05:48:00.001-07:00

In my ever growing family, we now have:

Nik (almost 9) and Jak (about 8 months) (and Lucy) in Kentucky.

Eleven month old Katie.

Almost three year old Jack (yes, it is confusing having two Jacks).

And introducing Jack's little brother...

Matthew Harrison. As of this writing, two days old.

Abuse of power

2007-09-06T14:28:00.000-07:00

This morning, as I slogged through my morning commute, I witnessed the most blatant abuse of power I have seen recently.

I was driving along the same long stretch of two-lane highway I travel for miles every day when my early-morning fog was broken by a quick flash of red and blue lights. I wondered for a moment how any soul had driven fast enough in this growing crowd to warrant a speeding ticket.

After a moment, I saw two cars pull into the left lane and I continued to wonder which one was the culprit. But instead of following them into the right lane and off of the road, the officer turned his lights off and moved on. S/he didn't seem to be in any particular hurry and neither lights nor siren made a command appearance.

As best I can tell, this fine upstanding citizen, a representative of our government decided that having cars in front of him/her on the road was too burdensome and chose to abuse the authority of his office to make them move.

Appalling.

Rodney Dangerfield and the state of New Jersey

2007-09-05T18:48:00.000-07:00

...both get no respect.

It's the time of year when we all have to decide if there are any conferences we want to attend next year. Budgets are being drawn up and now is the time to stake your claim on travel money.

A colleague and I were combing a few scientific society websites to see if there were any good meetings being held in any good cities in the coming year. We stumbled upon a wholly irrelevant meeting that caught our attention because the location was simply listed as "overlooking New York City."

What could this ever mean? Would the meeting be held in a blimp over the city? A constantly circling airplane? A very high treehouse?

We looked at the details on hotel accommodations to see if we could figure it out from that. A lovely description of the easy access to the city and the nearby attractions filled that page. Still no mention of an actual city and state. But there was a hotel name: Hyatt on the Hudson.

Hyatt on the Hudson, it turns out, is located in glamorous Jersey City, New Jersey. Now, despite a recent revitalization, Jersey City doesn't exactly have the greatest reputation in the world. And it's not exactly a tourist hotspot. So, I can accept that Jersey City isn't a great selling point. However, you could at least mention the state of New Jersey.

The NY Giants play in New Jersey. Concerts in New Jersey are billed as being in New York. We got our claim to the Statue of Liberty taken away from us. Now, we can't even trust scientists to come if they know it is in New Jersey....

I wonder

2007-09-03T16:01:00.001-07:00

When you get passed on the highway by one of those jerks doing 100 mph and swerving in and out of lanes and cutting everyone off and almost causing accidents, do they think that they're really good drivers and everyone else is terrible? And where is a state trooper when you need one (for karmic purposes)?

Ritual

2007-08-29T18:59:00.000-07:00

When I was a child, every change of season brought with it the family ritual of changing over our clothes. One Saturday, the date of which I can only imagine was determined by some sort of complex mathematical formula, we would head into the attic and haul down the bins and bags of clothes.

Each of us had to go through our dressers and closets and bag up anything that was worn out or just unwearable. Then, last year's clothes came out. Anything questionable had to be tried on. Anything outgrown got passed down the line.

I was the youngest, and therefore the end of the line. Anything I outgrew went to Goodwill. But there was always something slightly out of date to be passed down to me.

It was always kind of fun to rediscover clothes you had forgotten. And sometimes the hand-me-downs were something you actually wanted. But the real winner was always my oldest sister. Her clothes always got to be new. She always got to pick them herself. They always fit.

I hated her at those times.

All summer in a day

2007-08-23T14:28:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite Ray Bradbury stories is about a class of children who live on Mars (I think it was Mars, it's usually Mars) and on Mars the sun only comes out for two hours once every seven years. The rest of the time it is gray and rainy.

These children are young and so they have never seen the sun. They've lived their entire lives indoors with sun lamps. All of them except for one little girl. She moved there from Earth when she was older and so she remembered what warm sunny days were like. The children were getting ready for their first day of sun and this little girl was telling the rest of them what the sun was like.

The other children got angry that she had seen the sun already and so, to get even, they locked her in a supply closet just before the sun came out and she missed the whole thing.

This is what the past week has felt like.

