n00bitude

on monday morning i figured, holy ass it snowed a lot, and i work "far" away, i should call them cause i bet they're closed. so i call at 7.30, when all my internal organs are still booting up, and the secretary has been there for like an hour. imagine that: some of my coworkers, many with small mammary-attaching offspring, are at work and actually work-ing while i'm still farting in my sleep.

so i came from slack-tastic harvard and now i have to pony up and put in some serious effort here, proving myself yet again. this morning a pussy few inches have fallen overnight and the snowfall is busy, not blinding - i'm totally going to work.

~2 hours later i'm shaken from the display on route 2. i'm late, and my co-n00b parked her boyfriend's wrx in a snowbank on the way. they send us home at 2 pm, along with some other people who live "far" away.

on the way out they go, here, have these phone numbers and call next time - we would have told you to just stay home. i think of my flannel pajamas, my teddy bear fred, my birthday featherbed of luxury...and how i could have remained in a crystallized state of quietude for several hours, sleeping through american morning on CNN and starting the coffee pot sometime after 9.

so, while i *did* get to use my respirator with my 111th percentile lungs to empty about 17 gallons of acetonitrile into the waste drum, and while i *did* get my own HPLC station, all new and shiny, i also had to drive home. butt muscle on clutch side + throttle foot = smoked.

gas mileage = 29 mpg. should tell you how little fun i had.

suck and blow

so today i had to go to this place in leominster, which i found out is a town in 'western' mass (i.e., past 495). and i had to blow as hard as i could (stop thinking it, you freak) into a little machine that kept telling me "wrong answer, blow harder." then they sat me down, went over a huge questionairre, made me wear the drafty hospital johnny, and confirmed that indeed, it is safe for the sabominatrox to wear a respirator at work when disposing of hazardous waste. in that, it would be really weird, based on their machine that goes "bing!," if i were to spontaneously drop dead of some lung-badness whilst wearing aforementioned respirator. at work.

according to the data, i blew in the 111% of other women my height and weight. which made me feel good for about 5 seconds...i said to the doctor, "so that means i'm awesomer than them," and received a patronizing smile. then i realized that most women my height and weight are probably post-preggers fatasses, and then i didn't feel so good anymore. ah well.

sigh.

sincere gratitude

been too busy getting used to the working man's 9-5 to say much lately...more on the new job later. higher priority: thanking the people who really rule.

special shout-outs to scott and shanna for letting us crash last-minute saturday night, your absence notwithstanding; i thought we'd be spending the night at cumby's, lamenting the snow; not actually having *fun* being stranded in a cozy apartment, having bamboo house takeout. you guys are outstanding.

brenton, for giving us a place to stash the car and a ride home with no more than a wink and a smile - incredible generosity.

and the downstairs neighbor at scott and shanna's, whatever your name was dude, for helping us push the car in high winds and blinding snow for more than half an hour, with nothing more than "don't worry about it."

everyone from friends to strangers schooled me this weekend about what altruism is all about. thank you all.

soy un perdedor

indeed. i copied igg in taking this test. i may be only slightly nerdy, but i got MAJOR PROPS for telling the president at my new job about my mouse pad with all the structures and molecular weights of the amino acids. yeah.

good god help me

so does anybody have any creative ideas...

i try to be good and take lots of vitamins. how the hell am i supposed to handle 1000mg of omega-3's if every time i take one, 5 minutes later i get a case of the burps and for the next hour, i taste fish oil?

and don't just tell me to stop burping. nobody told mozart to stop composing. this is serious business now.

trogdor!!!

today definitely sucked.

having way too much to do at work isn't new for a lot of people. but i highly recommend, should you find yourself in the situation where you have an operation packing up and moving cross-country, get out. just go. don't stick around till the bitter end, having labwares packed around you as you struggle to make a dent in an insurmountable pile of "urgent data." the successful completion of which, if you actually forged ahead on this dismal career track, would have a profound impact on your future.

to say nothing of labeling radioactive tubes from the reagan era and being asked things like, "hey, you know the guy who's been working here for more than a year? well we need you to teach him everything you know! by friday! oh, and here's another experiment!"

so there i am, about to seriously fuck up my experimental design due to extreme hunger and cause the needless sacrifice of two poor little transgenic mousies, the novocaine from my visit to the dentist 2 hours prior wearing off as my tummy and gums throb in unison. i'm about to freak out.

the damage mitigated by sheer intestinal fortitude and willpower on my part, i come back to my desk upon completing the experiment, tears in my eyes, doing the only thing i can when i'm stressed out. start imagining setting things on fire.

about 30 seconds into my backdraft reverie, i find a microwaveable bowl of annie chun's hearty miso soup. the package has good heft to it, perhaps even 300 calories to stop me from self-digesting my organs. annie chun, god bless her fantastic asianness, is smiling up at me with those squinty little eyes.

a solution has been found; the sabominator is temporarily placated, and will be able to make the long journey home this season.

auld lang swine

it's been a while since i actually enjoyed new year's festivities.

this year i felt compelled to make sangria for the TCITB party, which i have never made, and drink quite a bit of it, which i have never done. first i battled 3 pm new year's eve shopping traffic at the state liquor store, shaw's, and DW highway. i nearly pussed out after being strong-armed out of making my left turn by an SUV with jersey plates (god doth have a sense of humor; it was time to get a taste of my own back for all my crimes in the old explorer in the tri-state area. god, i guess you really were watching me that time in the ikea parking lot).

i was a woman possessed; nothing stood between me and my celestial images of citrus flotillas in a sea of burgundy goodness, kissed with waves of triple-sec. it came out quite well and will probably be making appearances at future parties. i was glad to have made a jug of fragrant mauve painkiller, to be sure, after i took a spill down the stairs. now there have been more new years eve's where i've emerged bruised than not; there were always good reasons (the heel broke off my boot; 18 beer navigational system failed once i reached the curb; etc). but this time i'd not imbibed a single drop and was jauntily traipsing down damp stairs in my new pumas with my hands in my pockets. my elbows and wrists still hate me. but 5 sangrias later and i might as well have had an aleve IV - everything was all good, even after the party-wide "check out my bodacious ta-tas" photo challenge.

yesterday, after not nearly enough sleep, we got up and i cleaned our sty while hb went out to procure last-minute cilantro for my guacamole. i was a flurry of veggie-chopping, cookie-batter-licking madness until around noon, when sean and maddog showed up to the new year's day rally-thon. it was a great festival of gorging on snacks and motorsports, even if a little anemic in its attendance (ahem). then igg and his wo-man stopped by for dinner, where we were once again "those guys" at outback, with me and theresa burping intermittently amid our reminiscing about kelly's bad-porn party last year. i think the old broad at the table next to us just about had it with phrases like "breast milk pump" and "those puking asian chicks."

so today, we enter recovery phase...the house is clean, there's copious leftovers and unwatched CSI's on the DVR, and i'm fixing to check my tire pressures. sounds like a full day to me.