So again, a long time since the last entry. Both of my fans (me and my mom) have stopped checking the site. I blame my lack of updates on two events in January:
1) I started dating CNK again.
2) A week after we got back together my house was broken into and my computer stolen.
I am not saying that there was any kind of causal relationship between those two events. CNK is an engineer and not a crack-head.
Please don't write in to tell me that not all crack-heads will steal your computer and that not all engineers won't...I know.
Regardless, I'm pretty sure that if CNK had broken into my house and stolen my computer he would have given it back by now because I definitely made him, and everyone around me, sorry that it happened.
So now it's July, nearly August, and here is the update in abridged form:
January 2008 - CNK and I give it another go. I am thrilled. I get ready to make him a "so-glad-we're-back" dinner and come home with a bag full of groceries to find my front door has been smashed in with a shovel. I know it's a shovel because I don't own the one inside my front door and my neighbor is missing the one she keeps on our shared front porch. She was home at the time that it happened but just "figured [I was] making a lot of noise at the front door". I think she must have been confusing me with her roommate who installed a full drum kit beneath my study. I call CNK and B to come rescue me. Neighbor and her roommate also hang around with us. Cops take TWO hours to show up and three phone calls. We all freeze on the porch while the squad car drives past us and doesn't stop.
On my third call, the dispatcher asks me if there is any kind of landmark that the officer can look for. "There are five people standing on the front porch waving and shouting at cop cars" I tell her. Among the items stolen were: my computer, my DVD player, my backpack, my ability to shut the front door for two days, my ability to sleep comfortably in the apartment for one month, and a half-full bottle of Chambord raspberry liquor.
February 2008 - I don't really remember anything of significance. I mean, it's not like my house got broken into again. Oh, CNK takes me on an awesome valentines date. We have the worst meal ever but it's so bad that we laugh about it the whole time and then he takes me to a show at the Virginia Samford. It was fun but we get sleepy and so leave early to sit by his apartment's pool, wrapped in jackets, eating jelly beans and chatting.
March 2008 - - People continue to not break into my house. I really appreciate it.
April 2008 - B turns 28. This is infuriating because I have been getting even deeper into my 30's and he's still only in his 20's. Jerk. CNK and I throw him a little sushi birthday bash and we all have a great time.
In addition, CNK takes his PE exam so suddenly we can see each other more often and not only from 10pm-10:30pm on Fridays. It is a difficult adjustment but we make it. I have a successful committee meeting where they tell me I have enough to graduate in December! YES!...(spoiler alert, the July entry will dash all excitement you may have for me). My friend DP comes for a visit and we see Allison Kraus and Robert Plant which was surprisingly fabulous.
May 2008 - I try to write a paper. I fail. I try to write a paper. I fail. I try to write a paper. I fail. I try to write a paper. I fail. My boss yells at me. I yell at her and then cry. I try to write a paper. I fail.
June 2008 - - Everybody moves or gets married. I help CNK move. He helps his friends move. My friend's Lx2 get married, I miss the wedding because my cousin gets married in ATL on the same day. My mom comes out for the cousin's wedding. We also see our dearest old family friends and spend an entire day in IKEA. It's my birthday month. I refuse to get my hopes up and end up having a truly nice time, making a large dinner of crab legs and salmon, which I don't eat...I'm a vegetarian. I receive absolutely lovely gifts from everyone. Wine, cookies, shoes, serving bowls, a backpack to replace the one that was stolen, bookcases, flowers, and paper masks of my face mounted on bendy straws that say on the back "The world would be a better place if everyone was a little more like M---"
I'm very relieved that they say "a little more" because it saves us all the trouble of picturing the petty, stressed-out, crabby, snarky horror that would be if the world were a LOT more like me.
Most significant though, my distant cousin, Mgn, dies. I find out at the wedding when I ask after her as I was expecting that we would be at the same reception table. Her death was sudden and efficient, just like her. The funeral at Spelman College is amazing. Her family legacy is amazing. I get to see people who I will miss by not attending this year's family reunion and I wish I could thank her for the opportunity, as strange as that sounds.
July 2008 - Work continues. My training grant is renewed for a year and suddenly my mentor doesn't think I'll finish in December. Now it seems like it will be next June but I'm sure that has nothing to do with the additional six months of free funding. More people move. CNK and I help his sister in T'loosa and his friend in B'ham. I try to write a paper...I sort of manage but not really. I collect more data, it's actually decent.
And there it is, seven months in a nutshell. Nothing to it. As of this morning my house was still okay. I think it helped to remove the shovel from the porch and to get a real doorframe that's not made out of rotten wood. I haven't replaced the computer or the chambord but it's been really nice to have a backpack again.
If you get a chance, check out the links to my cousin Mgn. She really was an amazing woman and worth knowing.
I'll write again soon, or at least in the next seven months. Honest.
Showing posts with label graduate school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label graduate school. Show all posts
Friday, July 25, 2008
Monday, August 6, 2007
The home of water
May 28th, 2007
(old post from the myspace)
It was a stroke of luck that P~ picked up the phone when I called on the 17th of May. It was around 9:30 pm Birmingham time and an hour later in Cape Cod.
