My poor sister (Part 2)
(Hahaha. You're all going to feel bad for telling me how nice I am to my sister after I tell you this part.)
In the eleven years since I was a freshman in high school, New York State has re-structured its math curriculum. When I was in high school, there were the intuitively named Course I (which I took as an 8th grader), Course II, Course III, (which all have State exams) Course IV and Course V. In the past 4-5 years, the courses were remade into two year and a half courses (Course A and Course B) and then the equivalents of Courses IV and V. My sister started taking Course A last year as an eighth grader and this fall in ninth grade and took the final exam last week.
Yesterday:
My cell phone rang at about 3pm. The caller ID indicated that it was my mom's cell phone. I was kind of worried and curious: I was at work and I knew that my mom was also at work (and I was busy and distracted). It was my sister. The conversation after I figured out it was her (remember, this occurred while I was sitting at my desk in the lab):
Me: "What's going on?"
LS: "I just got my Regents score."
Me: "Oh! Okay. Good. How did it go?"
LS: "What did you get?"
Me: "On what?"
LS: "The math regents."
Me: "Which one?"
LS: "A"
Me: "There was no A." (She knows this. I don't know why she's asking.)
LS: "Well, the same one."
Me: "Umm, I got a 99 on the Course I Regents and 100 on the Course II Regents."
LS: "HA! I beat you!"
Me: "No you didn't."
LS: "Yes! I did! I got 100! I am the first person in Our Town!"
Me: "Good job! But it was different then! You didn't beat me!"
LS: "It was not! I don't care! I BEAT YOU."
Me (finally realizing that this was perhaps not a fruitful argument to have): "Oh, okay. Whatever. Well, good job."
Oops. Good job/Go you! was really the right answer there, huh? How does she put up with me?
My poor sister (part 1)
Sometimes, I feel bad for my little sister. It must be awfully hard having to put up with me.
I had a few (one in particular) big academic achievements in high school and some relatively large non-academic successes as well. The hoopla around all of these events (and some other academic events that don't matter nearly as much) was rather ridiculous. I have a large scrapbooks with all of my newspaper clippings and video tapes of when the local TV news did stories on me. While I think it is important to reward kids for their successes, the whole thing was just really out of hand in my case and I wasn't nearly the superstar that some people tried to make me out to be and it certainly didn't contribute to my having an ENORMOUS ego as a high schooler or anything. Oh no, not at all. Little sis and I were looking through the scrapbook last time that I was home (we were trying to find something else and she was like "What's this?" and then it went on from there.) It is hilarious. We were both doing impressions of what the newspaper reporters seemed to have had, laughing at the details they found necessary to report, laughing at the quotes from my teachers and counselors, etc. (Little sis's important observation: "None of these articles mention your dear, sweet then-six year old sister and how she inspired you and helped you achieve greatness. That's not fair. You KNOW that if I do the same things, there will be an entire paragraph in my newspaper articles that says:
'LS is only the second person in the history of our small town/this part of the state/the entire world to achieve this feat. Eleven years ago, LS's wonderful sister was the first to do it. Since then, the sister has gone on to get a degree from Duke, become a PhD student from Harvard and become Grand Sultaness of the World. Please bow down before her. Isn't she wonderful?'")
We had a good laugh about that. (Before you think this whole thing is entirely glib, I want to point out that I REALLY worry about the pressure that all of this puts on her and that other people don't value her as much as they should. I mean, she's a snarky little kid who makes jokes about it, but I wonder how much it bothers her. As for the people who are obnoxious about it, I might have to kick them.)
Anyway, I started taking high school courses in 8th grade, as did she. This matters because as high schoolers in NY, we have to take NYS Regents exams which matter a lot, at least in NY. One of the not-terribly-important-in-the-long-run things that I did was to get a 100% on the Earth Science exam that I took in 8th grade. I was the first person in our school district to ever do so. This is all well and good, except that my sister had the same teacher 11 years later. He announced that his students' goal should be "to be just like LS's sister and get a 100 on the Regents" on the first day of class, and he proceeded to remind her of my score throughout last year. She got a 99 and was quite dismayed.
More Western blots
Still doing Western blots all the time. Thus far, they have all been blank (entirely negative) which is bad. The first one makes sense because we had so many problems with the whole procedure. Not entirely sure what happened after that. I made a couple of changes and hopefully the two blots I have going today will work, in which case I will be seriously ramping up the number of blots I am doing.
