There's Dave's picture of a curious little Sandhill Crane that we saw this afternoon during a walk with Kelly First. This crane and his companions allowed us to get pretty close to them which means that someone's been feeding them. It pisses me off when people do that because it makes the birds unafraid of people and that, my friends, is a deadly thing for wildlife.
Don't feed wildlife, fools.
The crazy lady says not to feed us.
Viral Hankies
This is a set of virus hankies (you can get a better view at my flickr page if you click on them). I stitched these up as a Christmas gift for Kelly First after I found out that she'll be teaching microbiology next semester.
You don't really cover viruses in micro--or, at least, I don't recall covering them in micro...but The Brain and I don't really remember much about microbiology beyond having to do lots of Gram staining and our slow lab partner who had the annoying habit of lending my stuff to the people around us. Who does that? Anyway, that guy was my punishment for skipping the first day of lab, which I always did because you don't do anything important--except pick lab partners--on that day anyway.
Actually, come to think of it, I had some pretty unique lab partners on my way to my biology degree. One woman was a nurse in a nursing home and she used to regale me with lots of stories that featured a prominent fecal motif. She also had a collection of Beanie Babies that numbered in the thousands. Another older woman was convinced that enzymes were so fast because they didn't work in linear time. She told me that when her dog died her kids were really sad but very curious, so they buried the dog and then dug it up a few weeks later to see how the decomposition process was proceeding. She was probably the weirdest of my lab partners, but she did introduce me to one of my favorite descriptions of myself by once calling me a "hardcore comfort junkie." (The lab was very easy for me and consequently I was a bit lazy about it.) After her came the micro partner who lent out my stuff but who was otherwise harmless. And finally I was paired with a friend of mine, April. She was the most normal of my lab partners. In fact, I was probably the strange one in that pairing.
Those were just my biology lab partners. Man, don't get me started on my chemistry lab partners.
Blueberry Steroid Boy
I'm sure I've told you about Blueberry Steroid Boy, right? No?
Okay, so: Blueberry Steroid Boy works out at my gym. He's probably in his late 20's or early 30's, about six feet tall, maybe six one. He's got a handsome enough face and a perfect, perfect body, like Michelangelo's David perfect. Sadly, though, he is one of those men who is very, very attractive--jaw-droppingly so--until they open their mouths and then all the charm is sucked away into that vacuum that forms when attractive people prove themselves to be dumb or mean or, in certain notable cases, both dumb and mean. Don't get me wrong; Blueberry Steroid Boy isn't mean, he's just dumb. He's gorgeous and very, very dumb.
Kelly Workout actually gave him the nickname Blueberry Steroid Boy because one day we were doing seated rows and he was doing ab exercises on a nearby machine. He has perfect abs, a perfect, thick six-pack of them, and they are all perfectly visible beneath the tight t-shirts he wears to work out. As Blueberry Steroid Boy was resting between sets some lesser shlub, hoping to get some workout advice, came over and asked him, "Wow, what do you do for abs?"
Blueberry Steroid Boy had apparently been waiting his whole life for someone to ask him that question. He started in with a super loud litany of advice--he was practically yelling--that perfect abs are, like, so easy, man, they're so easy. All you have to do is, like, six sets of crunches and some side crunches and then, you know, you have to, like, eat right. Eating right's important, man. You have to, like, eat some chicken. And, like, eat some whole wheat pasta. And don't eat any fast food, man. That's the worst. But eat, like, blueberries. You have to eat blueberries, man.
I looked at Kelly Workout, and Kelly Workout looked at me, and I was, like, "And don't forget the steroids." And she was, all, like, "Yeah, eat some blueberries and shoot up some steroids between your toes." And then we both started laughing and trying not to laugh (which is a whole different kind of ab workout) because there we were, not four feet away from Blueberry Steroid Boy, and we were mocking him like we were invisible or something. (But he's kind of dumb, so I don't think he noticed.)
After that, I became a wee bit obsessed with Blueberry Steroid Boy. True, it's hard for me to take my eyes off that guy's body, but equally true is that The Brain enjoys mocking him and telling everyone his nickname and how he got his nickname. And then one day I saw him walk over to the guard dogs who live at the storage place across the street from the gym and he talked to them and gave them some treats through the fence and they were all waggly-happy to see him and I was, like, ugh, I am the worst person on the planet. Here I am mocking some dumb animal who takes time out of his day to show some kindness to other dumb animals. I felt kind of bad about it. Not that I was inspired to change my evil ways, but at least I felt kind of bad, no?
After that, I tried to guess what he did for a living. I guess he probably has some job like security guard. Or dishwasher. Or, like, one of those guys who works at 7-11 who's just a little bit too friendly when you go in to buy your Big Gulp, or a little too judgmental when you walk up to the counter with your Ring Dings and Doritos.
Poor Blueberry Steroid Boy. He kind of reminds me of this sweet, dumb girl I met once. She was a cousin of my friend Irene's fiancee, and one day Irene invited her to have lunch with us. On the way to lunch, Irene told me, "I invited her with us because she just broke up with her boyfriend." I was, like, awwww. Irene said, "They had to break up because it turns out they were cousins." And I was, like, wha-huh? She was dating her own cousin? Irene said, "Yeah. They dated for, like, four months before they found out. She's not too smart. She's sweet, though. Anyway, don't mention that thing about the cousin boyfriend."
I'm not telling you anything you don't know when I tell you that telling me not to mention something like that is like putting a steak in a cage with a tiger and asking the tiger not to eat it.
I met the poor girl (I don't remember her name) and she was super, super cute and super, super sweet, but I love steak. At lunch, one of the first things I brought up was the subject of boyfriends. When I asked her about her boyfriend, she got a sad look on her face and said she didn't have a boyfriend. I said, "What? But you're gorgeous! How can you not have a boyfriend?" That was all it took for her to come out with the whole embarrassing story about meeting this great guy at a party and how they really, really liked each other and they really, really had so much in common, and they started dating, and then she took him to meet her family and her mother was, all, "That's your cousin!" So they had to break up.
After lunch, we parted ways and Irene and I had a good laugh over it because we're horrible, horrible people. Then Irene told me about the time she had gone out clubbing with this young woman and they had gone into the bathroom together. While they were washing their hands, the girl leaned over to Irene and whispered, "That girl over there looks just like me!" Irene was a little confused because they were the only two people in the bathroom. Looking around, Irene realized that what the girl was looking at was her own reflection in a floor-to-ceiling mirror at the end of the row of sinks. "She's like one of those birds," Irene said. "You can put a mirror in their cages and then they think there's another bird in there with them."
Ay, carumba.
You know, as a woman who has actually had a couple of men I've dated complain to me that I am, in their words, "too independent" and "too educated," I always wonder how women like that survive. How do they cross the street without getting taken out of the gene pool? I guess they find men--men who value cute, dependent, dumb women--to take care of them? I don't know. They seem to manage to breed lots of cute, dumb little dependents, though, don't they? So I guess evolutionarily, they're probably far more fit than I am.
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