“Hey! What are you doin?” she said, sounding more southern than usual.
“I’m about to go skinny dipping” I told her.
“Seriously? I wish I was there! How warm is it?”
“Not warm, it’s freezing actually but we are going anyway.”
We start giggling and I can feel the nerves start to tickle my stomach. Now that I had announced my plans to P~ there would be no going back on it. I was definitely going into the bay.
Before setting out, the leader of our group had reminded us that we had to be quiet as public nudity was a felony. “It is when you do it!” I quipped and for that I was rewarded with cheers. The cheering was followed by good-natured shushing and then more giggling as we set off to the beach on foot.
I kept P~ on the phone with me during the walk.
“How many people is it?” she asked.
I counted and told her we were 23 people, about an equal distribution of men and women and an age span of about 40 years. I whispered to her for the duration of the walk. I told her how fundamentally tired I was and how long I had been working.
When she asked me if the work was worthwhile I replied with, ‘absolutely!’ but in truth, I’m not always so sure. Something about sneaking around in the salt-windy dark made the previous months seem less consequential and less painful. We talked about a mutual friend and how much I missed the both of them after only two weeks. She told me a little about the weather at home, my house plants and quitting her job.
The wind picked up when we rounded the corner to the beach. It hit the mouth piece of my cell phone and P~ gasped, “I can hear it! It sounds so cold there!”
I was still whispering but I increased my volume slightly to compete with the wind.
“We’re walking through some bushes now” I told her, “We have to press our sides into the fence of a tennis court because the path is so narrow. People are disappearing around a corner in front of me…I’m there! I’m here! I’m at the water. I have to go, I wish you were here, can you hear it? I have to go!”
I was babbling with excitement as a fresh surge of wind pushed off the ocean. She was laughing on the other end of the phone. “Go! Go!” she said, breathless, “Bye!”
Later, when I reached my dorm room again I called her back, but she didn’t pick up. In voice mail I told her that it was amazing and great and that I would talk to her soon. Her voice mail cuts you off quickly so I didn’t tell her the following until I returned to Birmingham:
The beach was cold and completely sandy. As I stood there, trying to get my bearings I could hear shouts and laughter coming from the water. It was frightening because the wind and surf muted their calls, making it sound like they had been carried out much further than could be safe. Along the reeds at the top of the beach people were stripping off clothes and running into the waves. They were mostly naked, some clothed but the only thing that marked the distinction was a slight change in the light their bodies reflected from a little sliver of the moon. I removed my shoes, jeans, and tee-shirt but kept my underwear and a tank top on. I told myself that it wasn’t prudish modesty, just practicality and protection from the cold water. I stood there for a second more and then ran, straight into the water, not stopping until it hit my shoulders. I could feel my feet slip and my head went under. For a second I panicked, feeling like I would be swept away, and no one would know I was gone. Then the tide surged forward just enough to plant my feet in the sand and my eyes adjusted to see all of the people bobbing around me. I pulled my clothes off under the water and started laughing.
It was colder than my skin could comprehend and while my brain tried to sort out information about temperature, salinity, motion and time it was unable to think the following things:
1) Graduate school is scary because success is not guaranteed. You can not depend on the outcome.
2) Your family needs you and you are not there. You can not be depended on.
3) Some day soon your little sister will learn that being an adult means being alone, even when you are surrounded by people who love you. You can not always depend on others.
4) Every day something can happen to change everything that came before and love may not fix it. You can depend on that.
My brain put everything aside and for once, just processed the information at hand. The temperature was extremely cold, the salinity was high, the motion was soothing and time didn’t matter. Once that piece of news reached me, I walked out of the bay. I didn’t care that my thighs were still fat and that I was holding my underwear in front of relative strangers. I found my towel just as a naked Swiss man grabbed me in a bear hug.
“We did it! Ja! We did it!”
I couldn’t stop laughing as I pulled on dry clothes. Further up the beach another student heard me laughing. We had butted heads for most of the course but when he spotted me he called out, “Mariya! Did you see me? I did it! Did you see me? I went in!”
I lied, and told him that I had seen him go in. Then I told the truth and said that it was awesome that he went in. I pulled a water bottle full of whiskey from the pocket of my sweatshirt, took a swig and then offered it around. Everyone had some and everyone thanked me for it. The walk back from the beach seemed too short. It was over and already becoming a sandy, damp, ridiculous memory.
When I think about it now it seems a shame that a feeling like that can ever fade. I guess if we walked around thinking, ‘the motion is soothing and time doesn’t matter’ it would be hard to get things done. So now I’m home. It’s hot in Birmingham and the wildfires from Georgia have made a thick haze throughout the city. We are landlocked here, so no ocean to clear the smoke away from our brains and our bodies. Nothing is perfect but one thing did surface from that salty cleansing of my brain. I read it when I was in college it is one of my favorite quotes from Zora Neale Hurston. The day after skinny dipping I woke up with it in the front of my mind.
“Don't you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it's in the sea, and it's homesick, and bound to make its way home someday”
(old post from the myspace)
It was a stroke of luck that P~ picked up the phone when I called on the 17th of May. It was around 9:30 pm Birmingham time and an hour later in Cape Cod.
