Pumpkin Eater

Dear Neglected Journal.  I ventured out to the great outdoors this past weekend.  Actually, I ventured toward D.C. and Punty and was driven out to the great outdoors in a leisurely, sun-dappled car ride nap.  But I arrived at the outdoors nevertheless.  Only to discover an orchard full of little children (and excellent cider donuts) and other mishaps.  Like how Punty's apple-picking trip came too late in the season, so we picked pumpkins instead (like that time we got blueberries instead of apples from a shady orchard in Maine... I have terrible luck with apples).  And she accidentally picked the farm her friend didn't recommend.  And by "pick pumpkins," I really mean "intimidate all the children off of the hayride, walk into half empty pumpkin field, wander around for 15 minutes as Punty picks pumpkin, then ride back into the store where Punty ditches said pumpkin for a prettier one from the bin."  I love it when I'm not the one that messes up.  On our way out, Liz ran into car trouble, so we camped out on the side of the road with a blanket and picnic.  It was the only time during the day that the outdoors cooperated.  The grass was nice, the sky was mostly clear, and the air was crisp.  It just came at the cost of a $2200 engine.  Lesson learned?  Avoid the outdoors.  Nothing good comes of it.

Center for Talented Toddlers

On the way to Important Yet Terrible Talk With Excellent Reception Food today, we bumped into Greg.  While we were all excited for the opening of the drug research center (this was, after all, before the Terrible Talk), Greg had bigger things on his mind: the education of his 3-year old.  He had a parent-teacher conference to attend, 2 letters of recommendation to obtain, and a very detailed pre-school application to fill out.  In describing all this, he inadvertently uttered my favorite sentences of the day.

Greg: One of the questions was, "how does your child deal with adversity?"  Uh... he cries.

Center for Awkward Youths

It's finals season again (coinciding with Neeson season).  This means that the weeks are generally gross.  But Thursday night was a brief, wondrous reprieve from it all, one of those nights with so many good elements, I don't know where to begin.  Empanadas from the biscuit people I adore.  Actually, a whole dinner from them.  Chill bluegrass music.  Al fresco dining amid trees, Christmas lights, and a little fire.  And of course, the lovely, lovely company.  It wasn't just that Sachini and Catherine are past ridiculous in their fun/nice distributions (off the charts on both scales), but also that we got to spend much of the evening discussing Mike's nerdy past.  I thought I could relate to him, Geek Camp alum-to-alum (ah, CTY), but he went far beyond a couple of misguided summers and into real hardcore stuff, with a special math and science high school (that Landlady Chang and Brother also went to), then teaching Nerd Camp, getting blacklisted, and then of course, back full circle to biostatistics here.  I had never felt so cool in my life.  Nor so proud that I 'only' spent 2 summers at Geek Camp.

Blazing Furnace

Expecting the Worst
Hanging out in my room last night, I suddenly heard a thump and little pop sound, followed by silence.  I didn't think Roommate Megan was moving anything heavy, but thought I'd check, fearing that someone had broken into the apartment or a surrounding one (ah, adjusting expectations in B'more).  Once I stepped into the empty living room, however, I saw that no such break-ins had occurred.  Then I smelled smoke.  Then I saw smoke coming from the heater closet. Then I saw a spark and rushed into Megan's room.

Two Public Health Experts One Mini Fire
There were a couple of minutes of chaos as we tried to figure out what to do, tried to get a closer look at the heater then jump away when we saw flames, and tried to see if we had a fire extinguisher anywhere (we don't; we should).  We then decided that calling 911 seemed like the right thing to do even though the fire was most probably out.  Right after Megan hung up, we panicked.  Not because of the fire.  But because we were both about to go to bed and not wearing presentable clothes.  She changed.  I borrowed a sweatshirt from her and kept the flowery white PJ half shorts because the heater was right outside my door and I didn't want to walk by another possible spark.

B'more's Best
The firefighters arrived in minutes.  They were everything one could expect them to be.  Calm, reassuring, and mostly seemed like they knew what they were doing.  We were right to call them, they said (I wonder if they tell everyone that).  They smelled the apartment and saw the blackened water heater.  "Yup, that's a fire all right."  Then they just chilled a little bit since everything was under control.  Somebody turned off the hot water.  Somebody decided they should leave a tag on the water heater.  Someone located a tag in his helmet.  Nobody had a pen.  Except for me.  I always have pens.

Super Confused Super
The next step was calling the emergency maintenance number, which put me in touch with Brian the Maintenance Manager.  "Wasn't I just in your apartment this afternoon?"  "Yes, yes, you fixed a drain.  Thank you!"  "I didn't touch your water heater."  "I know you didn't.  But it still burned up."  "Can you explain this again?  You're saying it caught on fire?"  "Yes, sir, it burst into flames." "I just don't understand.  This has never happened before."  "It's the first time for me, too.  But it happened."  "Well, do you want me to-- right now, I don't have a --"  "You should come first thing tomorrow morning."  "OK.  That's good.  Because it's 11 o'clock now."  Who knew I had a talent for talking supers through difficult situations?  I did.

This Happened Tonight

I know it's been quiet here lately.  But at the very least, this will be explained.  Tomorrow.  After I get some sleep.  And perhaps, a new water heater.

My Best Work All Week

Yet another pirate research joke.  There are a lot of pirate statisticians out there.

Cut

Last week, I decided to live beyond my means (like the people who got us into this recession) and treated myself to a nice chef's knife.  Not ridiculously fancy, but fancy enough.  It cost about the same as my (Target) microwave.  It arrived today.  And has me excited to chop vegetables.  Considering the cost savings in adverted health utilization this knife will bring because I'm eating more vegetables, it's probably an investment win in the long run (then again, living longer = more health expenditures, what a conundrum; such is the curse of learning health economics).

(Two pictures from last weekend below.  It appears that we're all terrible at having our picture taken.  This suits Brother's purposes because he takes artistic photos and can bring the best out of people in natural settings.  But it does terribly for having family pictures.)

Two good photographers.  In one terrible picture.

Everyone says they look alike.  I don't see it.

Hail Kaiser

I love a good goof who spins a good yarn.

(discussing his friend Kaiser)

Doc Nice: You know the Kaiser foundation?  She's from that family.

Moi: Whoa.  That's amazing.  That's really important.  Do you think she's related to the Kaisers of the roll?

Doc Nice: Probably.  If you're going to start a health system, you need some seed money, and I bet that that's where it came from.

Moi: It makes perfect sense.  If you feed people simple carbohydrates, they'll get sick and enter the health system.

Doc Nice: You know, isn't Kaiser German for king or something?  I bet they're also related to that.

Moi: OK, now you're just stretching this too far.  Let's not get carried away.  They are not German kings.

Doc Nice: I'm sorry.  You're right.  I was just goofing off.