Conversations
Disclaimer: All of these comments are
obviously things that I have recently overheard and are not things that I would have said nor would they have been said by any of my
obviously saintly friends in any conversation in which I was involved. Oh no. Definitely not. Not ever. Therefore, no judgement, just laughter. :) Names and details may have been slightly changed to protect the innocent.
Recently heard:
#1 "You know, the only reason I'm even ON the goddamn pill anymore is to prevent me against immaculate conception." (Followed by a long conversation on the hazards of being involved in immaculate conception)
#2 "I think I should tell him that at least YOUR platonic non-boyfriend gives you a friendly arm-around-the-shoulders, and see if that spurs him into action. I don't even get a friendly pat on the hand!"
#3 (In response to finding out one's friend had shown up to class dressed identically to their platonic non-boyfriend in very unfortunate sweater vests) "Well, if everyone didn't already assume you were sleeping together, they do now."
Response: "No, if we were sleeping together, we could have coordinated our outfits and ensured that this didn't happen."
Response: "I still have to veto your being interested in a boy that wears sweater vests. It's really lucky for you that I'm so tolerant or I wouldn't even be able to talk to you anymore."
#3 (Conversation)
Speaker 1: The worst part about it is that I have an upcoming gynecologist appointment and I know he's going to ask me if I've had sex since the last time that I saw him and I'm going to have to say no and he's going to wonder why exactly he is still writing the prescription
Speaker 2: You could always lie.
Speaker 1: No, I think that lying to my gynecologist to feel better about myself is really a little too low.
Speaker 2: You could always tell him that it's none of his business.
Speaker 1: You know, there are very few people whose business it is, but I think he might be one of them. That is kind of the point.
Speaker 2: He makes the cut?
Speaker 1: Yes, he does. In fact, thinking about the literal meaning of that phrase, it is ACTUALLY his business in every sense of the word.
LATER:
Speaker 2: Well, if anything actually ends up happening between my platonic non-boyfriend and I, I'll be sure to give him one for me (extra long to make up for lost time) and one for you. And one for your gynecologist. And one for my sweater vest.
#4 "WHAT?? I spent hours writing you that email dissecting the basketball team this year and you thought the most insighful comment was: "We have too many white guys with medium brown hair and single digit numbers. It was really hard to tell them apart."!?!?!?! Grrrr."
#5 (Really old and re-quoted to someone else recently but nevertheless funny) "Realistically, they just don't make any sense. I am now planning on disregarding all signs and not assuming that anyone is interested until they're sticking their tongue down my throat."
#6 "The whole thing seems very middle school. I think you ought to pass him a note in class that says 'Was that a booty call' and has yes and no checkboxes."
Sad times and stupid counselors
Disclaimer:I've been tossing around the idea of writing about this for a couple of days now, not sure whether it was appropriate or what the proper tone was, but I've decided to just go for it and not be so damn self-conscious.
On Tuesday of last week, I worked in lab until 2 and then left for the airport. It ended up being quite a busy and stressful day and it was tough to be sure to get everything done that day. I was definitely ready for a break both from work and from other personal life matters. My flight was a free flight on Independence Air, which meant that I wasn't flying directly to Syracuse but instead had to connect through Dulles. (Yes, I understand the geographical silliness of it, but it was $10.)
Upon arrival at Dulles, I noticed that I had two voicemail messages. My strangely phone wouldn't let me access my voicemail and the on-screen message only told me who the most recent message was from (a grad student in my lab, M.) While I was fighting the voicemail issues, my phone started ringing again, this time with an incoming call from another grad student in my lab, A (previously referred to in these parts as CLG). Apparently he, unlike the previous callers, had put some thought into when I would have been on planes and called when he knew my phone would be on. (Note to the two previous callers, both of whom I know are reading this: this is not a knock on either of you, it is more an observation whose relevance you can likely determine.) He proceeded to inform me that an MD fellow in our lab had passed away very suddenly that morning. The entire thing was quite shocking. My response was "What are you talking about?" and a small part of me wondered why A. (generally a very nice guy) was making a joke that was in such poor taste. Anyway, it turned out to be not actually a joke. I was glad to be able to talk to A. about it as he was somewhat comforting. (Note to the two of you: don't take that one personally either.)