“Hey! What are you doin?” she said, sounding more southern than usual.
“I’m about to go skinny dipping” I told her.
“Seriously? I wish I was there! How warm is it?”
“Not warm, it’s freezing actually but we are going anyway.”
We start giggling and I can feel the nerves start to tickle my stomach. Now that I had announced my plans to P~ there would be no going back on it. I was definitely going into the bay.
Before setting out, the leader of our group had reminded us that we had to be quiet as public nudity was a felony. “It is when you do it!” I quipped and for that I was rewarded with cheers. The cheering was followed by good-natured shushing and then more giggling as we set off to the beach on foot.
I kept P~ on the phone with me during the walk.
“How many people is it?” she asked.
I counted and told her we were 23 people, about an equal distribution of men and women and an age span of about 40 years. I whispered to her for the duration of the walk. I told her how fundamentally tired I was and how long I had been working.
When she asked me if the work was worthwhile I replied with, ‘absolutely!’ but in truth, I’m not always so sure. Something about sneaking around in the salt-windy dark made the previous months seem less consequential and less painful. We talked about a mutual friend and how much I missed the both of them after only two weeks. She told me a little about the weather at home, my house plants and quitting her job.
The wind picked up when we rounded the corner to the beach. It hit the mouth piece of my cell phone and P~ gasped, “I can hear it! It sounds so cold there!”
I was still whispering but I increased my volume slightly to compete with the wind.
“We’re walking through some bushes now” I told her, “We have to press our sides into the fence of a tennis court because the path is so narrow. People are disappearing around a corner in front of me…I’m there! I’m here! I’m at the water. I have to go, I wish you were here, can you hear it? I have to go!”
I was babbling with excitement as a fresh surge of wind pushed off the ocean. She was laughing on the other end of the phone. “Go! Go!” she said, breathless, “Bye!”
Later, when I reached my dorm room again I called her back, but she didn’t pick up. In voice mail I told her that it was amazing and great and that I would talk to her soon. Her voice mail cuts you off quickly so I didn’t tell her the following until I returned to Birmingham:
The beach was cold and completely sandy. As I stood there, trying to get my bearings I could hear shouts and laughter coming from the water. It was frightening because the wind and surf muted their calls, making it sound like they had been carried out much further than could be safe. Along the reeds at the top of the beach people were stripping off clothes and running into the waves. They were mostly naked, some clothed but the only thing that marked the distinction was a slight change in the light their bodies reflected from a little sliver of the moon. I removed my shoes, jeans, and tee-shirt but kept my underwear and a tank top on. I told myself that it wasn’t prudish modesty, just practicality and protection from the cold water. I stood there for a second more and then ran, straight into the water, not stopping until it hit my shoulders. I could feel my feet slip and my head went under. For a second I panicked, feeling like I would be swept away, and no one would know I was gone. Then the tide surged forward just enough to plant my feet in the sand and my eyes adjusted to see all of the people bobbing around me. I pulled my clothes off under the water and started laughing.
It was colder than my skin could comprehend and while my brain tried to sort out information about temperature, salinity, motion and time it was unable to think the following things:
1) Graduate school is scary because success is not guaranteed. You can not depend on the outcome.
2) Your family needs you and you are not there. You can not be depended on.
3) Some day soon your little sister will learn that being an adult means being alone, even when you are surrounded by people who love you. You can not always depend on others.
4) Every day something can happen to change everything that came before and love may not fix it. You can depend on that.
My brain put everything aside and for once, just processed the information at hand. The temperature was extremely cold, the salinity was high, the motion was soothing and time didn’t matter. Once that piece of news reached me, I walked out of the bay. I didn’t care that my thighs were still fat and that I was holding my underwear in front of relative strangers. I found my towel just as a naked Swiss man grabbed me in a bear hug.
“We did it! Ja! We did it!”
I couldn’t stop laughing as I pulled on dry clothes. Further up the beach another student heard me laughing. We had butted heads for most of the course but when he spotted me he called out, “Mariya! Did you see me? I did it! Did you see me? I went in!”
I lied, and told him that I had seen him go in. Then I told the truth and said that it was awesome that he went in. I pulled a water bottle full of whiskey from the pocket of my sweatshirt, took a swig and then offered it around. Everyone had some and everyone thanked me for it. The walk back from the beach seemed too short. It was over and already becoming a sandy, damp, ridiculous memory.
When I think about it now it seems a shame that a feeling like that can ever fade. I guess if we walked around thinking, ‘the motion is soothing and time doesn’t matter’ it would be hard to get things done. So now I’m home. It’s hot in Birmingham and the wildfires from Georgia have made a thick haze throughout the city. We are landlocked here, so no ocean to clear the smoke away from our brains and our bodies. Nothing is perfect but one thing did surface from that salty cleansing of my brain. I read it when I was in college it is one of my favorite quotes from Zora Neale Hurston. The day after skinny dipping I woke up with it in the front of my mind.
“Don't you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it's in the sea, and it's homesick, and bound to make its way home someday”
In my perfect world you always know to cut the red wire first.
February-ish 2007
(old post from the myspace)
Yesterday I started to write a new blog entry. It started like this: Well, it's been ages since my last entry but I haven't had any misdemeanors to report.