I've got all my sisters with me

2007-08-19T16:10:00.001-07:00

I guess I never realized growing up that I had a pretty good family. From my cynical, too intense for my own good adolescent vantage point we were all wrong. My parents argued occasionally. My middle sister and I argued constantly. My oldest sister wanted nothing to do with the rest of us.

College, though, gave me an opportunity to see into other people's lives in a way that day to day life at home hadn't. My sisters and I spoke on the phone at least once a week. I looked forward to seeing my parents. Meanwhile, I made friends who didn't have it so good.

The friend who hardly spoke to her older sister and was never even quite certain where she was living. The boy downstairs whose father had nothing to do with him until he was a teenager. The classmate whose parents barely tolerated each other and would have been much happier if they never had to see each other again. Suddenly I felt lucky.

As I was preparing for my Ph.D thesis defense, Colleen commented that she was looking forward to the opportunity to meet my family. I asked why and she replied that it always sounded like we were five very different people but we all seemed to get along so well.

I think that's a pretty good description. But it all works really well.

I love Muppets!

2007-08-17T14:29:00.001-07:00

AnthemSled directed me to the Muppet Personality Test.

It is frighteningly accurate.

You Are Dr. Bunsen Honeydew

You take the title "mad scientist" to the extreme -with very scary things coming out of your lab.And you've invented some pretty cool things, from a banana sharpener to a robot politician.But while you're busy turning gold into cottage cheese, you need to watch out for poor little Beaker!"Oh, that's very naughty, Beaker! Now you eat these paper clips this minute."

The Muppet Personality Test

Why Children and Puppies are So Cute

2007-08-08T18:54:00.001-07:00

This past Saturday, my sister came over with almost-three-year-old Jack to go swimming. In the solitary 15 second interval when no one was in the room with him, Jack managed to find a Sharpie marker and scribble on my only recently paid off sofa.

We had the foresight to pay extra for the stain guarding, so the marker came out immediately. My sister suffers from some distorted yuppie notion that she need not discipline her son, so all he really got was a stern talking to. I also let him know that he was lucky it had come out because if he hadn't he would have been banned from my house until he was 18.

Then, he got he sweetest look on his face, apologized and hugged me. As a proper indulgent aunt, I immediately melted. At this rate, Jack just may live to see four.

Un-real

2007-08-03T19:00:00.000-07:00

I've been bothered by something for a long time now. I despise reality TV. But that isn't what bothers me, per se. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to watch people shoved into a contrived reality, like being locked in a house with someone that they don't know is actually their half brother.

What bothers me is that long ago I used to love watching the original reality show, the early seasons of MTV's The Real World. And I love watching Ace of Cakes. And I once lost an entire weekend to Showbiz Moms and Dads.

I should say more that this used to bother me. It doesn't bother me now that I've figured it out. I don't mind watching reality shows that actually just film reality and edit it together in a dramatic fashion.

It's the Survivor-BigBrother-Apprentice style shows that bug me. Let's put people in totally contrived situations and make them compete so that we can all watch the absolute worst in humanity come crawling out.

Ick.

Tales (of horror) from the Road

2007-07-27T21:41:00.000-07:00

We're off on a mini-vacation, driving to Cincinnati for the wedding of two friends. I've been on some pretty horrific road trips and spent the night is some truly scary motels before (a motel in the middle of nowhere eastern Ohio where we were stranded in a snowstorm and were the only people staying there; the hotel at Mammoth Cave in the off season; a Motel 6 in the not-so-nice part of our nation's capital...and those were all on one trip), but last night was the worst yet.

It was getting late and we saw an exit with a number of hotel options. We were in a small town on the western end of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. In the interest of fairness, I'm not going to say where.

My Kentucky Boy chose a Super 8 because it advertised free breakfast and free wi-fi.

The first sign we should have run was that the lobby smelled vaguely of dog urine and the night manager was, shall we say, not the smartest person we'd ever met. But we signed the little slip and got our bag out of the car.

The Not-So-Super 8 didn't have an elevator, so we had to drag the bag up to flights of stairs to our tiny hole. The tiny hole had two small double beds and a tiny TV and a thin layer of dirt and grime. We quickly removed the comforter and held out hope that at least the sheets had been washed.