*crosses fingers*
Whole procedure:
here for any interested dorks.
Current step:
Wash for 30 minutes with agitation, changing the wash buffer every 3–5 minutes
How I tend to do the current step:
Put membrane in wash buffer on shaker. Go do something else. Forget you were supposed to change wash buffer. Remember to change wash buffer after 10-15 minutes. Repeat. Let wash go extra long to allow for forgetting and also just in case the dish that you are washing in is too small. Get ridiculously off schedule.
Hmmm.....I think I have to do something, but I forgot what it was....
Bad Cop
Friday was the deadline to register for this year's Keystone Conference on HIV Vaccines. This year's conference will be a little different than the ones that I have gone to the past two years, but it should still be interesting (different organizers which leads to very different program both in terms of speakers and in terms of logistic setup according to the program. And a different location. Among other things.) Actually, I think that I will pay attention to details a lot more this year after having been told about many of the "differences" between this conference and the ones held in years past. I will be interested to see how they play out for someone at my level.
In the past, a small group from our lab has attended, including the boss. Generally everyone has had a reason to go (presenting or working in some capacity) with the major exception being my attendance last year. This year, due largely to the differences cited above, my boss will not be attending. We have many more graduate students than we had at this time last year, and he basically said that he would pay for any of us to go, sort of as "scientific tourism." A few of the graduate students quickly signed up, and then went about convincing our fellow graduate students to do the same.
Somehow it was decided that the two most senior grad students (Iceland and myself) would play "Good Cop/Bad Cop" in convincing people. I was displeased by this notion, because it implied that I was the Bad Cop. We asked Evan and Mike (who later joined our band of convincers) and they both agreed that I was obviously the bad cop, as did everyone else who was asked. (Perhaps it didn't help matters that I karate kicked the next person that we asked.) I am not sure how I feel about this, but apparently I am the Bad Cop. So watch out.
End result: 6 (out of 9) students, 3 post-docs and 1 faculty member that we know of are going. (I think??? This may be revised.) Tomorrow's job is to deal with setting up our hotel rooms and getting plane tickets (to all be on the same flight.) Hopefully it will be a good time. I think that for me, it will be instructive on a political/networking level at the very least.
WRONG Answer
Lately I have been interviewing a lot of local high school students that have applied to go to Duke for undergrad. Instead of making them all prospective students travel to Durham, Duke has local alumni interview students (very informally) for them. For a number of reasons, I have been assigned a relatively large number of interviews this year. I was assigned seven students to interview (one left tomorrow night). The most recent interview was on Friday.
There were a number of scheduling-type issues in setting up the interview, so I had to specifically remind myself not to be annoyed by the girl that I interviewed on Friday before I met her. Or not to judge the fact that she was not wearing a coat when it was below freezing. I was being quite open-minded when I started, given some of the peculiar circumstances surrounding the set up.
Generally when I interview these students, I start out by giving them a little talk about how it's going to be very informal and how it is as much an opportunity for them to ask questions and get information about Duke as it is for Duke to get info on them blah, blah, blah. I then ask them why they are interested in Duke. I guess that my subtext for asking the question is "There are 60 colleges in the greater Boston area and who knows how many in New England. Why are you interested in going so far away, and what specifically draws you to Duke." I realize that it is sort of a mean question to start out with: as a high school senior I didn't necessarily have great reasons for being interested in the schools that I applied to. I'm pretty lenient with answers, though. I'm looking for a student to be able to a) make a coherent sentence and b) say something about Duke. It doesn't have to be "I really want to study X with Professor Y", it can be something really simple. I'll even take the shallow stuff. My biggest reason to start with this question is that the answer gives me a direction to take with future questions. The Duke Admissions Office doesn't give me that much information about these students, and usually their answer to "What attracts you to Duke" gives me some insight into their interests so that I know what else to ask. Really, I'm not expecting rocket science here.
Back to the conversation on Friday...I asked the student that I was interviewing "Why Duke?" Translated out of high-schooler speak, she gave me the samer answer that another of the students that I interviewed this year did: "Because my boyfriend goes there." Friday's student actually recovered from that admission and gave me a really good answer that sparked another whole trail of conversation as her second thought, but nonetheless, she said it.