It's like I willed it to happen. I finished the first sentence and then walked into the lab tissue culture room to set some media warming while I finished my blog. The three other graduate students who I work with were already in the room.
"Just ask everyone!" one student was saying to another.
"Nooooo, that's too weird" the other one replied.
"Ask people what?" I asked.
The first student turned to me and said, "She had some NutriGrain bars and a magazine in her desk that went missing. You haven't seen them have you?"
I laughed and said that I hadn't. Because I'm a jerk I asked what flavor the bars were and told her that she shouldn't have gay porn magazines in her desk anyway. Then, because I'm a really big jerk, I offered to sell the missing bars back to her at a considerable mark-up. The whole point was to tease my labmate about the possibility of someone stealing three NutriGrain bars out of her desk. I mean…they aren't even tasty. She took it in good humor so I asked around the rest of the lab. No one had the NutriGrain bars. The magazine turned out to be a Dell Computers catalogue so that also seemed like a pretty lame item to steal.
We were in the middle of writing a message on a board in the hallway ("did you enjoy the Nutrigrain bars and the Dell Magazine?") and continuing to tease my labmate about her loss (maybe the thief has a crush on you and they are making a shrine!) when a technician in our lab mentioned that she was missing some popcorn out of her desk too. I am really fortunate to work with people whom I trust and respect so at no point did any of us think that it was the work of somebody actually in the lab but we did start to feel creeped out.
I sat down to finish my blog entry, now with exciting news to report, and decided to put my ipod on for inspiration. My ipod was not in my desk and neither was the cord that goes with the ipod, nor the earphones. I informed my boss and called campus police. The man on the other end of the line told me that it might be a while. Half an hour went by and our post-doc discovered that his laptop was missing. Another graduate student was missing a T-shirt and a pair of socks from a desk. Now I felt terrible for teasing about the NutriGrain bars.
I called the police to report the other thefts. We were informed that it would be a while longer before someone could come out to take our report but they couldn't tell us how long it would be.
"Look" the officer said "I don't want to tell you that it will be ten minutes if it might be eleven".
I tell him that we can handle waiting for an extra minute; it's the difference of hours that we're trying to ascertain.
"Yeah, I can't tell you that." He says that the UAB police were all dealing with an incident and they wouldn't be able to help us any time soon. We decide to leave. One of my labmates gives me a ride to my car and on our way there we can see that two city blocks are barricaded and completely saturated with emergency vehicles. Here is what they were doing instead of taking our report…
**************
Police Detonate Suspicious Package At UAB
Friday, Jan 26, 2007 - 12:15 PM by Chris Pallone
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Just after four on Thursday, UAB students left their classes and discovered chaos.
Police got a report of a 'suspicious package' inside the engineering building at the corner of 11th avenue and 13th street south. Streets around many UAB buildings, including the Alys Stephens center, were back open about three hours after the bomb scare ended.
The scare disrupted rush hour traffic, students couldn't get to their cars or classes.
Birmingham and UAB police shut down at least six blocks of the University's downtown campus.
Fire trucks, Haz-Mat vehicles and police cars were scattered everywhere.
Curious onlookers didn't know what was going on.
"I didn't know what to make of it. I just hoped it wasn't in the building I was in." said Heather Torbert a UAB student.
Heather Torbert soon learned police were investigating a suspicious package. Someone had discovered what looked like a bomb in a knapsack, just inside the entrance of a UAB engineering building.
A bomb squad member dressed in a heavy protective suit went in and out of the building several times examining the device. Around 6:30 p.m., they pulled it out onto 13th street and destroyed it.
"We did trigger the device and it turned out not to be real," said Henry Irby from the Birmingham Police Department.
Police say it was a hoax, something meant to look like a real bomb.
For two hours, police prevented Heather Torbert from getting to her car but she finally left campus, glad that nothing bad came from the tense situation.
"It's scary. It's scary. It really is," she said.
Tonight, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is leading the investigation into who put this fake bomb in the engineering building, and why."
******************
Why did they blow the backpack up first? In my perfect world the bomb squad would have opened the bag first. I've seen how to do it on TV, you sweat buckets and shake and then you cut the red wire…or is it the blue?
Anyway, in my perfect world:
The bomb squad opens the bag, the air is tense. The lead member of the squad is training a rookie. She's tough but attractive and there has been plenty of jockeying for power position mixed with a little sexual innuendo. They will no doubt sleep together later.
"What do you see rookie?" That's what he calls her. Later, when they move past the animosity she'll ask him to call her by her first name but for now she's just 'rookie'.
"I don't know!" she's shaking but trying to hide it.
"Look, you've got to do this. It's now or never." He's unforgiving.
"Jesus" she says, almost under her breath. "It's…wait."
"There's no time! ID the wires and get them cut NOW!"
He starts to move towards her but she puts her hand up, waving him away.
"I've got an ID. It appears to be an ipod, a laptop that runs on a Japanese operating system, several NutriGrain wrappers, a computer catalogue and a pair of socks."
"GET OUT ROOKIE!! The wrappers are a fuse; it's the Kellogg's cereal bomber. Grab the ipod and GET OUT NOW!"
