I hate this place

I hate this place, but more than that I hate this place I hate the people, but more than I hate the people I hate the look in their eyes. By Lamont Carey

List of pet peeves about this place and the people:

1. Pointing with their middle finger
2. Meetings during lunch
3. Eating with their mouth open
4. Picking face or body parts while talking to me
5. Touching their mouths while speaking
6. Fidgeting while seating next to me during a meeting
7. Fidgeting while talking to me
8. Talking out of the side of their mouths
9. Looking at their feet
10. Long nose or ear hair
11. Comb-overs
12. Playing with facial hair during meetings
13. Bad Breath
14. Slow learners
15. Taking forever to get to the point
16. Giggling keys or coins in their pockets while giving talks
17. Making clicking noises with pens
18. Marathon meetings where nothing is accomplished
19. Unibrows
20. Not taking a daily shower or bath

Bad Cop

I had to give my boss a ride home yesterday and I was pulled over on my way back to work. The conversation

Police man “There is a stop sign back there.”

Me “Yeah I know I stopped.”

Him “You didn’t stop.”

Me “I stopped”

Him “You know I can give you a ticket”

Me “Okay”

Him “Don’t tell me you stopped when you didn’t”

At this point I am in shock because I did stop and he is yelling at me, so I just smiled at him (my only defense mechanism).

Him “Stop from now on or I will give you a ticket next time”

Then he got in his car and left. I just sat there for a minute, and then I got pissed. Who the hell did he think he was yelling at me like that, besides I did stop? It is not my fault that he did not see it. He scared me, and that is not fair. I wish I would have yelled at him but instead I was intimidated. When did we give our public servants so much power over the public?

In the same color family

In spite of 10 hours of sleep last night I am exhausted. The exhaustion is probably a result from, hip-hop class on Thursday, a 5 mile run on Saturday and my hockey game of Sunday. As I was getting dressed for work this morning I grabbed a pair of shoes which looked brown. These are a recently acquired pair of shoes, and I did not remember them being brown, but I was very tired and running late this morning. However the shoes looked brown, but alas they are not brown they are plum. Dismayed this morning I exclaimed to Cartman that I don’t match and he was very confused. I said my pants are brown but my shoes are plum. Cartman said but they are in the same color family.

There are two color families according to Cartman, lights and darks. This observation should not come as a surprise; I have noticed that most men do not have a sense of what matches when dressing. Even the best dressed men in my life tend to put two different shades of black together, which is a minor offense but still an offense. In the land of freaks and geeks the color combinations are astounding (and not in a good way).

I am going to wander the halls and make a list of all the offenses and offenders of style, this should be mildly entertaining. Well that was not as entertaining as I thought! The general trend is grandfather jeans with a belt located just below the sternum and a shirt originally purchased sometime in the 1980s. Though I did see one pair of black 501s that were purchased more than 10 years ago, they are almost vintage now!

Bruised Bootie

I have a big bootie; it was something that I was born with. No matter how many miles I run a week, football games or hockey games I play, or trips to the gym I make; my bootie is still out there. Over the years I have come to partially appreciate my big bootie, however today is not one of those days! Last night I went to Hip-Hop class which was a riot! I love to dance and I love to dance genres that I am not trained in (i.e., Hip-Hop).

The Hip-Hop routine had an 8 count segment that started with a kick-out then a slide forward on my bottom, spinning around on said behind and lying flat on the floor. This is a lot in 8 counts and my whole right cheek is bruised. My bottom is so bruised that sitting in my comfortable office chair is painful. I can’t help but wonder if I had a bigger bootie, that I could have absorbed the shock of landing on it over and over again. Or if I had no bootie, there would be nothing to bruise. Oh my poor butt! Did I mention that it hurts? Just in case let me say it again, my butt hurts!

Tourette's Syndrome

My office mate, Cartman, Sara and I all have tourette’s syndrome. For those of you who don’t know, Tourette's Disorder is a neurological disorder characterized by involuntary body movements and vocal outbursts for at least 12 months. The three of us have involuntary eye twitches and frequent vocal outbursts that involve a lot of profanity. In the last 10 minutes, Cartman has dropped the F bomb and GD more than 20 times. Today is a low stress day, the day I blew up the magnetic I cursed for a couple hours straight. I still find myself throwing out random profanity when I think about the magnet.

When I was growing up my mother would not allow profanity in our home, she claimed it was a sign of ignorance. However the more educated I became the more profanity slipped into my vocabulary. When I received my PhD I informed my mother that I had achieved the highest education standard and could use as much profanity as I wanted. She quickly informed my youngest brother (20 years my junior) that he could not use profanity until he had a PhD too.

