Humble Pie

(talking about undergrad campuses)

Christine: Her college had really good food.

Moi: Well, I liked it.  Rather than academics, it's one of the things we rank highly in.

Sarah: Yeah?  Mine, too!  

Moi: I didn't know that.

Sarah: Yeah, BC had really good food.  I think in the Princeton Review we were in the top 10 one year.  Sometimes for breakfast we'd have omelets made to order. 

Moi: Oh that's cute.  I was just being polite when I said "rank highly."  We're usually number 1 or 2 (There was one shameful year when we slipped to #3.  But we don't talk about that again.)

I can be modest indeed, but if you want to gloat about your school's superior food, you best come ready to play, and have more to show for than omelets.  Colby had omelet stations.  We had made-to-order omelets every day*.  Waffle irons with our school seal.  And don't even get me started on the apple farmers who came to visit.  According to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, we were ranked #1 by the Princeton Review in 6 of the last 10 years, including 2013, 2014, and 3 of my 4 years there- I'm probably an inspiration.

*In retrospect, a rather extravagant and perhaps poor use of staffing and resources. 

Some Kind Of

I have no pictures from yesterday. It was that generic kind of wonderful whenever you mix summer with water, sunshine, and greenery. Although the day started much differently. It started when I loitered outside the local liquor store ( where the sidewalk smelled like piss) waiting for doors to open. The owners were 15 minutes late. I was not. Neither were the 7 strangers with me. It says something about a neighborhood's make up when people line up to the liquor (also convenience) store. And I was contributing to the problem. Though I'm sure we all had very legitimate reasons for insisting on buying booze so early in the morning. Mine was that I needed milk and amaretto right away for the cherry cake I was bringing to the water. To be enjoyed with crabs, sun, demonstrating my lack of hand-eye coordination to everyone I work with, kayaking, and lounging with 'friends.'

When Three Word Could Do

Some people don't know how to take a compliment.  And some people don't know how to give one.

(catching up with Doc Query at the conference and trying to talk about how he's going to be teaching a course in the fall)

Moi: Wow, you're going to be great because you're funny and you are a good talking um, word, er- 

Query: Person?  I'm a good talking word person.

Moi: Exactly.

(pause)

Moi: Wait, I think the word for that is speaker.

Clerks

Grocery Store,

Why do you have an infograph on peppers if there are no peppers to be had? Though I suppose you are a step above the local Target. I tried to buy shampoo today but the brand and type I chose was so exquisite that I had to choose a different one. For my first choice was not in the store's computer system.  It was taken away, and when I returned to the aisle to make a second selection, no traces of it or any other of its kind remained on the shelf.  Like a phantom shampoo. They said that I couldn't buy it because they wouldn't know how to charge me. It never existed. 

Christine: They should've given it to you for free then. 

So many things in the world should be given to me for free. Yet remain stubbornly out of reach. 

Strange Bedfellows

After 11 nights away, spent in 7 different beds and 1 airplane seat, I'm finally back to my own bed tonight. I am literally counting down the minutes until I can go to bed. I would blame it on jet lag, but if that were true, I should be wide awake now. Instead, I blame it on the red eye that produced very little sleep, though it did lead to a wonderful chance encounter with my Chem 109 professor from the Bo'. Some days, I have trouble recognizing people I just spent a meal with, and other days, I have no trouble recognizing long ago chem professors. Perhaps it helped that he gave me the lowest grade I've ever gotten on a report card. 

Being in the airport so often the last week also brought along this gem:

This is a little girl who kept tripping over her leash because her mother was standing still (to find their boarding passes) while she could not. She was friendly (which led her to keep accidentally knocking people's luggage over), adorable, and delighted me to no end by getting all wrapped around on the leash. And giving up walking and falling to crawl on all fours. We all have those days, kid. 

The Blind Leading the Tired

How many PhD students does it take to navigate to a bar a mile away without getting lost?  How many PhD students equipped with smartphones and GPS technology?  We wouldn't know because we got lost many times.  There were at least 8 of us, including two nerd camp alumni, wandering through the (very straightforward) streets of downtown San Diego last Sunday.  No one thought to try to figure out where we were going.  We just blindly followed Liz, who, we realized too late, didn't realize she was leading.  And certainly didn't know where she was going.

