Day 14: It's not easy being green

Watching South Bend become environmentally conscientious is a little reminiscent of watching Bambi walk for the first time. While you can dispose of a metric tonne of landfill-destined waste with little hindrance, and virtually no expense, setting up recycling proves to be nothing short of an ordeal. I found a website where I could request delivery of a recycling bin, but, much to my chagrin, the link led to an "under construction" page. It did, however, have a phone number you could call to request the bin, so I called it. After some extensive menu navigation, I got to speak to a lady who told me, "You should be calling a different number to get a recycling bin delivered." Well, if you wanted me to call a different number, why do you have this one on your... never mind, what's the number I need to call? Another round of automated menu selection later, I finally found a human, who got a little confused about my address, but eventually we managed to get the bin ordered. A few weeks later it arrived and I can now feel I am doing a small part for the environment.
This morning I was driving into work (in my 4-cylinder, manual car). As I was crossing the bridge on Angela Boulevard, something made me laugh so hard I nearly crashed my car. The city council has painted bike lanes on either side of the road. This is great; it encourages people to cycle rather than to drive. One small problem. The only place they have designated bike lanes is on the bridge. I guess if your morning commute has you crossing the bridge over and over, but not driving anywhere else, you're sorted...

Day 13: Actually, we prefer the term “diskaidekaphilia”

I don't know if it's my being Irish, or if I am merely garden-variety insane, but I am superstitious about quite a few things. Where no predefined superstition exists, I have been known to invent personal rituals and convince myself that any deviation from them will result in abject failure. A perennial favourite of mine is a near clinical dose of triskaidekaphobia (thanks Wikipedia!). When I was a teenager, I loved playing Micro Machines on the Mega Drive. If I made it to the 13th level, I would never dream of stopping until I had at least passed level 15; the fact that 14 abuts 13 means it too is sullied with thirteen-ness. I have trained myself to be a little saner in recent years though I still avoid slot number 13 on the centrifuge where possible. I have a particular aversion to Friday the 13th. When the calendar inflicts one upon me, I prefer to play it safe by staying home. This year however, I was a big brave girl, and not only did I venture out of the house, I was the designated driver for some friends. Nothing bad happened, and in fact, we had a blast at our friend’s bachelorette party that night. However, I refused to date the cell culture media that I made that day properly.


One step at a time…

Day 12: Insomnia sucks

Sorry for the plebeian title - I am barely capable of spelling my own name today. Thank goodness for the spell-check on this site. A melange of pollen, heat and thesis-related stress have been conspiring against me recently. I think I got to sleep by about 4am last night, after I finally gave in and took a sleep-aid. My alarm went off at 8am but the sleep-aid still thinks I have another 4 hours of unconsciousness owing, so I have thus far demonstrated the synaptic firing patterns of a stapler. I don't have anything too taxing to accomplish today, other than an appointment with the ISSA where my famed ability to tolerate bureaucrats will be put to the test. My colleagues keep expecting me to finish sentences, which is a little more than I am willing to do, so I may hide in the microscope room until I feel a bit perkier. Roll on 6pm!

Day 11: Ahhh, darn it to the bowels of sanguinary heck!

I have a mouth like a sailor. I barely get through a sentence without dropping at least one F-bomb. I have managed thus far to fob it off as a "cultural" difference, but I think that excuse is beginning to wear thin. With each passing year, my accent softens, but at the same time, as I get further into thesis-writing, my mouth gets fouler. Adding to a pretty obvious list of reasons to clean up ye olde argot is the fact that I am frequently around a lot of children. Two of my colleagues have young daughters and my boss has two children under the age of 10. I love being around kids and want to have my own at some point, but I think it behooves me to clean up my diction prior to starting a family.

Children are, albeit indirectly, both the reason I want to break the habit of cursing and the reason I can't stop. I am knitting something for my friend Faith who is expecting her first child. It's meant to be a surprise (hence the B&W photo), although I am reasonably sure that Faith has seen me working on it already. I am using Lion Brand's ironically named Cotton-Ease yarn, and for some reason, when the pattern calls for a certain technique, the yarn forms huge, ugly holes. There are a number of ways to accomplish this technique, all of which I tried to no avail. I have tried the technique using a different yarn to eliminate my own ineptitude as the cause, and for once, that is not the problem. So, if you find me elbow-deep in Cotton-Angst yarn, impersonating a Tourette patient, just bear in mind that I'm doing it for the kids!

Day 10: I'm "literally" going to kill someone if I see this commercial again!

Most people have heard my rant about the Vehix commercial, but as I have seen it ad nauseam (lol) today, I decided to add it to my month in photos exercise.
The video opens with this woman in a ridiculous hat, sitting in the trunk of her car for some unknown reason. She kicks off the commercial with "So, I go on vehix.com and you can literally take a test drive". Those of us who are fleetingly familiar with the English language know that you can't literally test drive cars on a website. Indeed, our trendy hat-toter knows this too, as she, later in the commercial, says "You're practically driving the car." Well, which is it? You can't literally and practically do something; they mean opposite things. And take that stupid hat off! It's bad enough that you sound like an idiot. There's no need look like one too.

Juliet: Detective Lassiter is literally on fire.
Shawn: What kind of fire are we talking about? Michael Jackson in the Pepsi commercial fire or misusing the word "literally" fire?

Day 9: Murder, She Read

Hang on to your prune juice - I know you are all going to be as excited by this as I am. As the daughter of a writer, I know good literature when I see it, and this bookish offering that I stumbled upon when I was in Kansas has to be the holy grail for the intelligentsia. After Murder She Wrote was taken from us all too soon (i.e. after 12 seasons), nothing could fill the void left in our hearts. Until now that is. Yes, the best show on TV lives on in written form. And the icing on this magnum opus? Check out the first author. That's right, Jessica Fletcher is real!

Day 8: The Darling Buds of June

I'm only wrong when I think I'm right. As an ex-garden centre employee, and my BSc having been issued by UCD's department of Botany, I was telling my roommate when he should prune our rose bush. I don't remember during which season I said to do it, but he did so per my instruction last year and the plant never bloomed. This year he pruned it during whichever season I had said not to do so, and it is now blooming to spite me! It does look beautiful though.