Mike was a really great guy who worked closely with us. He was an MD/PhD in our lab who also saw patients one day a week. He taught me a lot of the cell culture that I now do and was generally extremely helpful in helping me know my ass from my elbow scientifically. More than that though, he was also extremely, extremely funny (in a rather risque way) and extremely, extremely generous. He was in his early 40s, had two kids (~12 and 9) and a very sweet wife. He died from a previously undiagnosed congenital heart problem. I could write pages and pages of funny stories or details about him; he was definitely one of a kind. I will miss joking around with him and getting help from him a lot.
I felt really bad about missing all of the services/memorials since they were while I was at home. Yesterday at our lab's weekly lab meeting a counselor from the hospital came to speak. Our lab is really big (80+ people; probably about 60 were at the meeting) and has been growing a lot lately so that we are starting to have some people who don't know each other, which we didn't have before. Anyway, the counselor man made us all move our chairs into a circle and wanted us to have a discussion about our feelings about Mike's death. He asked a bunch of questions and wanted people to answer aloud, he actually went around the room for two of the questions (How did you find out? and How has this affected you?) Many of the other questions were rather personal as well. Honestly, it was exceedingly awkward (which is perhaps partially because I was sitting right at the front of the room and was the second person in the circle). I can see the value of the experience: it would have been good for people who were sort of avoiding the whole thing or for people who were having trouble verbalizing about it. As I discussed with another grad student later, it was also kind of nice to have the validation that it was okay to feel really sad about it even though he wasn't our dad or brother or relative or something like that. Some of the questions really were good things to think over. But...it was really awkward to have to talk about really personal stuff and cry (there were few dry eyes in the room)in such a large group of people whom you often want to act professionally around (what the heck is the correct grammatical structure of that sentence? I can't figure it out at all.) and in a group of people who were so varied in how well they knew Mike, if they knew him at all. I think it was very uncomfortable for a lot of people for different reasons.
As I'm sure you can tell, that was a real banner way to start the week and made everyone extremely energetic as they slogged back to their desks yesterday. The lab in general still seems a little sluggish, though getting back to normal. I had a decent day yesterday (at least starting with yesterday afternoon).
To make a long story short, I didn't end up being quite as relaxed as I had hoped nor was I able to think through/escape other things that were on my mind over Thanksgiving break. Light posts to follow shortly (there is some funny stuff in my head, I just have to decide if it is appropriate or if it should really be on a more smutty blog).
I am the dumbest person in the world
As you may know, I currently live in Boston and my parents live in upstate New York, vaguely in the Syracuse area. This year I was a little behind in making my Thanksgiving plans. I started looking at making reservations for various forms of travel during the week of November 1st and all of my options were much more expensive than I was expecting. Plane tickets were extremely expensive, train tickets were more than I wanted to pay (the train between Boston and Syracuse is rather bad, so I tend to shy away from that choice), there was some issue with the bus (scheduling maybe? I don't remember). Anyway, I ended up deciding to rent a car and drive the 5-6 hours home, largely because the car rental would cost about $300 less than my other option (flying).
A fundamental issue with this plan is that I am the worst driver in the entire world. I'm not sure that I can fully describe just how terrible I am, but suffice it to say that I was never particularly good at it in the first place, and then I have gotten progressively worse while not driving in college and graduate school. My parents were obviously uncertain about my ability to drive home, and my 14 year old little sister commented to me last night: "Bree, please be extremely careful coming home. I would really like you to come home intact and I am afraid of you driving." It is really not like her to say things like that. I will admit, I myself was not thrilled about the prospect of driving but it really seemed like the only feasible option. I
was excited that I would be able to have flexible plans (I could just do my experiment on Tuesday without worrying about the time and leave whenever I was ready) and that I wouldn't have to be very strict about packing...I could just throw things in the car. (I am also the world's worst packer.)