We see her spring to her feet, ipod in hand, running as if her life depends on it. Her life does depend on it and just as she reaches the safety perimeter the ipod starts to play the Carter Family's 'Let the circle be unbroken'. The backpack explodes. She is thrown into his arms. There is an awkward moment while they look at each other. He releases her and says,
"Good job saving that ipod. The jerk who built that bomb didn't deserve to have such a great collection of tunes. I mean, this thing has got the Carter Family and Nina Simone for chrissakes"
She looks him dead in the eye, confident again.
"Yeah, I guess we're looking for someone who is crazy but has regular bowel movements"
He gives her a questioning look but there is a tinge of respect starting to shine through his eyes.
"Well, the way I figure it, you'd have to be crazy to blow up even a single David Bowie track and those NutriGrain bars will...excuse my french sir...give you the shits."
And that's just the way it happened in my perfect world. Oh, and I want my damn ipod back.
(old post from the myspace)
Yesterday I started to write a new blog entry. It started like this: Well, it's been ages since my last entry but I haven't had any misdemeanors to report.
It's like I willed it to happen. I finished the first sentence and then walked into the lab tissue culture room to set some media warming while I finished my blog. The three other graduate students who I work with were already in the room.
"Just ask everyone!" one student was saying to another.
"Nooooo, that's too weird" the other one replied.
"Ask people what?" I asked.
The first student turned to me and said, "She had some NutriGrain bars and a magazine in her desk that went missing. You haven't seen them have you?"
I laughed and said that I hadn't. Because I'm a jerk I asked what flavor the bars were and told her that she shouldn't have gay porn magazines in her desk anyway. Then, because I'm a really big jerk, I offered to sell the missing bars back to her at a considerable mark-up. The whole point was to tease my labmate about the possibility of someone stealing three NutriGrain bars out of her desk. I mean…they aren't even tasty. She took it in good humor so I asked around the rest of the lab. No one had the NutriGrain bars. The magazine turned out to be a Dell Computers catalogue so that also seemed like a pretty lame item to steal.
We were in the middle of writing a message on a board in the hallway ("did you enjoy the Nutrigrain bars and the Dell Magazine?") and continuing to tease my labmate about her loss (maybe the thief has a crush on you and they are making a shrine!) when a technician in our lab mentioned that she was missing some popcorn out of her desk too. I am really fortunate to work with people whom I trust and respect so at no point did any of us think that it was the work of somebody actually in the lab but we did start to feel creeped out.
I sat down to finish my blog entry, now with exciting news to report, and decided to put my ipod on for inspiration. My ipod was not in my desk and neither was the cord that goes with the ipod, nor the earphones. I informed my boss and called campus police. The man on the other end of the line told me that it might be a while. Half an hour went by and our post-doc discovered that his laptop was missing. Another graduate student was missing a T-shirt and a pair of socks from a desk. Now I felt terrible for teasing about the NutriGrain bars.
I called the police to report the other thefts. We were informed that it would be a while longer before someone could come out to take our report but they couldn't tell us how long it would be.
"Look" the officer said "I don't want to tell you that it will be ten minutes if it might be eleven".
I tell him that we can handle waiting for an extra minute; it's the difference of hours that we're trying to ascertain.
"Yeah, I can't tell you that." He says that the UAB police were all dealing with an incident and they wouldn't be able to help us any time soon. We decide to leave. One of my labmates gives me a ride to my car and on our way there we can see that two city blocks are barricaded and completely saturated with emergency vehicles. Here is what they were doing instead of taking our report…
**************
Police Detonate Suspicious Package At UAB
Friday, Jan 26, 2007 - 12:15 PM by Chris Pallone
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Just after four on Thursday, UAB students left their classes and discovered chaos.
Police got a report of a 'suspicious package' inside the engineering building at the corner of 11th avenue and 13th street south. Streets around many UAB buildings, including the Alys Stephens center, were back open about three hours after the bomb scare ended.
The scare disrupted rush hour traffic, students couldn't get to their cars or classes.
Birmingham and UAB police shut down at least six blocks of the University's downtown campus.
Fire trucks, Haz-Mat vehicles and police cars were scattered everywhere.
Curious onlookers didn't know what was going on.
"I didn't know what to make of it. I just hoped it wasn't in the building I was in." said Heather Torbert a UAB student.
Heather Torbert soon learned police were investigating a suspicious package. Someone had discovered what looked like a bomb in a knapsack, just inside the entrance of a UAB engineering building.
A bomb squad member dressed in a heavy protective suit went in and out of the building several times examining the device. Around 6:30 p.m., they pulled it out onto 13th street and destroyed it.
"We did trigger the device and it turned out not to be real," said Henry Irby from the Birmingham Police Department.
Police say it was a hoax, something meant to look like a real bomb.
For two hours, police prevented Heather Torbert from getting to her car but she finally left campus, glad that nothing bad came from the tense situation.
"It's scary. It's scary. It really is," she said.
Tonight, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is leading the investigation into who put this fake bomb in the engineering building, and why."
******************
Why did they blow the backpack up first? In my perfect world the bomb squad would have opened the bag first. I've seen how to do it on TV, you sweat buckets and shake and then you cut the red wire…or is it the blue?