Cartman, Sara and I all have PhDs (though Sara is a chemist and that doesn’t count as much) and we all use so much profanity. It is funny and adds comic relief to our day. Is profanity a sign of ignorance? And if so ignorance of polite society, because it is definitely not ignorance of science.

Love at First Site

I am guiltlessly copying the Anonymous Coward's style today.

I attended my first hockey game a couple of years ago. My date bought seats on the glass, and I was hooked right after the first fight. I loved the difficulty, intensity and violence of the game. The game unfolded like a violent soap opera, where the other team checking our star player or roughing our goalie would end up with our enforcer on the ice. Our enforcer would defend his co-players. You knew it was going to end up in a power play, but watching the drama behind the fight was almost as good as the fight itself. Within a couple of years I had my own set of season tickets, right on the glass. Along with season tickets comes the requirement of having team paraphernalia; it started small with a warm up jacket but ended with a full blown jersey. I was a fan, but not the type to linger for autographs, however after one game my partner insisted on waiting in the huge line to get his jersey autographed by the star player. I reluctantly agreed but insisted we wait in the bar until the line was smaller. We ended up being the last in line. When it was finally our turn, the star player looked up and when his eyes meet mine there was lightening! My soul leaped. I had been struck, my stomach contracted and my heart beat was erratic. I had never experienced such an intense instant physical reaction to anyone. I was struck, and it was love at first sight for me. I never talked with the hockey player, but I can still remember my body’s reaction when our eyes met.

Okay your turn; have you ever experienced Love at first sight? Anonymous comments encourage.

Drug Tests

I had my first drug test and I found the entire process offensive. The administration of the test was awful, but the implications about my personal life were truly offensive. First of all, am I guilty before charged? The requirement of a drug test on some level assumes that I am taking drugs. I resented the fact that I had to “prove” my innocence through a process that violated my personal privacy.

I am not taking drugs but if I was how much of it is my employers business? If I do drugs recreationally on the weekends or during my vacation, what gives my employer the right to question this behavior? I am sure the test does not monitor my alcohol consumption, my illicit sexual life or other behaviors that I might engage in that are dangerous to my health and brain cells. In fact they did not ask me for an IQ test, so perhaps I have many brain cells to spare and if I want to donate them to a drug shouldn’t I be able too? This was a pre-employment screening and not a performance related test. If I take drugs and it does not affect my performance at work, how does that become my employers business?

In addition my employer can find out other things about me from the test, like am I pregnant. I am sure in my male dominated field, my new employer would not be happy if I went on maternity leave soon after starting my position.

Homeless

A part of me has a secret wish to be homeless. I don’t want to be cold, hungry and dirty but I idea of being totally free appeals to me. I want to be free of every day cares and desires. If I was homeless I would not to have buy milk or put gas in my car. I would not have to worry about where I was sleeping that night. I also would not have to worry about who I was disappointing or letting down. I could just disappear and no more obsessing about all the cares and worries in my life. I could live my life on a whim. I know there is a serious down fall to being homeless, and I doubt that homeless people choose to be homeless, but the idea appeals to me. Of course the princess in me would never be able to take it, but I wonder if there is a way to combine the freedom of being homeless and a princess?

Is it possible to have a clean and comfortable place to live, nice restaurants, fresh flowers and a huge shoe collection without responsibilities?

Bring in the tears

Oh my GOD! I have not screwed up so much at work in my entire life! I was sitting quietly training my magnet. For those of you who don’t know a superconducting magnet that has been exposed to room temperature needs to slowly be brought up to high fields. All of sudden POP! HISS!! A Huge cloud of helium gas starts filling the room. Yup my magnet quenched, which happens from time to time at huge fields with a 30 year old magnet, but what makes this quench even more spectacular is that I did not remove a magnetic beam stop from the high field area. It went flying across the room and smashed into my magnet. Yup I didn’t quench the thing, I totally fucked it up. TOTALLY!!! There is broken glass from the window; still huge amounts of Nitrogen blowing in the room and my very fragile, very expensive quantum dot samples were blow right out of the room. The beam stop is twisted too. I am still in such a state of shock, but I am going to start crying any minute. I know there are no tears in physics, hell there aren’t any women in physics either. I can’t imagine what my co-workers are going to think when I start crying, oh I think the tears are here.

Little One

Welcome little one into my world.

I hope I provide you with love and security.

I lope your days are filled with joy and happiness.

I hope you learn from my mistakes and triumphs.

I hope you are strong without facing trials.

I hope I am supportive and nurturing with you.

