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| Wednesday, May 16th, 2012 | | 3:28 pm |
Decks anyone?
Anyone out there know a good licensed company/contractor that can do some work on our deck? It needs cleaning, possibly stripping, and stain/sealer. This tends to be a specialized sort of thing and we've had a heck of a time finding a reliable person that can do it within the next few months. Any tips would be appreciated! | | Thursday, April 5th, 2012 | | 1:09 pm |
Birthday plans
This Saturday I will be doing lunch and a movie as a low key way to celebrate my birthday. I will be hitting Fudruckers in Columbia around 11:30-11:45. Afterterwards I will be catching the 1:20 showing of Hunger Games at the Snowden Square theater. Let me know if I should save a seat for you at the movie. Hope to see you there! | | Thursday, March 29th, 2012 | | 8:51 am |
Preliminary B-day plans
So my birthday is next Saturday April 7. We are planning to keep it low-key. I have been looking forward to the Hunger Games for a while so I plan to make that my birthday treat. If you haven't seen it yet and want to wait for an outing next weekend, I'd love the company! There will probably be a meal in there somewhere too. Details to follow - just wanted to put that out there before everyone runs out to see the movie this weekend. | | Friday, March 16th, 2012 | | 8:45 am |
Pass me a beer dude ...
Apparently drowning one's romantic woes in alcohol is a trait we all share. No, no, not with one another, not with our fellow brothers and sisters in arms (after all, love really is a battlefield sometimes). This is a trait we share with fruit flies. At least, that is, according to the latest issue of Science magazine. I just read an awesome article about how Drosophila melanogaster (a.k.a. fruit flies) will preferentially consume food laced with ethanol after failure to copulate. Apparently even fruit flies need to get drunk with their homeboys every now and then. There are some pretty great highlights in this article. Did you know that male fruit flies will spend about 10 minutes courting the female and then about 20 minutes copulating? Think about the amount of time that men spend trying to get women into bed (or vice versa, this is the 21st century after all). If we spent twice as much time actually gettin' it on as we do trying to get in on ... well damn. Does anyone actually have the stamina for that? Is it even humanly possible to go for that long? And I'm not talking about doing it once, cuddling for a while, and then picking it up again in a few hours. Fruit flies don't cuddle. They just go non-stop until the deed is done. Although it is only 20 minutes for the lucky fly, I think nature might have us beat here. Consider this - a fruit fly weighs about 0.3mg (or so google tells me, it might be more but I think this estimate will make my point clear). That's 0.00000066 lbs. Pound for pound, that means I (a mere 150 lbs) would have to spend the kind of energy that comes with having sex for over 4.5 billion hours to match this. A crude comparison I admit, but wow. Sweet. Jesus. Did you also know that male fruit flies will mate with a headless (and presumably dead) female? Now, I could say something here about the deperation of men, but maybe I just shouldn't go there. In fact, the idea of necrophilia is downright creepy, so I'm going to stop here. I will say that the article mentions that most male flies in this situation exhibit behavior consistent with 'failure to copulate'. In other words, they can't get it up with the dead chick so they go and drink themselves into a stupor. Can't really blame them I suppose. Overall, a fun article. A review of the article attempts to paint it in a serious light and warns against anthropomorphizing the results. I give them a hardy FEH! How can you not anthropomorphize this?! It's just too awesome, especially when the authors make the matter-of-fact statement that results indicate that sex is rewarding. Um, duh. Why do you think so much of nature does the nasty on a regular basis? It's not because flies prefer shtooping it up with dead things. At least I hope that's not the reason, but whatever. It's genetic. And apparently so is the need to get wasted when we are rejected. Don't blame yourself, becaue baby you were born this way. Current Mood:  amused | | Friday, March 9th, 2012 | | 10:38 am |
Saturday shenanigans
We are planning to head down to Silver Spring tomorrow (Saturday) to catch the 2:30 showing of The Artist at the AFI Silver. Afterwards we will cruise over to Bethesda to hit Louisianna Kitchen, one of our favorite restaurants, for an early dinner. There may be some wandering in Silver Spring if the movie lets out really early or something. Let us know if you want to join us for one or both, carpool, etc. We will probably head down there a bit before the show because I need to hit Dale Music which is right around the corner from the theater. Feel free to tag along if you have a hankering for some sheet music. | | Sunday, January 1st, 2012 | | 9:20 pm |
Monday movie!