I was on the fence about showering in the morning. There was a good chance I would come out dirtier than I had gone in. But I braved it because I needed it to wake up. I had to dry myself with an 8x10 piece of sandpaper. I would have used two of the four, but one had an ominous dark smudge on it.

We dressed and figured we would load the car, eat our "free continental breakfast" and be on our way. "Brekafast" for an allegedly full motel consisted of 6 half-sized muffins and some juice. There was a toaster available, but I'm not sure what we were supposed to toast.

As a final insult, as we were leaving the boy asked the day manager where the restroom was. The only restroom was in the grimy little in-room bathroom, so he had to retrieve the key and go back up.

At least we were really grateful to see our room in the (much more expensive) hotel here in Cincinnati.

First the radio star, then the rest of us.

2007-07-24T16:33:00.000-07:00

The terrorists have got it all wrong. Forget about nefarious plots. Just scramble every TV station in the world except for VH1.

VH1 is home to a plethora of horrible TV shows. Horrible TV shows that, just like a car wreck, we can't look away from. (and it makes us end our sentences in prepositions)

I have watched "50 Cutest Television Kids" more times than I care to own up to.

I lost several hours this weekend to "100 Hottest Teen Stars."

And what college student in the late 90s didn't lose hours of her life to "Pop Up Video" This may have been the worst one of all. At least with the others you can do three other things at the same time and you won't miss anything. But with "Pop Up Video," every time you heard that little 'bloop' noise, you just had to look up. My friends and I lost an entire New Year's Day to this one once.

If you want to destroy this country, just trap us all in an infinite loop of mesmerizing trash TV and then walk right in and take what you want.

Yes, me too

2007-07-21T20:56:00.000-07:00

There is nothing wrong with staying up late at night because you've only made it to page 500 of a 750 page book and you have to know what happens next.

There is nothing wrong with secretly hoping your sister decides not to bring your 2 1/2 year old nephew to visit because it will interrupt reading time.

There is nothing wrong with rejoicing in learning that the list of leaked plot points you read two days ago in a moment of weakness was wrong.

There is nothing wrong with contemplating the havoc you will wreak on your local post office if a book isn't delivered to you on the promised day.

There is nothing wrong with striking up a conversation with the grocery checkout boy about the Border's wristband he is still wearing that let's you know that he started reading long before you.

There is nothing wrong with sending a taunting text message to a friend who is out of town and won't get her book for another day.

And there is nothing wrong with an adult yearning for closure in what is marketed as a children's book series and spending an entire Saturday seeking that closure.

Midyear reviews

2007-07-17T17:07:00.000-07:00

One of the many bizarre additions to my life since going corporate has been the annual review process. In our company, that means a several step process including writing objectives, writing an annual personal development plan, a midyear review and an end of year review. The entire system was developed by human resources types and has only minimal actual relevance to laboratory workers. We would treat it as such except that end of year bonuses are tied to the ratings on the final process, so we have a little motivation to try and take it seriously.

Right now is midyear review season. Everyone spent last week writing pithy comments about how they were progressing along towards their objectives and this week we're all getting called into our managers' offices for half an hour of deep and insightful examination of our performance.

Back in grad school, "performance evaluations" were usually limited to belittling comments in lab meeting and the occasional impromptu dressing down just for fun. This whole process is still kind of foreign to me.

I have, however, noticed there are two basic approaches to the whole review:
(1) Thoroughly nonchalant. This person dashes off his/her comments in an hour or so, doesn't really worry too much about what will be said and probably has little to worry about. There may be offhand jokes with their manager about the whole matter.
(2) Bitter. Somewhere in this person's past is at least one very honest review. But it wasn't their fault. It never is. Their manager hates them.

So far, I am falling into category 1. I'll keep you posted.

Oh, to have such a troubled life

2007-07-12T14:37:00.000-07:00

I recently switched gyms and the new one isn't so much a gym as an upscale YMCA on steroids. It has a babysitting room, karate classes, dance classes, gymnastics, a computer room, a full-sized baseball academy, indoor and outdoor pools, the list goes on and on.

Any place with this kind of facilities, of course, runs a decent sized day camp. Monday, as I was coming in, a harried looking mother was retrieving her two children from the aforementioned camp. I didn't get a good look at the girl, because her brother (roughly age 8) distracted me. He was remarking, in a very exasperated way, "No, I didn't have any downtime today."

