My last post was about Monday and Tuesday, so for this one we're going back in time to Sunday. It's a weak excuse for a Back to the Future reference, but I'll take it.
So, Sunday morning very early Kate and I left Texas for the long drive to Michigan. We had the truck packed and tarped, so everything was ready. We woke up at 1:30 in the morning and were on the road at 2:01. For those of you who don't know, that's early.
Kate took the first shift and drove till the sun came up. Then I drove till lunch or so, and Kate took another turn, and we alternated till we got to Michigan. We made the whole trip in a little over 16 hours. Not bad. The weather was good, and the only complaint was that police enforce the speed limit in Illinois. Seriously. No tickets this time. We did see lots of people get pulled over, though, so we kept the cruise control carefully set at 65.
When we got to our apartment, we spent half an hour unloading the truck and were about ready to call it a night. I was beat, Kate was beat, so we ordered a pizza and ate sitting on the floor (because the kitchen table had boxes on it).
This was when I learned that I had, in fact, married a woman. You see, I was tired and felt gross from a day in the car, so I decided to take a shower. I grabbed a towel that we had been given and headed for the shower. It was a very nice towel, soft, white, and monogrammed. Kate saw me and said "You can't use that towel, it's white." To me, that's like saying "You can't use that rectangle, it's a square." You see, to men, towels serve one purpose. They absorb water from wet things like bodies after a shower. White towels are a subset of towels, so by definition they are towels. Therefore, white towels serve one purpose: drying wet things.
It turns out that white towels (especially monogrammed white towels) are for display. To look pretty. So, I dug through some boxes to find a blue towel and took a shower. I guess Kate has some work to do teaching me what's what.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
First day of work
Well, friends, for those of you who don't know, I recently got married. More on that to come (I haven't written anything about it because I've been pretty busy with finals then getting married then driving from Texas to Michigan, then starting a new lab...lots to do).
So, Kate and I spent most of Monday settling in to our new place. There was lots to do. The AT&T guy came to help us hook up our internet and took forever. I'm pretty sure he made another service call in the middle of helping us. He was there at our apartment, sort of in and out a few times to the truck to get tools or whatever, then he left. Didn't say anything, didn't ask if we were planning on being there for the next hour, just left. The only way we knew he wasn't done was that he left some tools on our living room floor. An hour later, he came back and went back to work without saying anything about having been gone.
Then, when he left after several hours, he informed us that we were ready to install our internet. I was a bit confused because I thought that was what he had been doing, but he kindly informed me that we were self-install customers, and that he was just making sure that the phone lines were ready for us to do the installation ourselves. So, that was weird.
By the time he left it was after 2PM, so I just decided to stick around the apartment and help Kate unpack stuff and organize. There's a lot of that to do, it turns out. The next day I went to work in Lyle's lab, which is being pretty fun so far. I'll probably talk more about that once I get caught up on past events.
On Tuesday I came home from work on the bus, and it was cold. I was tired. And when I walked in the house, Kate said those three simple words every man longs to hear. "Dinner is ready." It was beautiful. She had thrown some meat and stuff in the slow cooker and we had it over rice. Simple for her, wonderful for me. I truly have a great wife.
So, Kate and I spent most of Monday settling in to our new place. There was lots to do. The AT&T guy came to help us hook up our internet and took forever. I'm pretty sure he made another service call in the middle of helping us. He was there at our apartment, sort of in and out a few times to the truck to get tools or whatever, then he left. Didn't say anything, didn't ask if we were planning on being there for the next hour, just left. The only way we knew he wasn't done was that he left some tools on our living room floor. An hour later, he came back and went back to work without saying anything about having been gone.
Then, when he left after several hours, he informed us that we were ready to install our internet. I was a bit confused because I thought that was what he had been doing, but he kindly informed me that we were self-install customers, and that he was just making sure that the phone lines were ready for us to do the installation ourselves. So, that was weird.
By the time he left it was after 2PM, so I just decided to stick around the apartment and help Kate unpack stuff and organize. There's a lot of that to do, it turns out. The next day I went to work in Lyle's lab, which is being pretty fun so far. I'll probably talk more about that once I get caught up on past events.
On Tuesday I came home from work on the bus, and it was cold. I was tired. And when I walked in the house, Kate said those three simple words every man longs to hear. "Dinner is ready." It was beautiful. She had thrown some meat and stuff in the slow cooker and we had it over rice. Simple for her, wonderful for me. I truly have a great wife.
Back from the dead
No, not in the way you're thinking.
More like I'm just less busy now and am going to blog the last month or so of my life in reverse chronological order. It'll be kind of like watching Citizen Kane, except that I've never seen it so I don't know if that holds.
Anyway, enjoy!
More like I'm just less busy now and am going to blog the last month or so of my life in reverse chronological order. It'll be kind of like watching Citizen Kane, except that I've never seen it so I don't know if that holds.
Anyway, enjoy!
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Jews are awesome
Well, I could really leave this one right here and get the basic message across. Jews are, in fact, awesome. But some people keep asking for more cowbell details about my life, so here we go.
Last Wednesday, I went to get a free bagel at the Alumni Center. Just one of the many perks of being a student. Every week, they have free bagels and some student group is there handing out their recruitment propaganda. Last week, the student group was Hillel, the umbrella organization for Jewish student groups on campus.
So, being a wannajew, I stopped to talk to them. They were really nice. They gave me a fridge magnet that says "גו בלו", which is "Go Blue!" transliterated (not translated) into Hebrew. It's kinda fun. I turned down several Silly Bands (apparently something the kids are doing these days) shaped like Stars of David and letters in the Hebrew alphabet. But the best thing they gave me was the number of the Jewish Penicillin Hotline. This is a group of students who will bring any sick student matzo ball soup for free. Just to help out their fellow man.