The whole thing is a little frustrating. Wouldn't you expect that someone might ask that question at an interview? Wouldn't you at least have some sort of token answer prepared? How do you even begin to think that "Because my boyfriend goes there" is an acceptable answer, or at least an answer that you should ACTUALLY give? There are about a million reasons why it is wrong, yet 2 out of the 6 students that I spoke to used it. Ugh.
Oh Kurt!
I read Kurt Vonnegut's "A Man Without A Country" this weekend. For those of you who didn't already know it, Kurt Vonnegut is my favorite author ever. I have been looking forward to this book for a while although as I told my roommate a couple of days ago, I was worried about reading it as well. During Vonnegut's book tour he made an appearance on The Daily Show (one of my favorite TV shows...yay!) It was kind of painful to watch the interview: Jon Stewart quickly gave up on asking questions and instead the show featured two segments of KV rambling in the sort of stream-of-consciousness/non sequitor type of way that is often associated with elderly persons. His appearance on The Daily Show confirmed an unfortunate fact: Kurt Vonnegut is actually getting quite old. So...I was a little apprehensive about how his essay/memoir book would read.
After reading the first two chapters, I was sad. The first two chapters were very much like the Daily Show interview. I lamented this fact to my roommate and then continued to read. After those first two chapters, the book really hit it's stride. Vonnegut spends a lot of time attacking the current administration in both overt and not so overt ways (I know you're shocked.) His title stems from this displeasure with the US right now...he feels that he has become "A Man Without A Country." As I was reading, I wanted to write blog posts about his views on both politics and religion, but I eventually decided against it because I figured there were copyright laws against my just reprinting the entire book.
Conclusion: Go read the book! It is shorter than some of my blog posts!! You will most certainly enjoy. :)
Other recommendations:
Cinnamon Dolce Lattes from Starbucks. I don't even like coffee and I am eternally addicted. Mmmmmmmmmm.
Project Runway: BEST GUILTY PLEASURE SHOW EVER. A fun reality show where contestants really have to have talent. Pretty clothes and lots of talk about fashion and design. Cattyness. Heidi Klum as the world's cutest pregnant woman. Honestly, it is the most exceptional reality show that I have seen in a long, long time. (All of the episodes shown so far this season are on my hard drive right now....)
I am *such* an OCD bitch
Our lab bay has three people (who sit at three desks) and two benches. My desk is next to a full lab bench, while the two guys that sit next to me have to share a bench. This is a little weird, seeing as how I have done far less bench work thus far in my project, while they predominantly do benchwork. Since I so rarely use the space, the two of them have expanded to use my space as well, which is fine. Until now, when I am starting different stuff and need it.
I'll fully admit: Clutter stresses me out. My desk is actually messier at the moment than I would like it to be. The person who had this bench before me used to keep it covered with papers a foot thick (really. No exaggeration. It was scary. She didn't sit at her desk once in the whole time that I knew her because the desk and her chair were covered with so much stuff.) So...I react strongly when the area gets cluttered. I have tended to get on my two bay-mates' cases a little bit lately for leaving my bench a mess when I need to use it. I complain and complain and feel bad about it but a) I need work space! and b) I would rather have the space open to work on as necessary as opposed to covered with their random stuff that has to be moved whenever someone needs space.
I was a little grumpy about it this morning (I blame it on having to get up early for our 8:30 grad student meeting). They ended up cleaning up all of their stuff and leaving the whole thing open for me, and now they are crowded into their little area. I feel bad that they are so cramped. I need to remember not to bite heads off. And make it clear that they are welcome to work at my bench, just not to use it as a storage locker.
*looks lovingly at the nice pristine expanse of lab space next to her desk and smirks* :)
PS: Mike, this is not directed at you. You are at least considerate and clean up after yourself. You may use my space whenever you want. :)
Hijinks and Triumphs
Currently in my project I have to do a large series of experiments called Western Blots. Without going into too much detail, Westerns can be a little laborious (in that they have a lot of steps and can take a long time.) They are involve techniques that are relatively standard unless you are me. I almost never work with proteins, so the initial steps of running a protein gel and then transferring the gel to a membrane seem slightly like brain surgery as far as I am concerned. Until last week, I had done 1 Western in my life and it was 6 years ago and I had never run a protein gel or done any other protein work outside of that one long-forgotten Western.