I wanted to turn to him and scream, "You're a child at day camp. Your entire day is down time. Don't you understand?" But I didn't think it would go over so well with his mother...

One nation under...

2007-07-10T15:40:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in the wave of intense patriotism that followed September 11, 2001, small American flags appeared on just about every highway overpass in the country. Who put them there? Where did they come from? I have this image of a single person in a beat up Toyota Tercel driving all night and all day to track down every overpass in the country. Just when s/he thinks it's time to rest they realize that the first flags they placed all those months ago are now tattered and worn and need to be taken down and brought to a local American Legion hall or desperate Boy Scout troop to be disposed of and the whole terrible long night starts over again.

A few weeks back, though, this amusing image was replaced by a more disturbing one. A modern day version of those old black and white photos of occupied territories and dictatorships of the Eastern Block where the leader's photo and the newly instated flag looked down from every free space.

I don't usually get political in this blog, but the current administration has created such a culture of fear that we have become a de facto version of those oppressed people. We still have plenty of freedom, but, until recently, to object was to be branded an enemy. The "You're either with us or against us" mentality meant we all had to accept it or defend ourselves against a pack of people questioning our loyalty.

I am not saying that I hate the flag or that I don't feel a small rush of pride when I see it, but I wonder if maybe I would feel better about it if I saw less of it.

Sometimes, really stupid people get sick

2007-07-06T19:25:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wish the moron TB patient from Atlanta would just go away. He is continually trying to play himself as some sort of victim of the horrible CDC who was just doing what he thought was okay.

He was not some ordinary, uninformed Joe Schmoe. He is an educated man, an attorney. He has family who work in infectious diseases. Regardless of who told him what, I find it hard to believe that he didn't know that all TB is highly contagious, especially to those with whom you spend several hours in a confined place breathing recirculated air.

Even if he wasn't totally aware of the risks, most people upon being told they had TB would call up their uncle who worked on it and get his advice. And any ethical researcher would say "Well, I know you wanted to get married in Greece, Andrew, but if you get on an airplane, you run the risk of infecting a lot of innocent people. Why not drive to Atlantic City instead?"

But instead, the arrogant jerk got on a plane, risked infecting dozens of people, including his new wife, and now calls the press every few days explaining why he is the victim here. And he expects us to pity him.

The Church of Trite Phrases III

2007-07-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

They've changed the sign at that church again. Now it says, "The tongue weighs almost nothing yet few can hold it."

I think I've finally figured this place out.

The way to be a proper Christian is to stand quietly by and accept the world as it is. To not object or ask for change or be different. Just hold your tongue and accept the status quo and be like everyone else and wait for G-d to do it all for you.

I will leave my personal feelings about organized religion out of this. And I was not raised as a Christian. But my understanding of Jesus, as a person, was that all he did was speak out and try to change things. The entire foundation of Christianity, as far as I can tell, was about the exact opposite of everything this church preaches on its little lighted sign.

in The Church of Vagueries Part II

2007-06-25T19:23:00.000-07:00

That same quaint brick corner church has changed its sign of platitudes several times since last I wrote about it. Now it says "Be quiet enough to hear G-d's whisper."

What???

So, people who make noise can't hear what they need to be a good person?

Does this include making noise about the wrongs we see around us? And standing up for the little guy? That involves noise. So does the making a difference they mentioned back in April.

So the lord wants us to sit quietly by and wait in silence in case he/she/it wants to whisper to us? When we see things that we object to or that we think needs to change, we have to be quiet enough to hear the lord's whisper.

I won't poison your minds by telling you what denomination this church is, but I certainly hope these little messages aren't an indication of the entire faith's opinions.

Sometimes stereotypes exist for a reason

2007-06-20T18:12:00.000-07:00

I have spent the week at a scientific conference. It isn't important which one or where or why. They all follow the same pattern. An auditorium full of people furiously taking notes while someone flips through a series of increasingly complex Powerpoint slides only half of which make sense to anyone in the room other than the speaker.

I don't know if it's because the meeting is particularly small, or because it includes a lot of physicists, but it seems to have attracted every bad stereotype of a scientist and, frankly, I'm appalled by my own people.