You see, it says in the Talmud that "a sick person should know that he or she isn't left to suffer alone." And simple as that, the students want to make sure that any sick person knows that they have a friend. Jew or Gentile, they just want to do that kind of service for anybody who is suffering. And that's why Jews are awesome.
Last Wednesday, I went to get a free bagel at the Alumni Center. Just one of the many perks of being a student. Every week, they have free bagels and some student group is there handing out their recruitment propaganda. Last week, the student group was Hillel, the umbrella organization for Jewish student groups on campus.
So, being a wannajew, I stopped to talk to them. They were really nice. They gave me a fridge magnet that says "גו בלו", which is "Go Blue!" transliterated (not translated) into Hebrew. It's kinda fun. I turned down several Silly Bands (apparently something the kids are doing these days) shaped like Stars of David and letters in the Hebrew alphabet. But the best thing they gave me was the number of the Jewish Penicillin Hotline. This is a group of students who will bring any sick student matzo ball soup for free. Just to help out their fellow man.
You see, it says in the Talmud that "a sick person should know that he or she isn't left to suffer alone." And simple as that, the students want to make sure that any sick person knows that they have a friend. Jew or Gentile, they just want to do that kind of service for anybody who is suffering. And that's why Jews are awesome.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Politics
Does anybody enjoy political talk TV? My roomie is watching Keith Olberman right now and I realized something: I hate them all. Beck, Olberman, even Jon Stewart who I used to really like. They're all insufferable tool bags. The shows involve a lot of really smug bragging about everything that the other party does wrong, lots of complaining about things that don't go their way, and videos and sound bytes that make the other guy look dumb. So annoying.
I'm not going anywhere with this. I'm just sayin, is all.
I'm not going anywhere with this. I'm just sayin, is all.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
The other thing about Cell Biology
My faithful readers will remember last week when I posted about my cell biology class. Everyone else can scroll down to last week and pretend to be a faithful reader if they want. No judgment here.
Well, it seems that I am not the only one complaining about the class. Yesterday, the professor (the "head professor", so the one who wrote this last test we took) came to class and said that she's been getting lots of negative feedback. She then explained that we were all dumb and need to work harder. She told us that this class is a graduate level class, and is all about critical thinking not just regurgitation like we are used to, and that can cause some students to struggle. But the solution is for us, the students, to buck up and work harder.
This made me think about two things. First, when you argue, there are the buzzwords you use and there is your actual argument. These two do not have to be related. You may notice that my criticism of her class was "in grad school we should be thinking critically not regurgitating, therefore you are a bad teacher," and that her defense was "in grad school, you should be thinking critically not regurgitating, therefore you are all lazy and dumb." We both think that those particular words- critical thinking and all that- back up our particular position. Of course, I am right.
The second thing is something that really bothers me. That is that the problem is always someone else's fault. I would have been happy with a compromise of "hey, guys, I could have worded my questions better, but you still need to put more time into this class. I'll try to be clearer about what I want if you will try to do better work." Some sort of shared blame. But there was no sharing. She said "You are complaining about my test, therefore you are all dumb." Nothing wrong with the test.
Anyway, I thought I should follow up on that previous post. I just have to make it through another few weeks of the class, and then I'll get to complain about something else.
Well, it seems that I am not the only one complaining about the class. Yesterday, the professor (the "head professor", so the one who wrote this last test we took) came to class and said that she's been getting lots of negative feedback. She then explained that we were all dumb and need to work harder. She told us that this class is a graduate level class, and is all about critical thinking not just regurgitation like we are used to, and that can cause some students to struggle. But the solution is for us, the students, to buck up and work harder.
This made me think about two things. First, when you argue, there are the buzzwords you use and there is your actual argument. These two do not have to be related. You may notice that my criticism of her class was "in grad school we should be thinking critically not regurgitating, therefore you are a bad teacher," and that her defense was "in grad school, you should be thinking critically not regurgitating, therefore you are all lazy and dumb." We both think that those particular words- critical thinking and all that- back up our particular position. Of course, I am right.
The second thing is something that really bothers me. That is that the problem is always someone else's fault. I would have been happy with a compromise of "hey, guys, I could have worded my questions better, but you still need to put more time into this class. I'll try to be clearer about what I want if you will try to do better work." Some sort of shared blame. But there was no sharing. She said "You are complaining about my test, therefore you are all dumb." Nothing wrong with the test.
Anyway, I thought I should follow up on that previous post. I just have to make it through another few weeks of the class, and then I'll get to complain about something else.
Lenny
Well, friends, after years of homeopathic medicine, I had to take Lenny to a real doctor yesterday. It seems he had a leaky gasket that I would have really enjoyed fixing myself, but I just don't have the time these days. I think it would have made for some good experience but it would have probably taken me 2 or 3 weeks. And grad school is a busy time. Plus, it's cold outside.
So, I went to a mechanic that I think I'm going to like. The place is right up the block from my house (by the bus stop I used to use, so it's an easy walk) and very quick. I took Lenny to him on Monday morning before work, and by Monday evening he was done.
I'm hoping that this is the end of Lenny's problems. He's a good car, he just breaks down a lot. It's not his fault.
So, I went to a mechanic that I think I'm going to like. The place is right up the block from my house (by the bus stop I used to use, so it's an easy walk) and very quick. I took Lenny to him on Monday morning before work, and by Monday evening he was done.
I'm hoping that this is the end of Lenny's problems. He's a good car, he just breaks down a lot. It's not his fault.
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