Today I went online to actually reserve the car. I decided to look quickly at a couple of sites where I could make flight reservations, just to see how bad the flights were and if there were any last-minute deals (which I certainly didn't expect). Not only did I go to expedia, but I also visited some airline-specific sites. One such site had a large banner ad inviting people to sign up for their frequent flyer club. This ad reminded me that I was a member of said club, so I logged in to see whether I could get a discount.
When I logged into my account, I was greeted with a message reminding me that I had earned one free-round trip ticket and was about one trip away from earning another. Don't let these miles go to waste, they reminded me! They expire in June!
D'oh. I now have plane tickets to go home on Tuesday night and return to Boston on Sunday morning. They cost a grant total of $10 in fees. I guess flying around to all of those weddings and wedding-related functions this summer paid off after all. Let's hope that the Dulles curse doesn't reappear. (See the May and June archives if you don't know about the Dulles curse) My family is entirely relieved.
Aaaack!!!! Now I have to pack a suitcase!!
Delicious
Delicious is pretty much the main adjective that comes to mind when I think of our night out last night. I know that it's odd to go to a cool club and come out solely talking about the quality of the refreshments, but whatever. (Yeah, I had a super fun time otherwise, but damn the food was good.) Last night a bunch of us went to a cool place downtown called Saint (I'll direct you to pics
here courtesy of Evan since I don't look too awful in them.)
I started with the most perfect Cosmopolitan that I've ever had. Ever. I've been to this bar a few times before and I assume that I've ordered Cosmos there, but I don't remember them being as singularly perfect as the two I had last night. While drinking my Cosmo (and her martini), JP and I started to peruse the rest of the menu where we noticed sushi. We were chatting about whether or not the sushi would be good, how much they would give us etc. when the bartender came over and noticed we were looking at the food menu. He pointed out the spicy tuna maki and assured us that it was the best maki in Boston. We were pretty skeptical that a random club would have the best maki in Boston, but we figured it was worth a try.
We ended up having to order a second plate because we ate the first one so quickly. It was hands down the best spicy tuna maki that I've ever had. (Sorry Fugakyu)
A little while later, I was convinced to order a lychee martini. Honestly, I didn't know what lychee was and I still have very little idea exactly what it is, but that's okay. The lychee martini was quite possibly even better than the cosmopolitan.
In the end, it was a fun night and would have still been fun if the food and drinks had been terrible. It is tough to have a bad time when wearing platinum eyeshadow or when with the fun peeps that I was with, so yesterday had lots of things going for it.
It has been a pretty good weekend otherwise as well-chill during the day and fun at night. I saw Harry Potter on Friday before meeting people at the bar (I apparently didn't make the cut for Evan's Friday night pics, so I won't link to them), more chilling, Duke bball and Glowpop's wedding yesterday. All in all, a good time. Then again, how could it not have been a good time...I didn't have to go to lab!
The people upstairs
The funniest thing that happened this weekend involved neither of the previous two stories, however. On Saturday night, shopping roommate stopped at Starbucks. The girl working behind the counter looked at her funny because she recognized her, and they tried to figure out how they might know one another. Finally, they realized that they both lived in the same building.
Starbucks Girl: "You know, whenever I meet anyone who lives in our building, I feel like I have to apoligize for my roommates. They are the two loudest people on Earth."
My roommate: "That's funny. The people who live above us are EXTREMELY loud."
They realize that the Starbucks girl lives above us.
Starbucks Girl: :If they are bothering you, you really should come up and complain. They bother me all the time, but they are my friends so I feel bad about saying anything. It would be really nice if you would complain, actually."
My roommate: "So what IS the noise, after all?"
Starbucks Girl: "Well, the two of them share one room (which is the room above mine). One of them is a drum major. The other plays this game, Dance Dance Revolution, I don't know if you've heard of it, ALL THE TIME."
My roommate dissolves into laughter.