Anyway, in my perfect world:
The bomb squad opens the bag, the air is tense. The lead member of the squad is training a rookie. She's tough but attractive and there has been plenty of jockeying for power position mixed with a little sexual innuendo. They will no doubt sleep together later.
"What do you see rookie?" That's what he calls her. Later, when they move past the animosity she'll ask him to call her by her first name but for now she's just 'rookie'.
"I don't know!" she's shaking but trying to hide it.
"Look, you've got to do this. It's now or never." He's unforgiving.
"Jesus" she says, almost under her breath. "It's…wait."
"There's no time! ID the wires and get them cut NOW!"
He starts to move towards her but she puts her hand up, waving him away.
"I've got an ID. It appears to be an ipod, a laptop that runs on a Japanese operating system, several NutriGrain wrappers, a computer catalogue and a pair of socks."
"GET OUT ROOKIE!! The wrappers are a fuse; it's the Kellogg's cereal bomber. Grab the ipod and GET OUT NOW!"
We see her spring to her feet, ipod in hand, running as if her life depends on it. Her life does depend on it and just as she reaches the safety perimeter the ipod starts to play the Carter Family's 'Let the circle be unbroken'. The backpack explodes. She is thrown into his arms. There is an awkward moment while they look at each other. He releases her and says,
"Good job saving that ipod. The jerk who built that bomb didn't deserve to have such a great collection of tunes. I mean, this thing has got the Carter Family and Nina Simone for chrissakes"
She looks him dead in the eye, confident again.
"Yeah, I guess we're looking for someone who is crazy but has regular bowel movements"
He gives her a questioning look but there is a tinge of respect starting to shine through his eyes.
"Well, the way I figure it, you'd have to be crazy to blow up even a single David Bowie track and those NutriGrain bars will...excuse my french sir...give you the shits."
And that's just the way it happened in my perfect world. Oh, and I want my damn ipod back.
Your plywood breasts are cutting my face
Sunday, September 17, 2006
(old post from the myspace)
So graduate school continues to be...continuous, constantly. The work is going well but every day I realize that I am only scratching the surface of what I need to be doing. Here is how I'm handling the situation:
1) Don't panic
2) Work harder
3) If the first two fail you and you still feel overwhelmed, go out for beers with your best friend on Friday afternoon.
4) If the third option still doesn't lift the weight from your chest then when he's not looking, go into the bathroom and start crying.
So that seems to be the plan I have adopted and it's working out nicely. Friday I went to the Mill/Grill/Schmill (I can never remember which it is now) with B. We ordered a pitcher of beer, tortilla chips, and a steaming hot bowl of fat. Right there that should have been enough to ease the rising panic that is grad school but something was off. There wasn't enough cheese in the fat-bowl or something. We were chatting about life and fighting over the last congealed globs when I realized that I was going to start crying.
So I headed for the "ladies" and once there I had a nice little sob. Deeee-lightful. I was rinsing my face when a very tall, very outfitted, woman walked in. She was a quintisential B'ham woman. Her age was somewhere between 21-45. She was painfully thin, blonde, overdressed for a brew pub, and had cleavage that looked harder than Washington's chin on Mt.Rushmore.
I was blowing my nose and wondering why gold necklace belts were once again stylish when she asked me if I was okay.
"I'm great." I said, and then let out a completely pathetic sniffle.
"Oh sweetie!" And the next thing I knew she had used her long stick arms to pull me into her rock-hard boobs. I could feel a blood vessel break in my left cheek.
"Damn! that's going to leave a mark" I thought.
"I'm Amy Jo" she said, as she released me. She was smiling with what I think was supposed to be a benevolent and warm gaze. Instead, it reminded me of a TV commercial and I was the particularly well-performing dish soap.
"Listen, sweetie, I know it doesn't look like it but I have been through some real tough times. See this?" she was pointing to her mascara which would have been hard to miss in a black-out.
"Uh-huh" I was rubbing the circulation back into my cheek.
"Well it's waterproof! Because you believe me, I have cried before!"
It was sort of cute really. I decided that she must be in her mid-twenties and although her sympathy was really unwelcome, it was at least sincere. I was just starting to warm up to Amy Jo when she hit me with a wammy even tougher than her chest.
"Do you believe in GOD?"
"Right now I believe in another pitcher of beer Amy Jo."
"You might feel that way now, but in the morning when you wake up, say a little prayer."
I assumed that she didn't mean to the god of porcelain but rather to a giant white man sitting on a cloud.
"And you will hear HIM. HE is real. HE's there for you. Okay?"
I wanted to ask Amy Jo about her 'HIM'. I wanted to know if HE was so great why she felt the need to second guess HIM on the whole breast situation. Also, I'm not sure you can get into heaven while wearing a gold chain belt.
I refrained from saying anything else other than a quick 'thank you'. When I got back to the table it was clear that I had been crying but B didn't press me about it much. We both knew what was happening there. M showed up not long after and we decided to head on to the Blue Monkey. We passed Amy Jo on our way out and she gave me a truely sweet smile with a little wave.
"Wow," said M, "you know everyone!"