So, last week JP the wonderful tech and I started on my massive series of Westerns. The whole process was extremely painful and involved lots of crazy problems and hangups. Unsurprisingly, the experiment failed. When JP was asked why, she said "It was sketchy." When I was asked why, I said "Too many hijinks."
Today I am repeating the Western. Unfortunately, JP is busy with other work, so I'm on my own. This is not good, especially since I was rather distracted during the beginning steps last week...I was answering other peoples' questions and trying to do lots of things and sort of missed our lesson on how to set everything up. However, the experiment is underway! I have managed to set up the first major step (running the gel) with rather minimal help. Only one difficult step left.
The good news about Westerns? They involve a lot of incubation steps (as in set up gel, wait 90 minutes. Set up transfer, wait 2 hours. Etc.) which means that once I get through the pain of setup (that will become easier with practice) I have play time. :)
Woohoo!
New computer is here! I'm in the process of setting it up (installing and uninstalling programs). It seems a little heavier than I expected, but it is here! And it works!
I WAS NOT Consulted
...about this awful change of weather. I do not like it, no I do not. Walking to work was not fun. Blllleeeeech. (I was also not consulted about the radio station that is currently playing in my lab bay. What are we listening to?)
The broken Sony computer is back. I took it apart and made the hard drive into an external hard drive (and was QUITE proud of myself, I must say) and yesterday we took some parts out and used them to fix Evan's computer. (He has the same model and was also looking at an out-of-warranty repair, though for an obvious and much smaller problem than was wrong with mine.) As a result of all of this techie-ness (and one other admission that I made), my roommate now is referring to me as "Geek Squad." I suppose this is better than her previous nickname for me while I was sick: "Coughy McCoughington." Another friend said that maybe I should quit my day job and go into computer repair. I think this is a poor idea, given that it took me an inordinately long time to figure out that one piece inside my (and Evan's) computer, labelled "Intel 2200B/G Wireless" was the wireless card.
My new and fantabulous computer shall arrive tomorrow, at which point I should actually be accessible again. Yay!
You have GOT to be kidding me (the finale of the Sony story)
Once upon a time, I sent off my Sony laptop to be repaired after having an undiagnosed problem. If you desparately to know about it, you could read about it
here and
this here. If you really, really wanted to know about it, you could even go back to the April archives and find out about the previous time that I sent it off to be repaired. Sadly for those of you obsessed with the status of my computer, I did not have a blog the very first time I sent that particular laptop back to Sony, so you cannot hear that story.
Anyway, I have been checking the "Repair Status" page quite often over the last week or so. Every time I checked (up until last night), the message said "Your computer is being repaired. Please check back later." And then.....I checked yesterday and was greeted with an estimate for cost of repairs on my computer and a request to call Sony to approve the charge for repairs. Oh...I called them all right, seeing as how the estimate was for considerably more than the computer had originally cost to purchase.
I talked to a very nice (and reasonable) man on the phone. I laughed as I told him the estimate, because the thought of paying that much to repair the computer was just that silly. His first response to the situation was "That can't be right!" When he later confirmed that yes, that was the correct estimate, he was laughing as well. I told him that there was no way that I was paying that much, and he agreed and made the arrangements to send the (dead) computer back to me. If I had said yes to the repairs, I think he would have yelled at me.
I think I had some points that I could have argued to get the estimate reduced: some of the repairs that they seemed to think were necessary were absolutely not needed. The things is, I would have been arguing down from a price that could have easily bought me three laptops.
Instead, I priced laptops from other companies and I think I've picked one out. I'm planning on taking the hard drive (which I know is fine, no matter what they say) and making it into an external hard drive. I am open to suggestions for what to do with the rest of it though. (Does anyone know where to get a sledgehammer?) I'm guessing that I'll have a new and considerably more functional computer by the end of this month, at which point I will be back with you a whole lot more often.
(That's the short version of what's going on...there's pretty much nothing else happening other than me being somewhat under the weather, my interviewing a bunch of high school students who want to go to Duke for undergrad and my having otherwise NOTHING happening.)
The end of an era
I am fortunate enough to have a lot of friends that I keep in touch with from college. Included amongst those friends is a group of eight girls (nine including myself) that is a very close group. While there are members of the group that are closer than others and there have always been large and small issues within the group as would be expected with a group this size, we are still quite close. We try to get together ~twice a year and we otherwise keep in touch by email and phone calls. Actually, the main reason why I started this blog was as a way to keep the members of this group caught up with the day-to-day details of my life to stop me from writing excessively long emails. The last time we all were together was at one of the group's wedding over Memorial Day weekend, the time before that was her bridal shower and the time before that was New Year's Eve 2005.