The moral of the story: I was RIGHT!!!!!! I think I'm going off to be a professional sound identifier now. :) I mean, this is sort of the equivalent of my saying that it sounded like these people sounded like elephants and finding out that they actually had a pet elephant. (I'm hoping that this comes off as funny as the revelation actually was.)
Last weekend odds and ends
I must say, the past week has been quite nice in the lab. I'm getting work done (and some things are actually working) and my boss was travelling last Thursday and Friday and was only in town one day this week (yesterday) making the whole place very restful. And empty. Of course, that's not what you've been asking for an update on, so I'll get right to it.
The dinner was yummylicious. Free advice: While it is somewhat sensible to not really eat anything all day before going to a five-course dinner so that you have lots of room, it is NOT advisable to not eat anything all day before going to a dinner where you will also be served five beers (and an extra one while you're waiting for the table). This results in one getting much more intoxicated than they might expect and also one getting lost in the bathroom. (Whoever heard of two bars sharing a bathroom so that a drunk person could go to the bathroom and suddenly end up in a different bar? Very poor planning.)
Shopping was also fun. I bought some Clinique stuff and a couple books at Borders, but we looked at lots. While in a department store downtown, my roommate and I suddenly realized that we had a desperate need for impractical brown boots and we ended up trying on pretty much every pair of boots in the Downtown Crossing shopping area. Roommate got two pairs. I did not get any. :( Stoopid extra wide feet. We were late getting back from shopping and it was decided that it was too late to start a game of Risk (our friends did not want to stay up all night) so instead both roommates and I had an expedition downtown to see "Pride and Prejudice," which was quite good, even for a Jane Austen movie. :)
I'll leave it at that for now and put the other funny thing that happened last weekend in it's own post.....
The weekend
1. I was just about done writing this post when blogger ate it and I had to re-write. The other verision was much better.
Anyway, tonight I am the lucky winner of NOT staying home listening to the musical stylings of the Blue Man that lives above me. (Tonight is the "Dance Dance Revolution" noise as opposed to the "Drum in a Marching Band" noise. My new thought is perhaps this is all about marching band and some days they practice drumming while other days they practice marching. If that's the case, then they are the worst marchers that I've ever heard.) Tonight I will be going to a brewery/restaurant for a somewhat fancyish dinner (fancy for a grad student, at least.) I am quite excited (perhaps too excited since it is only a dinner after all) because the food that I have eaten at this restaurant before has always been FANTASTIC, and the menu looks quite spectacular. You can check it out and be jealous (jealousy required) here: http://www.cambrew.com/happenings.htm. My original plan was to go out afterwards, but I am not really sure that is happening now. Our dinner is at 9 and I suppose I'll have to see how late it is when we are done and how I am feeling after the 5 beers that accompany the 5 courses.
Today was a rather lazy day as was last night. I went into the lab this morning (and the experiment worked!) and then haven't done a whole lot since. Last night my roommates and I had a spiffy plan which we eventually cancelled because executing the plan involved leaving the apartment and going outside where it was cold. Double-stuffed oreos and TV won.
Tomorrow will be a shopping day and I am also psyched about that! One of my roommates just moved to Boston in September (at which point she became my roommate) and has yet to go to some of the shopping areas in town. Therefore, tomorrow I am going to do my duty as her roommate and take her around and also do lots of fun shopping of my own. :) Afterwards I am thinking that we might invite people over to play Risk, which will hopefully be an end to a very fun (yet also rather laid back) weekend.
A fantasy football win would be nice too, but I'm not holding my breath...... All I can say is that AT LEAST Duke Basketball starts on Monday night, so that I can stop worrying about the whole sport of football for another year. On that note, GO DUKE!
John Phillip Sousa alert!
As far as the apartment heat is concerned: it is a problem with our radiators...some work and some do not. The best working radiator just so happens to be the one in my room, which I must say I am quite pleased about when it is supposed to be 29 tonight.
Tonight there is also a new upstairs noise. It is also the first time the noises have occured during hours when normal people might theoretically be sleeping. The noise is obviously a drum that is obviously playing marching band music. Looks like I'll be having dreams of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade tonight....