Our peripatetic stroll through downtown took at least double the time it should have, but I didn't wholly mind.  Weather in San Diego, we all discovered, is ridiculously beautiful all the time; it was great to savor the chance to roam around with friends without sweltering heat or fear of being mugged (ahh, B'more).  Plus, the trek eventually led right to my hotel.  It didn't quite work the same for Liz, Ilene, et al (I'm so afraid of leaving Ilene out now!).  They did make it to the bar.  But they arrived 4 minutes past closing.  Probably should've checked the operating hours before heading out.

Whoville

(can you tell that vacation is winding down and I'm trying to avoid work as best as I can?)

It did not surprise me at all to find out last week that Who is an older brother.  The ignoring of emails, jokes at my expense, sudden thoughtfulness when he remembers that I exist-- these are all traits I am familiar with because of my own big brother.  Who even made a t-shirt for his little sister branding her as Who's Sister, which is the type of thing my brother would totally have done if only he cared enough.  This discovery came at the end of a long and Who-intensive (and Liz intensive! which was wonderful) day at the student conference on health services research (the 'baby conference' that precedes the real thing), which culminated with me being cornered/persuaded/coerced to organize a dinner for my Hopkins friends which Who then invited himself to and paid for.  All the while thanking us for inviting him.  The organization process was unnecessarily long, made all the more difficult by hunger, fatigue, and relying on Twitter direct message as my only means of communication with Who (y'know, Twitter direct message, that super widespread and convenient conversation tool we all use to schedule things).  We lost Susan and Rachael, separately, because neither wanted to expose their friends to Who.  So they paid for their own dinner and drinks like schmucks.

Life is full of tradeoffs we all must make, and learning about my advisor's 80s cutoff shorts is one I'm willing to pay if it means beers and tacos with my friends (Ilene included).

Tyranny of Pants

This is from Brian. We really shouldn't encourage his entry submissions (or Ilene's editorial suggestions) but the cartoon has a point. 

And it allows me to talk about myself. Now, I actually love pants quite a bit (just love not wearing them more) but on Saturday, rushing off to meet with a researcher at UCSF at 7am then staying up late for warehouse shenanigans  meant a very long time in pants. Tight pants! I could not wait to shed them at the end of the day. At 2am, I became the first to cave and look for a bed and change into PJs.  Piano singalongs kept me up for another hour but at least I was in flannel. When the sun came up the next day, I learned many things about sleepovers in a warehouse, where people sprawled on couches and sleeping bags as they saw fit. Like how a bed and pillow might look comfortable in the wee hours but not in the early morning when you see wisps of blonde hair all over the pillow. And how I was the only one wearing pajama pants, because boys just stripped off their pants to go to bed (in boxers- though I wish everyone had brought pjs). It's bad enough that men get 30 cents on the dollar in earnings, but extra freedom from pants, too? So unfair. 

Eat. Rinse. Repeat.

I have been traveling in the west coast for a little over a week.  My schedule hasn't allowed much time for sightseeing or visiting friends, so my meals have been a way for me to take in the local flavor with friends while sating my cravings for anything we don't have in B'more.  That's why my meals in the last week (and anticipated meals today/tomorrow) have looked like this:

fish tacos. fish tacos. Thai salmon. sushi. fish tacos.

Indian fusion. meat tacos. Chinese. Chinese. sushi. Chinese. sushi.

ice cream. fries. oysters. ice cream. chilaquiles.

burgers & poutine. Vietnamese. Chinese. Chinese.

I could eat these 4 foods for forever.  Alas, I head back for B'more tomorrow night.  And pick up my steady diet of bbq & biscuits where I left off.  One could do worse.

SFO Redux

The past 24 hours has been both the best and the worst of days.  On the one hand, I am exhausted, I now have a headache (slowly subsiding, we hope) and I just threw up in an airport bathroom, complete with food-formerly-known-as-chilaquiles streaming down my nostrils.  I have chocolate stains on my jeans, my skin is dry, and I look not unlike a refugee.  On the other hand, the past 24 hours has brought about not just one but 2 rounds of ice cream, the best hot chocolate I've ever had stateside, oysters, sleeping over with my brother's friends in their warehouse studio, and meeting up with 3 different Bo' friends, as well as a little time with Lisa.  Did I also mention fresh Californian peaches, sushi, Mexican food, and the best truffle fries I've had in a very long time?  (This could all explain why I threw up)  Who could ask for more than that?  For now, I'm sitting at the airport, charging my phone, trying to stay awake until boarding, and basking in gratefulness for my very short SFO trip.