I hope you are healthy and intelligent.

I hope you have my eyes.

And I hope I never leave you

And if I do

I hope you are just like me.

I love DC

I love DC. There are many reasons why I love this place. I love the diversity of cultures, thoughts and views. I love the choices in things to do. I love that there are many fabulous places to eat. I love all the clubs. I love that I can actually dance techno, hip hop and top 40s all in the same club. I love all the sweet looking cars on the beltway. Oh and I love driving very fast on the beltway and for the most part not being the fast driver out there. I love that coming from small town USA gets me out of tickets. I love that winter is so short. I love the humidity; it does wonders to my skin. I love that most people do not smoke. I love the fact that I play on a coed hockey and football team. I love that I have a gym at work. I love jogging on the GW parkway. I love all my new friends out here. I love that it is so easy to meet new people. And I love that this place is great for my self-image.

Happy Valentines Day

It is t – 7 hours until the end of V-day. Thus far I have received 4 V-day well wishes. And one of them just made my heart swoon; it was from my old BAW’s wife. She sent me a video clip of their daughter singing this song.

Shina ma rinka dinka dink

Shina ma rinka do

I love you

Shina ma rinka dinka dink

Shina ma rinka do

I love you

I love in the morning

And in the afternoon

I love you in evening

And underneath the moon

Shina ma rinka dinka dink

Shina ma rinka do

I love you

Happy Valentines Day

A Song to sing

I made myself hoarse singing this song last night.

Joey
By: Concrete Blonde

Joey, baby - don’t get crazy
Detours. fences... I get defensive
I know you’ve heard it all before -
So I don’t say it anymore
I just stand by and watch you
Fight your secret war.
Although I used to wonder why -
I used to cry till I was dry.
Still sometimes I get a strange pain
Inside
Oh, joey, if you’re hurting so am i.

Joey, honey - I got some money
All is forgiven. listen, listen
And if I seem to be confused
I didn’t mean to be with you.
And when you said I scared you,
Well I guess you scared me too.
But we got lucky once before
And if you’re somewhere out there
Passed out on the floor.
Oh joey, I’m not angry anymore.

Read to me

You are hurt and unable to move. I want to help you. I want to show you how much I love you. I want to give you something wonderful and pure; you who have given me the greatest gift of all, your love. Let me find a story that will inspire you and not offended me. Let me take time out of my busy life to take you somewhere away from the pain and the monotony. Let me see your face light up when I walk through the door. Let me show how much I love you, and let me know that you know no one will ever replace you in my heart. Let me watch your features soften and drift to someplace peaceful as my voice whispers you to sleep, where you are safe and free from pain. Let me read to you.

I am hurt and the pain inside makes it hard to move. I want someone to help me. I want to be shown how much I can be loved. I want to find something wonderful and pure; someone to give me the greatest gift of all, again. Find me a story that will inspire me and make me smile. Take the time out of your life to lift me up in your embrace and comfort me for all time. Let me see the love in your face every time you look at me. Show me how much you love me; such that I never for one minute feel alone, and know that no one will ever replace me in your heart. Let my features relax and the tensions leave my body as you whisper me to sleep, where I am safe and free from pain. Someone please read to me.

To have loved and lost

There seems to be some confusion about the poetry on my blog lately, so let me clear it up for you; not everything I write has happened to me. Yes, dear readers not everything is about me, and even when it is about me, it may not have happened recently. Unfortunately, my life is not that interesting or that painful all at once.

Is it better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all? I know the people who say it is better to have loved are usually people who are generally happy with their love lives. What about the people in the midst of a really bad break up, do they still think it is better to have loved and lost than never at all? Of if you are completely in love with someone who is bad for you? Would you rather never have fallen for them in the first place? And if you are months after having your heart broke and still have a gaping hole where your soul used to be and you can’t shake the extreme loneliness and pain. Would you rather have never loved at all?

Good ole boys

Last week I had the privileged and honor of going to lunch with 4 levels of hierarchy above me at work. I was the only woman at lunch and the only one under the age of 55 too. I also had the unique privilege of listening to all that is wrong with young students and scientist today. Apparently the youth of today is not as prepared or a smart as the youth of 30 years ago. Graphing calculators and computers have made all young scientist stupid, not more efficient but stupid. Also the innovation and wide use of field effect transistor has destroyed the young scientist’s ability to recognize analog on and off switches. Side note here; Who uses analog circuitry anymore? Come on people it is the 21^st century. They claimed that we (because I am a young scientist) do not even know how to turn dials, which is totally not true.