Fair warning
Recently, I've started reading more and more of the big political blogs. I know that a couple of you have mentioned that you prefer reading personal stuff to the political stuff, so I'll warn you now that there are a couple of "deep" posts in the tank ready to be written (don't worry though, they will still be very ME....you ought to know by now that I really can't stop being self-centered for more than five seconds). Of course, if I actually finish getting ready to go out on time, then I'll write you another post about what a ridiculous day I had today to make up for the serious stuff this weekend...
Anyway...as a prelude, here are the results from a Politics Test that I just took, so you have the proper context. (You'd figure it out pretty quickly anyway). The graphical results of this one are pretty funny. Not only do you get the two graphs shown below, but you also get a graph showing where you fell in comparison to others who voted the same way you did in 2004 and a graph showing where you fall in comparison to a variety of famous people, whose faces are placed near their political affiliations I guess (I say that only because some of the placements are surprising). On that graph, I am apparently Gandhi's right ear, which rocks. :)
More anti-apartment thoughts
I JUST SAW A MOUSE IN MY APARTMENT!!!! EEEK!!!
It must be a really stupid mouse, running around an apartmen inhabited by biologists who know how to do MEAN things to mice. Boo.
I think K. and B.'s cats need to come over and visit.
I love the sound of jackhammers in the morning
I love my apartment. Really, I do. It is enormous, it is in a great location that is safe, walking distance to the lab, walking distance to all sorts of interesting places and right by the T, and it is DIRT CHEAP for both its size and location. Lately, I've not really been feeling the love.
The building has six units. Technically they are condos and we rent the condo from its owner, not from the building or something like that. Our landlord is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Anyway, the other five units have been occupied by young-ish families as long as I have lived here (since June '03), until recently when the people above us moved in. The people above us are a group of three BU undergrads.
I haven't figured it out yet, but they do something strange in the room above mine. The noise is a general pounding noise, but the rhythm is strange and eliminates most of the usual explanations. At first we thought they had a band and the noise was reverberations from the drum. This weekend the noise got MUCH louder and seemed to more clearly sound like feet stomping. When I say much louder, I mean that it was making the the windows in my room shake. Again there was an odd and distinctive rhythm, which makes the whole thing puzzling. It basically goes "bump-bump-badump-bump" over and over and over again. Our new thought is that they are very enthusiastically playing some game with a pad that you jump on, somewhat like "Dance, Dance Revolution." The noise can really only be explained by foot stomping. It is obviously foot stomping. Except....it went on for 12 hours straight both days this weekend. How does someone have enough ENERGY to stomp that loudly for 12 hours straight???
Between the stomping and the lack of heat, I'm really unexcited. (For those of you not up on the heat situation, our heat IS on. Sort of. The past two winters that we have lived here, the apartment has been a sauna from around October 1-at least April. For some reason, possibly relating to the new ownership of the building in general or heating costs, the radiators don't kick on very often this year. We haven't figured out a pattern yet, but we know it sure isn't the all-heat-all-the-time method of last year. The pattern mostly seems to be that the radiators come on when we pick up the phone and are ready to call and make a stink about it. It hasn't been quite so cold of late, so it's sort of okay, but once it really gets wintery we will be having some issues. For now, I just use lots of blankets.)
All of this is not a huge deal (in fact, I only bring up the radiators because I am cold). The real reason that I was ready to move today was that I was brutally awakened by the sound of two jackhammers this morning. Grrrrrr. Apparently there was a "Brookline water emergency" that could only be fixed by jackhammering DIRECTLY OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW early this morning. Booooo. I suppose I believe them about this faux "water emergency" a little more since the street was still closed when I came home from work today (in fact, they tried to stop me from going home, saying I wasn't allowed to walk up the sidewalk on this side of the street) and they seemed to be shoveling dirt into a hole in the middle of the road directly outside of my bedroom window.
The only good thing about jackhammers? It is impossible to hear stomping over them.
Your other positive thought for the evening: apparently blog complaining about the heat also works, because the radiator just kicked on.
