email for pics

For his birthday, Ger wants Irish breakfast. Specifically, he wants brekkie rolls, that oh-so-Irish of traditions in which you take an innocent meal and wrap it in a French roll. We’ve made the preparations for importing Irish sausage, rashers, and pudding, but there are minimum orders for these kinds of things and we’re going to need some help.

So if you’re in the PST and interested in helping Ger celebrate his birthday with a full Irish breakfast, come on over to our place Sunday, the 4th of March. Breakfast will be on for 1-ish, since people who are up and out the door before 1 on a Sunday are probably going to church and wouldn’t be able to make it until 1 anyway.

RSVP here or to Ger.

An email I received today:

“Subject: bad day

on Tuesday, I went to zoo to clean Aspen’s cage and got bit by fire ants,
then David and I headed to Tuscaloosa.  On the way we had a flat tire in
Prattville which took a while to fix as had trouble getting lug nuts loose.
Then David left his wallet at the tire place so had to go back and get it.
Then before got out of Autauga County(Prattville is in this county) I got a
speeding ticket.  Got David moved in to his apartment and came home.
Electricity was going on and off and dad told me I needed to go to bed then
electricity went out for 7 hours.  figured all the bad luck was finished but
on Wed. went to zoo and dietician wasn’t there so I had to fix all the diets
for education.  Glad those two days are over.  love, mom

grandma is still laughing about the speeding ticket.”

Well. Guess this is everything… resolved I suppose. CW has returned to whence they came up in research which… well means I get to be me and them from now until a replacement arrives. In about two months. (more…)

Today I wander into the office thinking ‘hm, must get back to Franck about that weekend in London, maybe I’ll get to see Gwen, must find out what happened to all the French over the weekend, going home on Friday hurrah’ and then on a suspicious rumour I moseyed up to Logistics to check when we’re actually starting our offshore ops – I’d heard filthy rumours that maybe it was happening next week not three weeks from now.

Filthy alas, but true. (more…)

In 24 hours I’ve had two separate linguistic adventures. I suspect this is because I clearly look like both 1. a native English speaker and 2. someone who won’t just frown and keep walking.

The first was in the corner supermarket, where I was carefully considering the cottage cheese selection. A woman accosted me and asked me where she could find the cream. Though it came out sounding more like “clllllleeeem” with a very rolled R. I may have been the worst person in the store she could have asked, since I’ve given up on depending on American sources for decent milk products and I’ve never needed to use, um, cream. I pulled a half pint of “Heavy Whipping Cream” off the shelf and handed it to her with the disclaimer that it probably wouldn’t be as good as what she was used to. “This is cllllleeeem of milk?” I told her “Yes.” I sincerely hope I was right.

The second happened, interestingly enough, when I was retrieving today’s lunch portion of the aforementioned cottage cheese (my choice, anyway) from the group fridge. Another woman with an exotic accent accosted me, asking “You are a native speaker of English, right?” I nodded, and we spent the next few minutes discussing her preposition choices in a manuscript that had recently been rejected due to “some grammatical errors.” Apparently she’d been having a real problem finding a native English speaker in the group this morning.

I told her we don’t tend to make it to the office before noon, if ever. That, coupled with the World Cup fever that’s seized the non-native English speaking population of the lab, means it’s a wonder she found anyone in the lab at all.

“Did you, um, go to school in Alabama?”

This is not a question I hear every day. In fact, no one’s ever asked me that before, without already knowing where I’m from. Certainly not a stranger on the street. Especially not an extra. An extra for a Discovery Channel Shark Week TV commercial walking around Caltech in knee high white boots and a Bight University t-shirt (and Paul not here to appreciate the pun). When the dyed blonde had said “Hi,” looking in my direction a moment before, I had assumed she was talking to someone behind me. With that question, however, I abruptly realized she was in fact talking to me. I didn’t recognize her, but I’m notoriously awful at placing people outside of their relevant spheres, and even within, still pretty bad. I look at her bewildered expression and reply, “Yes, actually – I did. I’m Michelle.” To which she replies, “OH MY GOD! It’s Charity!” followed by a totally classic sorority girl chick flick reunion scene. Before being herded off by the director’s assisstant’s assistant, she handed me her card, and congratulated me on getting out of Alabama.

I love the fact that it’s a small world. I love how even though I didn’t know her all that well, I haven’t seen her in eight years, and I know absolutely nothing about what she’s doing and how she got here, for those 2 minutes of hugging, we were the best of friends. I love how random it is that someone from my high school swim team in Mobile, Alabama, is now pursuing a Hollywood acting career. More power to you, Charity. And if anyone needs an actress, let me know, and I’ll put you in touch.

So. It’s been a while but I’m faced with a conundrum in that the relationship between me and a coworker has turned wretched and I’m not sure what to do. I realised things were bad when I was putting in extra hours before and after I ought to be there to make sure my ass was covered when things they said caught up with both of us. (more…)

All weekend I held in my mind an idea for an emailforpics post. It was a small idea, a grain if you will, of something that might inspire me to write a few paragraphs and (hopefully) y’all to read them. Something happened this morning to change my mind, and although this means y’all will not hear about the young couple who purchased two 50-lb bags of salt at Costco this weekend, the commentary is strikingly similar. “What in the world were they thinking?”

I stood on a street corner clutching my coffee, waiting to cross Colorado (the “main drag” in Pasadena, if there are any non-locals kicking around). There was a queue of cars facing me on the other side of the street. The first one in the queue, a red SUV, had its left indicator on. I smiled and thought Perhaps not everyone in LA is a bad driver and waited for the light to change.

Suddenly, a car horn blared. It was coming from the Civic behind the SUV. I usually try to determine the source of such outrages (in case it might be me), and could find none. No one in the queue was moving. No one was blocking anyone else. The light was still red. I wondered if perhaps I had misplaced the horn, but a few moments later I got a rare opportunity to verify, since the Civic honked again. Beep beep. In that way that suggest the honker is trying to wake up someone in front of them.

I checked the light. It was still red. I noted there was no cross traffic on Colorado, and after once more analyzing the situation in the queue across from me I could only come to one conclusion. The honker wanted the honkee (the red SUV I believe) to go ahead and make the left turn against the red light.

Baffling.

It has been noted here that people will convince themselves that the rules do not apply to them for some reason, and I will admit that I am sometimes one of those people. Especially when driving. I routinely drive above the speed limit (though these days usually not more than 5-10 mph over), and if confronted with a red light at 03:00 at a deserted intersection I will usually stop, look, and drive through. Such a thing has never crossed my mind in broad daylight during the morning rush hour, and I have never considered encouraging anyone else to engage in my illegal activities. The only other explanation I can think of is that the Civic believed (for whatever reason; perhaps the driver was on the phone at the time) the SUV meant to turn right. I’m not sure how the driver could have come to this conclusion, since the SUV was clearly indicating left (and indeed turned left once the light turned green), but I do try to begin with the assumption that all people posess the standard suite of reasoning capabilities and that encouraging someone to pull into an intersection against a red light would be considered an unwise act.

I really have no idea. I will never know. Just as I will never know why the young couple in the queue in front of us at Costco felt they needed two 50-lb bags of salt. Nothing else in their cart gave clues; they did not appear to be purchasing for a business. Do they have a severe slug problem? Have they just slain a vampire and now must salt the earth over its final resting place?

I think I wonder because I know there is a reason…and it’s usually more interesting than anything I can come up with.