And I thought, "True, and I've got the bruises to prove it to you."
Which brings me to the final step in coping with graduate school:
5) If all else fails, have some plywood knockers smashed into your face. It will make you laugh and after that, there is very little that two cool friends and another beer can't fix.
(old post from the myspace)
So graduate school continues to be...continuous, constantly. The work is going well but every day I realize that I am only scratching the surface of what I need to be doing. Here is how I'm handling the situation:
1) Don't panic
2) Work harder
3) If the first two fail you and you still feel overwhelmed, go out for beers with your best friend on Friday afternoon.
4) If the third option still doesn't lift the weight from your chest then when he's not looking, go into the bathroom and start crying.
So that seems to be the plan I have adopted and it's working out nicely. Friday I went to the Mill/Grill/Schmill (I can never remember which it is now) with B. We ordered a pitcher of beer, tortilla chips, and a steaming hot bowl of fat. Right there that should have been enough to ease the rising panic that is grad school but something was off. There wasn't enough cheese in the fat-bowl or something. We were chatting about life and fighting over the last congealed globs when I realized that I was going to start crying.
So I headed for the "ladies" and once there I had a nice little sob. Deeee-lightful. I was rinsing my face when a very tall, very outfitted, woman walked in. She was a quintisential B'ham woman. Her age was somewhere between 21-45. She was painfully thin, blonde, overdressed for a brew pub, and had cleavage that looked harder than Washington's chin on Mt.Rushmore.
I was blowing my nose and wondering why gold necklace belts were once again stylish when she asked me if I was okay.
"I'm great." I said, and then let out a completely pathetic sniffle.
"Oh sweetie!" And the next thing I knew she had used her long stick arms to pull me into her rock-hard boobs. I could feel a blood vessel break in my left cheek.
"Damn! that's going to leave a mark" I thought.
"I'm Amy Jo" she said, as she released me. She was smiling with what I think was supposed to be a benevolent and warm gaze. Instead, it reminded me of a TV commercial and I was the particularly well-performing dish soap.
"Listen, sweetie, I know it doesn't look like it but I have been through some real tough times. See this?" she was pointing to her mascara which would have been hard to miss in a black-out.
"Uh-huh" I was rubbing the circulation back into my cheek.
"Well it's waterproof! Because you believe me, I have cried before!"
It was sort of cute really. I decided that she must be in her mid-twenties and although her sympathy was really unwelcome, it was at least sincere. I was just starting to warm up to Amy Jo when she hit me with a wammy even tougher than her chest.
"Do you believe in GOD?"
"Right now I believe in another pitcher of beer Amy Jo."
"You might feel that way now, but in the morning when you wake up, say a little prayer."
I assumed that she didn't mean to the god of porcelain but rather to a giant white man sitting on a cloud.
"And you will hear HIM. HE is real. HE's there for you. Okay?"
I wanted to ask Amy Jo about her 'HIM'. I wanted to know if HE was so great why she felt the need to second guess HIM on the whole breast situation. Also, I'm not sure you can get into heaven while wearing a gold chain belt.
I refrained from saying anything else other than a quick 'thank you'. When I got back to the table it was clear that I had been crying but B didn't press me about it much. We both knew what was happening there. M showed up not long after and we decided to head on to the Blue Monkey. We passed Amy Jo on our way out and she gave me a truely sweet smile with a little wave.
"Wow," said M, "you know everyone!"
And I thought, "True, and I've got the bruises to prove it to you."
Which brings me to the final step in coping with graduate school:
5) If all else fails, have some plywood knockers smashed into your face. It will make you laugh and after that, there is very little that two cool friends and another beer can't fix.
Seattle-homey-home-home-home
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
(old post from the myspace)
So last week I snuck home. Snuck? Sneaked? Snooked? I think it's sneaked.
Whatever, I went home and I only told five people in Seattle. Mom, Alli, my little brother and sister and my friend Pam. One for every full day that I was home. It was all I could handle and I'm glad I limited myself even though there were other people who I would have liked to see (you know who you are).
It was a last minute trip anyway. Hannibal Lecter mice suddenly freed me from the lab (literally, but I can't explain that here). I called my mom nearly in tears. "Get me home, I can come home next week, get me home okay?"
I hate to seem ungrateful. Graduate school is fine lately except how it seems to be taking place under a giant bowl of hot sorghum syrup. The heat, the humidity, the way I can't seem to get anything to really take off in lab, the Hannibal Lecter mice. The so-very-far-away-from-home.
So a week later I was on a plane and by the time I was on my final connecting flight, Birmingham seemed like an elaborate dream. In fact, I slept most of the way to Seattle and when I woke up, Mt. Rainier was standing just outside of the plane window. We observed each other. He told me I looked tired. I told him I was really worried about his snow cover. He looked naked and his foot hills were completely bare. Global mountain denuding. But still, it was good to see him regardless of his lacking modesty.
Momma Jo was there to greet me when I got off the plane. She looked great. Then home to Capital Hill. The city was all shiny eyes and teeth, definatley showing off for me. Every inch was green, temperate, and full of punk kids in subarus (subari?). After homemade mom food and a nap I hooked up with Alli for a Sunday afternoon of total Seattle indulgence. But I couldn't stop laughing. I honestly had to stop on the street to double over and laugh and laugh.