There were a few cracks starting to show as we planned the New Year's get together. At that time we had one woman who was married, one who was engaged, one who was in a long-term relationship and six who were in varying states of singleness (recent, longtime, happy, unhappy). Everything worked out in the end, but there was definitely some discussion (sometimes not entirely in the open) about the appropriateness of bringing significant others to our get together. The question of "Are our reunions girls-only?" started to become significant, even if some of that discussion went on behind the scenes. In the end we worked it out and had a "girls only" New Year. Our first real co-ed reunion was at the wedding this May.
A couple of days ago I received a phone call from one of the other girls in the group telling me that she and her husband were expecting a baby. Obviously, I am very excited for them. At the same time, I was a little bit (selfishly) sad to hear their news. I wonder how this will affect our little group's relationship. There were certainly rumblings of discontent about girls-only versus co-ed get togethers before (though not over the wedding, which was obviously co-ed. Sort of.) but I can see this being a much bigger deal. Among the nine of us, there are varied opinions on children...some people really love and want children and others very much do not want them and do not enjoy them. I think that any discontent that happens this time will not end up being "behind the scenes" but will be right out in the open and could cause a lot more damage.
There is talk about getting together sometime this spring before she has the baby. I wonder what will happen after that? How do these things usually work out?
Resolved
I'm going to write the remaining three posts about things that have occurred since I left for break (and are all slightly deeper than my usual fare) out of chronological order because I somehow have a block over writing what should be the next post. Probably because it will end up being excessively long. But whatever.
Once upon a time, I wrote a blog post that I never finished called "What I like about you". This post, written in approximately August or September of this year, was about the fact that I was really happy with myself at that time. By happy with myself, I mean that I was happy with how my life was going but even happier with how I was acting and my general attitude towards everything. I was acting "like my favorite version of myself" and I was quite pleased. I was also pretty sure that I had sort of stumbled into a good groove and that I would stay that way for a while. This coincided with some conversations that I had with other people about how I thought it was not unhealthy to say "I don't like myself very much
right now" because it implied that there WERE qualities about yourself that you like very much and that it was more of a statement that you needed to change some things, not that your self-esteem was low. I was differentiating between "I don't like myself very much right now" and "I don't like myself very much." This distinction could be all in my head, but I think that it is an important distinction, at least for me personally. As far as staying in my little groove...I was wrong; it didn't last nearly as long as I'd hoped.
After saying all that, I offer you my New Year's Resolution:
I would like to be more assertive/more outspoken/less self-conscious/more able to take risks this year. Those particular qualities were really the ones that I was so proud of at the end of the summer and I would like to make a conscious effort to be more of ther version of me that I like. I think I hold back on saying things far too often (be they comments, facts, jokes or whatever). For better or worse, all those things are me being me and I should just go with it and not worry so much. Does that make any sense?
I like this New Year's Resolution because it isn't committing to making some enormous lifestyle change that might be somewhat untenable or rash "just because it's the New Year." It is reassessing myself and coming up with something that I would like that also seems to be something reasonable that I can do.
Edited to clarify the final paragraph: I guess what I mean is that I feel like a bigger resolution (which might require more of a lifestyle change) is not for me for New Year's. I do not do change very well and I need a reason other than "New Year's" to make a big change. There are some other things that I want to do, but I think they will require more gradual change for me. I like my resolution because it is something that will make me happy but is also a small-ish enough change that I think I can be successful.
Good news and possibly better news. (a Sony update)
I made a trip over to the help desk today. First, they confirmed my problem ("You're right! It doesn't turn on!") and then they opened up the computer, took out the hard drive (which was entirely fine) and made me a copy of my data. So...in the end I haven't lost any data (except for songs downloaded from ITunes, which Harvard will not make a copy of due to copyright issues. Blech.)