As noted on facebook: For those govies and others with Monday off, we'll be seeing the new Sherlock Holmes movie at 3:00pm at the UA Snowden Square theater. Join us if you want. Perhaps dinner will follow. We'll also be climbing before the movie - call one of us if you want to meet up with us there and we'll figure out a time. | | Thursday, October 27th, 2011 | | 12:50 pm |
Need a microwave
Anybody have a spare microwave? We are starting our kitchen rennovation next week and it turns out that the range-unit microwave we bought cannot be operated freestanding on a table. So we will be without a range and can really only cook on the grill on nice evenings. We were going to rely on the microwave for a lot of our meals. If anyone can loan us a microwave for a few weeks, we'd really appreciate it! | | Tuesday, July 19th, 2011 | | 3:24 pm |
Housewarming Party!
In case you missed the evite, or my facebook post, or my husband's LJ post, we're having our housewarming party this weekend - Saturday July 23. Doors open at 3pm and folks are welcome to stay until whenever. We'll have burgers, dogs, sodas, wine, and some munchies. Feel free to bring something to share, but it's not required. Kids, SO's, etc. are welcome. I don't really want to put my address online, so email one of us if you need it. Although most everyone who reads my LJ probably got an evite. If not, I'm a terrible friend and your omission was unintentional. Hope to see you all there! | | Friday, June 17th, 2011 | | 8:36 am |
X-men movie!
We will be heading out to see the new X-Men First Class movie tomorrow (Saturday) 3:20 at the Arundel Mills Cinemark Egyptian. Come and join us! Dinner plans may occur afterwards. We'll probably get to the theater around 3:00. Let us know if we should look for you, save seats, etc. | | Tuesday, June 7th, 2011 | | 9:09 am |
Survived!
So I survived my piano recital last night. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't terrible. My pedaling and dynamics were not as precise as I wanted them to be, but that is largely due to playing on a piano that I've never touched before. I hit a few wrong notes, but no rythmic mistakes. If you really know the piece well, you would have noticed. But for someone unfamiliar with it the mistakes were barely noticeable. I guess I can't complain too much about that! The ice cream afterwards was also really tasty. A big thanks to pseudotheist for sitting through almost 2 hours of kids playing before me ... and for the months of listening to me work on this piece! Some folks asked what piece I was playing. It was Fugue VII by Shostakovitch. Here's a nice recording of it on youtube by David Jalbert, who also happens to be rather cute (which was in fact confirmed by my 70+ year old teacher!). The first part is the prelude. The fugue starts at 1:20. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgEGAC1XvW8 Current Mood: relieved | | Monday, June 6th, 2011 | | 8:16 am |
On stage
Tonight I'll be playing my first piano recital in years. I believe it's been about 14 years since I've been on stage giving a performance of any kind. I don't really count teaching as performing even though it involves getting up and talking in front of a lot of people, hundreds at times. While a teacher generally wants to amuse their students and keep them interested, entertainment is not a requirement. They have to show up or, you know, fail! It's a kind of motivation that an audience at a play or recital simply does not have. So yes, I'm a bit nervous. It's been a while since I've felt this feeling. For those who perform, you know it. It's a distinct kind of nervousness. Standing in front of a large audience and giving a professional talk or teaching a class doesn't scare me in the slightest because I know what I'm doing. I know my material and can just ... talk. If I forget the exact words, it doesn't matter. You can change the structure of the piece and still be effective. With music, especially a solo piece, there is no room at all whatsoever for error. Every note is heard and it counts. As a quick calculation, my piece has over 1000 notes that I have to produce by memory in the correct sequence with the proper dynamics in one fell swoop. Would you trust yourself not to screw up? I don't. And I guess that's the problem and why I always get nervous at things like this. My overwhelming need to have people like me combined with not trusting my skills makes for lots of icky stomach feelings. Right now I've decided to make myself feel better by promising myself I'll stop for ice cream on the way home from the recital. Incidentally, I was talking with T about this last night and he says, "well, don't worry you'll have the music right there in front of you." Upon informing him that oh no, we all have to play by memory, he responds, "That's a terrible idea! Why would you want to do that?". Sigh. I have no idea. Current Mood:  nervous | | Monday, May 9th, 2011 | | 12:41 pm |
The logic of corndogs
I overheard a great conversation at lunch today. One of the departments was having a big potluck picnic in the outdoor seating area where I usually eat. It looks like there were a lot of regulars as well as colleagues, family, etc. from other units. We have a lot of non-Americans floating around since this is a research institution and we support fewlloships, visiting research, etc. from all over the world. Having said that, this was my amusement for the day: Non-American woman (imagine the accent): What is this? American man: Oh, that's a corndog. NAW: ? AM: There's a hotdog in there. See? NAW: Like a little sausage? AM: Yeah, and they cover it and the whole thing is deep fried. NAW: <perplexed silence> AM: It's ... well it's ... it's really geasy, but it's REALLY good! NAW: <politely> Oh. Ah, it is hard to argue with the unmistakable logic of corndogs. | | Friday, April 1st, 2011 | | 2:57 pm |
This is why we need a budget
Here at work we've been operating without a budget for 6 months. Do you have any idea what this means? It means we can't buy anything. When supplies run out, we have to beg and borrow to purchase anything. We can't upgrade parts that are breaking. And if something does break ... well that just sucks. Nothing to be done until we have money to spend to fix it. It is REALLY hard to operate like this. Do the fat-cats in Congress even know what they're doing to their own government employees? Doubtful.