At every break, everyone seems to crack open the laptops. Tonight, at a banquet dinner, someone actually had her laptop out as the very prominent researcher next to me watched his prime rib get cold and chewy.

I could write a book on the fashion faux pas alone. Socks with sandals. A leather vest with black jeans and an Oxford shirt. Pants actually pulled up to one's armpits. And, one guy, I'm pretty sure only brought one shirt with him for a week long meeting.

Apple versus PC arguments have been breaking out everywhere. A lovely hike through a national park this afternoon degenerated into a discussion of why (one biophysicist swore) riding a bike at the same pace as one is able to walk is actually less efficient work. And this was our leisure time!

All I'm saying is that any room where I'm one of the coolest people around, is a sad room.

Airmail

2007-06-17T17:16:00.001-07:00

Today was a day of travel. Travel and airports and hotels seem to lose their sheen at excitement when you're traveling for business and you're all alone and you don't really want to go.

To get from where I live to Bar Harbor, Maine, one has to take three separate flights. The first flight was only 20 minutes long and involved a brief adventure on a small propeller plane all to the tune of a very cute four year old boy with the whiniest voice I've ever heard and unending questions ("But, whh-hy is the bus turning, Daddy?)

After a quick lunch and some time wasting in Philadelphia, it was on to a reasonably large plane to fly to Boston. This one was actually big enough to have a first class.

My punishment for this luxury was the third plane. If someone attached wings and a propeller to a Dodge Caravan, it would probably be bigger than this plane. And to boost our confidence in this alleged aircraft, we were provided with a pilot and co-pilot that may not have been old enough to drive cars. The Junior Airmen then informed us that there was a thunderstorm sitting over our destination. In case we weren't nervous enough about flying in a toy plane with toy pilots.

It was only fitting that the toy plane would land at a toy airport. I've seen some pretty small airports before, but the one in Bar Harbor makes the airport on Wings look like O'Hare. The minivan with wings makes a constant circuit to and from Boston and this is the only flight you can take unless you own a plane. The "terminal" is the size of my living room and the people who have been "screened" by the two TSA agents (required by law) are kept in a glass-walled dog crate. The current homeland security alert level is posted on a nicely laminated sign taped to the wall.

Nirvana

2007-06-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

Some brilliant person has figured out how to combined the two greatest things in the world and create chocolate sushi! If they have peanut butter, I may consider sending this woman some sort of marriage proposal or love letter or something...

Starting Over

2007-06-03T17:55:00.000-07:00

My biggest dream as an adolescent was that we would move. I longed for the thrill of leaving our small town and going someplace where no one knew me and I could be someone totally different. I could leave behind my public humiliations and reputation and start over. I never got that wish.

Maybe that's why I hit the ground running at 17 and didn't stop moving for the next twelve years. I only went about 35 miles away to school, but to my high school friends, it was apparently like moving to another country. I lost a lot of them as some of us grew up and some didn't and some I just finally understood why my parents never liked them.

After college, I moved halfway across the country to Cincinnati for grad school. Despite the fact that by 1999 email was virtually universal, a lot of my college friends had a hard time keeping in touch, or so it seems. I really only stayed in touch with about four of them. Only two of them enough to invite them to my wedding. They stayed in touch with each other, but it just felt like they thought it was too hard to keep up with me. My life was too different from theirs and too far away to try and work it out.

Then I moved to Kentucky. Things were different. I was still close enough to Cincinnati to visit often. Even if they never called or e-mailed, I saw them once a month or so. They were always happy to see me, even if they forgot about me in the interim.

But then I moved back to NJ. I've been gone long enough to lose most of my New Jersey friends, or at least become peripheral in their lives. We haven't really figured out how to be friends as adults yet. And my Cincinnati and Kentucky friends seem to be forgetting me. With a few exceptions, the e-mails are fewer and further between. The phone calls only really happen if I initiate them. They were all happy to see me back in April, but no one really remembered to send an e-mail on my birthday.

Losing peopl is always the hardest part of moving.

Praise and adulation

2007-06-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

I don't normally do this, but I'm going to use this blog to heap praise on my husband.

I live in a world of academics. This means that pretty much no one I know has any really practical skills. When they are drawing up the list of people to allow into the bunker at the end of the world, my friends and I better hope we can pool our collective book knowledge to build an effective bunker really really fast.