I haven't seen a summer in Seattle in two years. It's soooo cute. Men drinking water out of platypus bottles, with microbrew beer guts and $2,000 bicycles. 30-something punk couples, covered in tattoos, pushing babies in $1300 strollers. Neurotic white ladies marching around capital hill in giant gortex sunhats and long sleeves. All of them, I missed them all.
We walked to volunteer park and watched the people in the park tell their children to "use your words!" and to "try to be more considerate". Snort!
One little girl and boy had two daddies or maybe a Dad and a Poppa. Everyone in the family looked really happy. Ahhhh.
Then off to Liberty. Not "the pursuit of" but Seattle's latest...okay Southerners, you are going to love this...Cocktails, Sushi & Espresso Bar. That's actually how they bill themselves. It was great. We drank some kind of insanely alcoholic drinks and ate little veggie sushi bites with mango in them. Our bartender looked like Ricky Martin and when he told us he was originally from Puerto Rico we tried not to giggle. But he made a mean cocktail and we got to taste all kinds of numbly drinks from the leftovers in his shaker.
Floating out of Liberty and down 15th all I could do was grin like a fool. People were staring. I didn't care. There were still five days left before I had to leave again. It didn't get better than that and as with most trips home; it was much harder at times.
So there is the best moment, not because of my cocktail buzz but because of the everything. The absolutely everything. My best friend is chattering away at me and I know that my mom is looking forward to seeing me walk through her front door in a few hours. My little sister is waiting for my call. The weather is cool enough in the early evening for a light sweater. And there are five days stretching in front of me. I will be hugged every day. I will not have to explain that I am a vegetarian. I will not be the only woman without makeup. I will not stick out in any unfamiliar ways. I am home.
(old post from the myspace)
So last week I snuck home. Snuck? Sneaked? Snooked? I think it's sneaked.
Whatever, I went home and I only told five people in Seattle. Mom, Alli, my little brother and sister and my friend Pam. One for every full day that I was home. It was all I could handle and I'm glad I limited myself even though there were other people who I would have liked to see (you know who you are).
It was a last minute trip anyway. Hannibal Lecter mice suddenly freed me from the lab (literally, but I can't explain that here). I called my mom nearly in tears. "Get me home, I can come home next week, get me home okay?"
I hate to seem ungrateful. Graduate school is fine lately except how it seems to be taking place under a giant bowl of hot sorghum syrup. The heat, the humidity, the way I can't seem to get anything to really take off in lab, the Hannibal Lecter mice. The so-very-far-away-from-home.
So a week later I was on a plane and by the time I was on my final connecting flight, Birmingham seemed like an elaborate dream. In fact, I slept most of the way to Seattle and when I woke up, Mt. Rainier was standing just outside of the plane window. We observed each other. He told me I looked tired. I told him I was really worried about his snow cover. He looked naked and his foot hills were completely bare. Global mountain denuding. But still, it was good to see him regardless of his lacking modesty.
Momma Jo was there to greet me when I got off the plane. She looked great. Then home to Capital Hill. The city was all shiny eyes and teeth, definatley showing off for me. Every inch was green, temperate, and full of punk kids in subarus (subari?). After homemade mom food and a nap I hooked up with Alli for a Sunday afternoon of total Seattle indulgence. But I couldn't stop laughing. I honestly had to stop on the street to double over and laugh and laugh.
I haven't seen a summer in Seattle in two years. It's soooo cute. Men drinking water out of platypus bottles, with microbrew beer guts and $2,000 bicycles. 30-something punk couples, covered in tattoos, pushing babies in $1300 strollers. Neurotic white ladies marching around capital hill in giant gortex sunhats and long sleeves. All of them, I missed them all.
We walked to volunteer park and watched the people in the park tell their children to "use your words!" and to "try to be more considerate". Snort!
One little girl and boy had two daddies or maybe a Dad and a Poppa. Everyone in the family looked really happy. Ahhhh.
Then off to Liberty. Not "the pursuit of" but Seattle's latest...okay Southerners, you are going to love this...Cocktails, Sushi & Espresso Bar. That's actually how they bill themselves. It was great. We drank some kind of insanely alcoholic drinks and ate little veggie sushi bites with mango in them. Our bartender looked like Ricky Martin and when he told us he was originally from Puerto Rico we tried not to giggle. But he made a mean cocktail and we got to taste all kinds of numbly drinks from the leftovers in his shaker.
Floating out of Liberty and down 15th all I could do was grin like a fool. People were staring. I didn't care. There were still five days left before I had to leave again. It didn't get better than that and as with most trips home; it was much harder at times.
So there is the best moment, not because of my cocktail buzz but because of the everything. The absolutely everything. My best friend is chattering away at me and I know that my mom is looking forward to seeing me walk through her front door in a few hours. My little sister is waiting for my call. The weather is cool enough in the early evening for a light sweater. And there are five days stretching in front of me. I will be hugged every day. I will not have to explain that I am a vegetarian. I will not be the only woman without makeup. I will not stick out in any unfamiliar ways. I am home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