Anywho, having ranted for a minute to set the stage, this is a tale of how to deal with a lack of funds. Go low tech.
Me (to my boss): I need a new flowmeter. Mine broke.
Boss: What's wrong?
Me: Well it keeps giving me a low battery signal and then dies even after I've tried 3 different brand new batteries.
Boss: Have you tried a DC plug?
Me: Doesn't have one. Has to be batteries.
Boss: How much to replace it?
Me: $700
Boss: Not happening any time soon.
A few minutes later as I'm sitting back in my office fiddling with said meter, the Boss walks in, rips out the battery and promptly sticks it on his tongue.
Boss: This is completely dead. Try another one.
Me: But I've tried three.
Boss: From that box of batteries in the main office?
Me: Yeah.
Boss: That's been sitting up there for years. We need new ones, but go see if you can find one that works.
Me: Um, okay.
A few minutes later I'm up in the main office sticking battery after battery on my tongue because we can't afford to just buy some new batteries to assure a working one. I avoided the ones that had all that blue corrosive powder on them (yes, they are THAT old). After a couple I finally found one that worked - for all those who have stuck a 9V battery on their tongue I'm sure you know how awesome that feels.
And my deputy director's response (this is my boss's boss) when she sees me doing this? It wasn't 'hey, we should just buy some new ones'. It was 'hey, at least the safety officer isn't around to see you doing that'.
Seriously, we need a budget. This is not in my job description. | | Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 | | 7:29 pm |
Got contractor?
Anyone have a good contractor they could recommend? We need to fix a few things that showed up on our home inspection and we've had two (yes two in a row) contractors fail to come through. They just don't return the calls and now we have about two weeks to get things taken care of before we close. Help! Any suggestions would be appreciated! | | Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011 | | 10:19 am |
Body? What body?
Dude. I just got a tour of the Necroscopy Lab. They have a giant free ranging beetle colony that cleans flesh off of dead bones. Gross, but so cool! Some days it's totally worth coming to work! Current Mood: excited | | Saturday, January 29th, 2011 | | 6:09 pm |
Thus begins the exoduses ...
Exodi? What is the plural of exodus? I've never heard it, although I suspect that an exodus is such a major thing that it generally occurs in only one distinct event at a time. I don't know. Whatever. Anywho, we are in the first week of our home listing on the market which means drop everything at a moments notice and get out of the house for a viewing. Someone is supposed to come to see the house tomorrow (Sunday) between 1-3. Ergo, we will be heading to Snowden theater on Sunday to see True Grit at 1:10. If you care to join us, drop us a line or call and let us know if we should look for you. | | Saturday, January 22nd, 2011 | | 11:43 am |
Anyone want to loan us a corner?
We are in crazy 'getting the house ready to put on the market' mode now and we need to clear out a few items to make the house look a little less cluttered. We have two chairs (a recliner and lounge chair) that need a temporary home to live in while we show the house for the next couple months. We'll have plenty of space to keep them once the new house is acquired, but until then they need to go. We could keep them in the garage for a bit, but this is suboptimal as it would force me to park outside and we need the garage space for a staging area for packing out and other projects. It also seems a little bit of overkill to rent a storage space for just a couple pieces of furniture. Soooo ... does anyone have a corner in a basement or shed they could spare for a couple months ... because you're the most awesomest and bestest friend ever? We'd totally owe you! Current Mood: hopeful | | Wednesday, January 19th, 2011 | | 8:02 am |
We have a new house!
This past weekend was a crazy one for us. We put in an offer on a house and it was accepted last night. Yikes! We're very excited, anxious, and overwhelmed! If all goes well with the inspection and such we'll be closing in March. Now we just have to get our current house sold. Wish us luck! Current Mood: happy | | Friday, January 7th, 2011 | | 3:27 pm |
Black Swan viewing
Tonight (Friday) 7:30 at the Old P&G Greenbelt. Beijing Restaurant right next door for dinner at 5:45-6:00. Let us know if we should expect you for dinner. | | Thursday, January 6th, 2011 | | 7:46 am |
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