My dear husband, on the other hand, has real, practical skills. He's been fixing cars since he was sixteen, and he's smart, so he can translate everything he's learned from cars into other electronic and mechanical devices. He fixed our air conditioning back in Kentucky several times. He figured out how to fix our plumbing on a few occasions. He took apart our washing machine when it broke and figured out how the fix it, but it proved to be cheaper to replace it. Anyone who has ever met him knows exactly where to go when their computer won't work (my sister drove 45 miles for an emergency repair last weekend).

A friend of mine who is going through some rough times lately has recently added the insult of her car making a horrible noise. It sounded like when you were a kid and you put baseball cards in the spokes of your bike tires. She stopped by the house after we went out this evening and my dear husband took her car for a spin around the block. He pulled it back into the driveway, leapt out, popped the hood and pulled out the dipstick.

He sent her off with three quarts of oil (the only person I know who would have that on hand) and advice to call him at work on Monday because she might have a leak. She called later to report that the noise had stopped.

So not only does he have some pretty useful skills, but he uses them for good instead of evil.

Small town life

2007-05-28T15:35:00.000-07:00

I grew up in the sort of small town that people write novels and plays about. The sort of place where the high school English teacher and the junior high shop teacher grew up together and the high school vice principal and the junior high nurse are married. The kind of place where everyone in town turns out for the big football game against the cross-town rival and where the fire department dog runs free through the streets.

After seven years living in big cities and disappearing into the crowd, I'm back in a small town. Okay, actually, we live about fifty yards outside of town, but I'm counting it. My dear husband, on the other hand, is a city boy. He spent his entire life in and around Louisville, Kentucky. It's not a big city, but it is a city. There are no small neighborhood events, no local kooks that everybody knows, no small town charm.

Now that the weather is nice, there are finally opportunities to show him what I love about small town life. It started Saturday night when we walked into town for ice cream and stumbled upon the calendar of summer events. It read a lot like the list of events scheduled for the small town where my parents still live: concerts, parades, car shows.

This morning, we joined the entire town for the Memorial Day parade. It was just like back home: the American Legion, the Girl Scouts, the high school marching bands, it was my childhood all over again. The husband marveled at an entire town gathered around the small veterans memorial as men in uniforms read speeches and high school kids in wool band uniformed played patriotic songs. And then everyone walked back to their homes. And for me, it was home.

Garage Sale

2007-05-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

I have been involved in exactly two garage sales in my entire life. The first was when I was 12 and my friend Kathleen's family was getting ready to move. We were kids, it was great fun for us and her parents bought us ice cream or something with part of the profits.

The second was this morning. I am still learning the ropes of being a townhouse resident, but one of the things people in planned communities do is they have community events. This weekend, our particular community had a garage sale. Anyone with anything to sell could put it out on their driveway and the masses would come flocking.

We didn't sell much (including some things that were actually pretty good finds), but we have $50 we didn't have this morning and there is ever so slightly less clutter in our basement. And, it was prime people watching.

My first observation, any two people capable of speaking a foreign language will speak it when discussing your old stuff in front of you. I particularly enjoyed this as I have a decent grasp of Spanish and could pick up what the Spanish speakers were saying to each other when they thought I was just another clueless American.

Number two, for people picking through things someone else wants to throw out, garage sale shoppers can be ridiculously picky. That's old. That's dirty. That's outdated. Well, duh, if there was nothing wrong with it, would I be selling it to you for a quarter?

Number three, there are a surprising number of people bargain hunting who either don't need to or shouldn't need to. I saw a woman pull up in a Mercedes SUV that costs about $70,000 new. And I don't think she was just looking for good, cheap antiques.

And finally, I noticed that some people will argue with you no matter what the price. They want to think they are getting a bargain. We sold our old space heater to an older couple for $20 (talked down from $30) and the husband was interested in my husband's spare gas can. It's a big one, fairly new nothing wrong with it. He said $2 and the man was ready to willingly pay. His wife would not give him the money until we agreed to $1 because "eet's old." It is two years old and $2 was a really good bargain, but some people only think they're getting a bargain if they force you to give it to them.