After going to the help desk I came back to the lab and talked to a fellow grad student about the problem. (Thank you SO much Mike, you rock.) He did a little sleuthing online and found
this, a statement from Sony dated two weeks ago noting that certain products (including my model) have a defective motherboard and extending the warranty on the motherboard for an additional year if you called them about it. I called and told the operator that I was having problems and gave him my model number and mentioned seeing the statement online and the operator immediately caved...he is sending me a FedEx box as we speak. It still isn't guaranteed that the problem is due to the defective motherboard and/or covered by this extended warranty, but Sony is currently covering the cost of shipping and diagnosis at least(and the man on the phone seemed pretty sure that the problem was due to this motherboard failure). It seemed rather strange how quickly the man said okay when mentioned the problem, possibly indicating that they are getting a lot of complaints about this issue right now (or around and during the two weeks since the statement has been up.) He indicated that I'd have the computer back in a week and he even mentioned that I should write a note with the computer telling them not to erase the hard drive if they don't have to. (I neglected to mention that part really didn't matter.) So.....it is possible that this is all going to work out. Maybe. Possibly. Keep your fingers crossed.
I HATE Sony
I have a Sony Vaio laptop. I bought it in October of 2004 when I was getting paid to teach an undergrad course and could spend money on a computer (I was feeling relatively certain that my other laptop was on its last legs at that point so I went ahead and got the new one while I could afford it.) I really love the Vaio...it has some wonderful features, a spiffy graphics card etc. Unfortunately, I have thus far had to send it back to Sony twice for repairs (both times before October 2005 when the warranty ran out)...once for a new hard drive and once for a new motherboard. I have certainly not been impressed by the quality of the computer. I took the Vaio home with me for Christmas where it sat unused.
After I got back from my little travel debacle (see below), I took the laptop out of my bag and set it up to check my email/surf the internet/regale you all with intriguing blog posts. I started up the computer, opened my email and promptly got a blue screen of death and the computer shut itself off. And it has refused to power on ever since.
I spent some time freaking out and I looked into a few options. Sony will fix it for a price...they have fixed prices for different levels of service but we don't really know what level of service it needs until they diagnose it, which also has a charge and can't happen until I send it to them on my dime. I've basically determined that I'll most likely pay for a Tier 1 issue but that I'm not going for the more expensive ones. I'm kind of skeptical about putting much money into a computer that seems slightly unreliable and has already had to be repaired twice, especially when there are repair categories that cost about as much as a new laptop. The other issue, of course, is that I've theoretically lost some data. Nothing that's the ABSOLUTE end of the world, but definitely some things that I defintely want to have.
The likelihood of a new laptop is a question in and of itself. This laptop (the Dell) is annoying because it is slow (both slower than the other computer and slower than it used to be in general.) It still has some major issues that made me think that it is going to keel over any minute although it HAS survived (mostly in a drawer) for a kind of long time. Longer than the other one. And it has a lot of issues that make it particularly inconvienient to use...the battery doesn't work, it weighs twice as much as the other one, the screen doesn't stay up very well. And it won't run Sims2 (I received both Sims2 expansion packs for Christmas). In the long run, it works well enough for absolutely essential purposes, but not for extra fun purposes.
A more clear-headed and practical friend pointed out that Harvard computer services might fix the Vaio for less money. I got in touch with them and found out that they have a help-desk that is open starting tomorrow (after break) that will help me recover my data. I guess that my best case scenario is that I recover all my data and then they give me an idea what's wrong such that I can make a better decision about how much repairs will cost. I'll keep you updated, but it is frustrating and will likely impact how much time I spend online. Maybe.
I recommend against buying a Vaio.
Curses
I was supposed to come back on the evening of Thursday the 29th. My mom, my sister and I spent the day Thursday at the mall in Syracuse, which is an hour away from our house but is also the city where the airport is. My flight was first delayed for an hour and a half and finally cancelled (the delay and the cancellation were for different, extremely sketchy reasons and I have no idea what was really going on.) My mom and sister cam back to Syracuse and picked me up and my dad brought me back to the airport at 5-something the next morning for my next flight. (5-something! I got up at 4-something! And I still had a sinus infection! It was bad times.)
When I went to check-in at the kiosk, I printed out my boarding pass but was not given a chance to check my bags. I pressed the check-in or check baggage button and tried to make it all work again, and somehow the machine printed me two more boarding passes: one to fly from Syracuse to Boston and one to fly from Boston to Denver. And no choice to check bags. It was early and I was quite confused at that point. Eventually a ticket agent came over to me and asked "Do you need help?" in the same sort of tone that one might ask "Are you a moron?" I explained my situation and she looked at me oddly and then attempted to fix the situation. After a little while, the woman started putting tags on my luggage which said "DEN". That's pretty much when I started yelling. Finally, everything got straightened out and I had a boarding pass to Boston.