I am here to launch an unofficially response to all the good ole boys in science who think they were much smarter in their youth then the youth of today. I will start by saying, YOU ARE NOT THAT SMART. You struggled with concepts and probably simple calculus when you were young. If the youth of today are not prepared for your class it is because they had bad teachers and mentors. The youth population is not getting collectively dumber.

This summer I had a student that was so motivated and dedicated it was frightening and he was only 16. He did not know anything about basic electronics, but he knew a lot more than I did about software and computer languages and a WHOLE lot more than the good ole boys. It is fair to say that the knowledge base of today’s young scientists is different from 30 years ago, not better, not worse just different. However it is better, in that they are more competent to deal with today’s technologies, so there!

I take it back

I want you to go home
I take it back

I need some time alone
I take it back

I don't love you
I take it back 

I want you to stay
I take it back

I need you
I take it back

I love you
I take it back

Special Person

They say it takes a minute to find a special person.

An hour to appreciate them. 

A day to love them. 

And an entire life to forget them.

I say they are wrong.

I say it takes a lifetime to find a special person

An another life time to appreciate them.

A week to love them.

And another special person to forget them.

In the dark

In the dark I can’t tell them apart
He might be black
He might be white
He might be the man who broke my heart

In the dark I can’t tell them apart
He might be young
He might be old
He might be the man who wants my heart

In the dark I can’t tell them apart
He might be kind
He might be generous
He might be the man who doesn’t want my heart

In the dark I can’t tell them apart
As sleep clouds my vision
And dreams steal my clarity
He might be the man who deserves my heart

Ski Bunny

This picture was taken 3 minutes ago from a live webcam where I skied yesterday, in the snow (no sun). Now I am not a snow bunny, I ski all conditions and can ski (though I might not be happy about it) any terrain. However I have been on 3 skiing trips out west this year and I have missed the sun, every trip. I am getting a little sick of being mistaken for a man on the slopes, and unfortunately the best extreme weather outfits are manufactured for men. I want a snow bunny outfit, something pink! And I want to ski at least one great sunny day in the west, is that too much to ask? In spite of my ranting, my trip out West was fabulous! The slopes were empty on Sunday and the powder was fresh and trackless until I tore it up! Also no injuries to report!

Hang Over Cures

I did something this morning that I have not done in years! I bought McDonald’s breakfast, along with a Gatorade. I know a few of you are smiling and nodding your heads, and you are right I am hung over. I am such bad shape that I needed my old hang over cure of greasy hash browns and Gatorade. I have not bought McDonald’s breakfast on my way to work, ever. It was the wine, and a lot of it. However I have a big day ahead of me and need to recover as soon as possible, any hang over cures out there?

A Blogger Silent Poetry Reading

Today is A bloggers Silent Poetry Reading hosted by Grace’s Poppies. Bloggers are encouraged to post their favorite poems, or original work. My current favorite poet is Lamont Carey, a spoken word artist from DC. He is an ex-con, entrepreneur, a community activist and an excellent artist. However I can not find anything of his to post, so the next poet that has inspired me is the Anonymous Assclown, and you should check his stuff out. It is very powerful. Finally I will submit something I stumbled across;

How did I end up here?

A little flirting
A little loneliness
So persuasive
I didn’t mean to take it so far.

A little fun
A little beautiful
It feels so comforting
I didn’t mean for anyone to know.

A little resistance
A little alcohol
His hands on my body
I didn’t mean to be here.

His mouth on my body
His scent in our sheets
His toothbrush in our bathroom
I didn’t mean for it to be this way.

A new home
A new life
I love him
I didn’t mean to hurt you.

On my knees
Please forgive me
I love you
I didn’t mean to come back.

Independent Variables

I love my car. I know it is silly and superficial, but I can’t help it. I love my car. I also work with freaks and geeks. I am changing that one; I have a new job and will be leaving the land of the f and gs soon (after sending out 45 applications). In the terms of my work, we have two seemingly independent variables, my car and my co-workers; however these two variables have become entangled. Hop-Hop seems to think it is funny to box my car in whenever he gets the opportunity, which increases the probability for a scratch on my car an order of magnitude! It also reminds me of high school, and after 10 years of post-high school education, it is ridiculous. Tonight once again I noticed that Hop-Hop has boxed in my car with his car. I think this is his pathetic attempt at being funny, or perhaps even flirting. However it just pisses me off; Hop-Hop and his little friends better hope they did not hurt my car.

Anonymous AssClown

Dear Readers,
I am the Ass Clown for the day and will not be posting today. However feel free to visit if you would like to see Spin Doc the Ass Clown.
Spin Doc