Modern marvels

2007-05-16T19:22:00.000-07:00

I recently read this vaguely disturbing story on CNN.com I'm really kind of creeped out that someone could go trough this experience and actually be aware of their skill slipping off of their spine. But at the same time, I'm amazed that I live in a world where that sort of thing is possible. That there are ways to surgically reattach a person's head (essentially).

The Jetsons promised me that by the 21st century we'd have flying cars and moving sidewalks and three hour work days and robot maids. I think I was twelve when I figured out that wasn't going to happen.

Back to the Future II promised me that in eight years from now I will have hover boards and flying cars (why do we all want our cars to fly?) and giant video TVs and mega-dehydrated food. The only things even close to real are the biometric locks on car doors and the 80s nostalgia cafe.

But despite my lack of science fiction like technology, we live in a pretty advanced time. My TV can's respond to voice controls, but it can learn what I like to watch and record it for me.

My car can't fly, but it can keep running on a flat tire and alert me to all sorts of internal problems.

We can't teleport, but I can chat in real time with my friend in Australia through instant messaging.

We aren't vacationing on Mars, but wealthy people can buy their way into space, and the space tourism is becoming a reality.

Medical science can't cure death, but it certainly seems able to cheat it a bit more.

Planning

2007-05-15T15:47:00.000-07:00

I'm not an urban planner. I'm not a city administrator. I was never even all that good at SimCity. But I have to be better than whoever is in charge in the city where I work.

The city in which I work is home to a large number of companies and they are all clustered on or near River Rd., a narrow, windy road that twists one lane in either direction along the Raritan River. It's notoriously slow the minute there are more than five cars within two miles of one another.

So, when would be the best time to trim the copious number of trees lining this scenic nightmare? Why, 4:30 pm on a Tuesday just as the thousands of employees of the aforementioned companies are trying desperately to be anywhere other than River Rd.

I don't blame the poor guys in charge of holding up the Stop/Slow sign, but they certainly weren't helping. I assume they all drive to and from work. You would think they would have a better sense of how long is too long to keep one side moving and the other stewing in their cars.

A little forethought could have gotten the trees trimmed and everyone home with lightly lower blood pressure.

Dynamic

2007-05-06T16:45:00.000-07:00

I don't know exactly when, but at some point in time our family gatherings changed. It used to be everyone sitting around my parents' family room in comfortable clothes, maybe watching TV. There was often a big sandwich involved.

Then there were boyfriends included.

Then the first of my sisters got married.

Then there were in-laws to include. And we started to have homes of our own to host them in.

Then there were babies at them.

Then one of those babies became big enough to walk.

Now he can talk and demand things and tell you stories about his day. And there's another baby holding everyone's attention. And there are friends and friends' kids and fights over toys.

Family gatherings are a lot more chaotic these days, but they're also a lot more fun.

It feels like only yesterday we spent family gatherings playing Red Light, Green Light in the hallway of my great Aunt's apartment. Now, I'm refereeing fights over toys and my sister is convincing her son not to blow bubbles in his drink and my mother is upstairs changing my niece's diaper and I suddenly feel old.

Surfaces

2007-05-04T18:46:00.000-07:00

Ever have one of hose days/weeks/months where you're just so worn out that all your emotions hover at the surface?

It's been a long week with one thing after another just poking away at me. In the end, I find that I no longer have the energy to suppress any feelings. I feel like one poorly timed Hallmark commercial and I would melt into a puddle of goo or something.

It makes interpersonal communication a little hairy. It doesn't take much to get angry or upset or whatever in this state. The poor man of the house often suffers the brunt of these outbursts. But co-workers and family aren't necessarily safe either. Even I don't know when some unexpected emotion will surface.

I'm just glad this week is over.

Heal the world.

2007-04-30T14:30:00.000-07:00

On my drive home every day, I pass a stately old American Baptist church that sits in the center of town. There is always some sort of religiously related message (the sermon topic?) on the board our front. For the past two weeks, it has said, "Being different isn't the same as making a difference."

What??

What on Earth is that supposed to mean? Is being different bad? Do only conformists really make a difference? Do those kids who always try too hard to be different really think they are making a difference?

This is one of my (sometimes numerous) issues with organized religion. In an effort to say something profound, they've put out this muddled, potentially dangerous message. The only meaning I can take from it is: Being different is bad and doesn't change anything in the world, so you should just be like everyone else and concentrate on making a difference.

Yikes!