After all of that drama, apparently little miss ticket agent had decided that I was a nutcase, because said boarding pass had a big "S" for "Make sure you really security screen and frisk this one" all over it. I was in the bad people line, I was majorly searched and it majorly sucked. And then they lost one of my bags and did not get it to my apartment until 10 pm.
I'm startig to wonder whether the travel curse is all about me, since I definitely can't blame this one on either Dulles or Independence Air.
Why my sister is the greatest
For those of you who don't know, I have only one sibling: a little sister who is eleven years younger than I am. (She will be 15 in February.) Her name is Kim and she is a high school freshman, currently taking biology in school, starring on the field hockey team, earning awesome grades, being Little Miss Popular, causing scandal by dating a junior, etc., etc. We get along very well and talk on the phone and/or IM almost every day. Usually when I am home we laugh a lot and do some silly things. While I was home over Thanksgiving, we got into a very heated argument over who was taller and we had to measure. Let me tell you, I am quite proud of the 1 and 3/4 inches that I won by. We also had a lot of fun while I was home over Christmas which involved our finding my old original Nintendo system (which I got in 1988 or so) and hooking it up and playing Super Mario Brothers nearly incessantly.
One of the moments when I appreciated her the most (and this is sort of random) occurred on December 26th. All four of us had received Barnes and Noble gift certificates for Christmas from my grandmother (some of us also got them from my aunt.) The four of us decided to go to the Barnes and Noble in a nearby city (ahh having to drive an hour to go shopping) to buy some books and then go to see The Chronicles of Narnia. We bought the movie tickets first and then we went to Barnes and Noble with a long time to browse. I was looking at a few books in the Science section (yes, I am a nerd. Deal with it.) when my sister walked up to me to ask a question. While she was there, she started to look at the books too.
Suddenly, she picked one up and said "This is cool! I want to read this sometime!" She was talking about "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin. I picked up a copy as well to figure out which edition it was and I told her about why there were different editions and why one was considered better than the others. I mentioned that I had a copy of the "good" edition here in Boston. She said "Hmmmm. That's really cool. You know how you said you were going to send that book to Dad? Well, could you send "Origins of Species" to me in the same package so that I can read it?" I said of course. We ended up looking at books in the Science section for a long time, with me pointing out various books that I had read and enjoyed in the past. In the end, she asked me to send not only Origin of Species but also "The Mismeasure of Man", a really interesting book by Stephen Jay Gould as well as some other Gould books. One of the books I bought that day was "A Briefer History of Time" by Stephen Hawking, which my sister borrowed in the car and read before I came back.
I guess the thing that impressed me so much was that Kim was there interested in reading all of these interesting non-fiction books that I wasn't exposed to until college. I'm so glad that she is so curious about things and interested in science and that she has the opportunity to see what is going on in the world outside of our small town and is interested in learning about different ideas. Really, she rocks. :)
Books I bought at B&N that day or received for Christmas:
Non-fiction
A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Are Men Necessary? by Maureen Dowd
(I read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman over Christmas although I did not receive it.)
Fiction
Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire
A Time to Run by Barbara Boxer
The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella
True Believer by Nicholas Sparks
Fancy meeting you here
I'm back. And I'm alive (which I'm not sure is a statement that I could have made yesterday given the severity of my hangover). I'm in the middle of a few things right now, but I thought I'd at least say hi. Later this afternoon and tomorrow I should be putting up a barrage of posts about my holidays, which will include posts titled:
Life in a bubble (which will be looooong)
Why my sister is the greatest
Resolved
I HATE Sony
and possibly some others. (See, if I tell you the titles then I have to write them. That's how it works) I might even tell you the stories of the sinus infection I had while at home, my travel difficulties in getting back (including a mysteriously cancelled flight and almost inadvertently going to Denver) or my technology woes. Mostly I'm just excited that I made it through yesterday at this point, but I will have more time later this afternoon.
With that, I'll leave you with a quote that I heard during the past couple of days....
"You know, I've never watched porn before. I was a vegetarian."
which was followed with
"I would use that as my new away message, but my Mom might see it and that would be bad. She doesn't believe in vegetarians."