Why can't you be different and make a difference? In fact, I think that with so many things wrong today. With this whole culture where it's cool to be rude and nasty and not care about anyone or anything, maybe the way to make a difference is exactly the opposite of this church's message: Be different from everyone else. Don't be like everyone around you. Care about things. Respect people. Think. Then you can make a difference.

In need of a Berlitz course

2007-04-29T17:26:00.000-07:00

After nearly one year of marriage, which was preceded by two years of living together and one year of dating long distance before that, I'm realizing that my husband and I speak different languages.

This morning, I found myself wandering the grounds of the area's largest and oldest drag racing facility (shouldn't every neighborhood have one?) surrounded by car guys and car parts and a surprising number of objects that I forgot existed outside of Kentucky.

For him, it was a tiny piece of home in the middle of a land that still seems too unfamiliar and harsh. For me, it was a journey back into the foreign world that I had forgotten about. Standing at that car show, I was reminded of how strange it felt when I first moved to Kentucky. There was an entire world about which I knew nothing.

My husband is fluent in the language of this world. He is constantly trying to explain to me the purpose of a cold air intake or why the position of this or that little hunk of metal means that a car probably won't run.

I have no idea what he is talking about.

I only recently found out that cars don't have carburetors any more.

I still don't have a clue why it's cool to have a loud car.

What I know is that this little world makes him happy. He enjoys talking to people who are impressed that he owns a '66 Mustang. He likes criticizing other people's shoddy repair jobs and telling me why they aren't the best solution.

He complains that the guys on Car Talk spend too much time being entertaining and not enough time diagnosing cars.

I assume this is how he feels when I try to explain science to him.

A tribute

2007-04-20T17:05:00.000-07:00

A grad school friend fowarded me an email this afternoon informing me that our department's graduate secretary had passed away from complications following a hip replacement.

Anyone who hasn't been to graduate school probably fails to appreciate the importance of a graduate secretary in the lives of graduate students. And Dorie was one of the best.

Dorie was the keeper of all of the information in our program. She knew what forms had to be filled out and where they had to go when they were done. She knew who needed reminding three or four times and who could be counted on to be early with everything.

She was in charge of welcoming candidates to their interviews and welcoming them again as new graduate students. She could tell which nervous student needed reassurance and which one needed to be left alone. She always knew who was on the verge of tears and just how to stop it.

Part of her job was to hand back exams. She always knew when it had been a tough one. She was always ready with a comforting word. Plenty of tears were shed in her office and that was okay.

Dorie was always ready to listen to a stressed student or share in an unexpected joy. She was a warm smile first thing in the morning and reminder that there were plenty of students who had been through exactly what you had and everyone had come out okay in the end.

Students were always making her promise not to retire until after they graduated. She had finally gotten to the point where she had stopped making those promises and started counting down the days. There were only two or three years left.

Dorie was the spirit and heart of our department and she probably had a greater impact on the future of science than some Nobel Laureates. She will be missed, but she will live forever in the hearts and minds of the students who never would have made it through without her.

A world gone mad

2007-04-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

What is going on in the world? First, that guy at Virginia Tech, and now this. I have two questions (okay, maybe more):
a) Is all this still not enough of a case for tighter gun control in this country?
b) Has NASA's psychological screening process completely fallen apart?

I'll start with the first one. If Charlton Heston and his friends were really in favor of responsible gun ownership, wouldn't they welcome tighter regulation on who can buy what type of gun? Wouldn't they want to make sure that there were fewer incidents like these that turn people against all gun ownership even though there are plenty of perfectly responsible sport-shooting fans out there?

My own husband owns a gun and wants to teach our (future) children to target shoot like his dad taught him. But learning to shoot at a range comes with learning about being responsible and locking guns up and never, ever pointing a loaded weapon at anything you don't intend to shoot and never firing a gun in anger.

On to the second one. NASA has a pretty thorough psychological and security screening process for its employees. I work at a major company and I know how tight our security is and how hard it is for a non-employee to even get into the parking lot, let alone the building. I highly doubt our nation's space agency is less secure than the research facility of a major consumer products manufacturer. That leaves the only possibility as that this was yet another NASA employee snapping (recall the diaper wearing, stalking astronaut...).

I think I need to go look up the signs of the apocalypse now...