Monthly Archives: September 2007

The moon is fuller tonight than last night.

My family is celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival today by sitting outside, staring up at the sky, preferably toward the direction of the moon and eating pastries. Then we wind up talking, because, you know, people do that. The conversation starts off innocuously enough. There’s Orion, this moon cake is good, that one is gross, and then things get a bit more heated after that. Jena 6 hello Reconstruction, Iranian president’s funny bone, implications of the weakening $, nuclear reactors, myopic politicians. Maybe we might even talk about other stuff like how pink nailpolish doesn’t match well with warm complexions. But I have to work politics into that somehow or my dad’s going to bail at that topic. Ok here’s something, Chinese moon cakes contain toulene, which is best left in nailpolish.* There you go! Oh we’re not having moon cakes anyway. Renegades that we are, we’re having pineapple cake this year. Happy Moon Festival Day!

*I totally made that up. But I wouldn’t put it past them!

This is it: Autumnal Equinox. After today, SAD hits and I’m going to just hole myself under the covers until the sunlight comes back.

So in celebration of this glum event, here are some of the good things, the silver lining so to speak:

• Less Sun = less grass growth = savings from not having to mow the lawn. Cha ching!
• More holidays, more excuses to gorge myself silly
• Burn more calories just standing outside in the cold
• Weather is not uncomfortably hot or cold (for now), and the humidity eases up. Hopefully, we’ll get the much-needed rain we’ve been missing since, oh… all Summer long!
• Fall/Winter wardrobe that’s been languishing in the closet can come out.
• Shopping (well, this is more of an all-the-time, anytime sort of thing, still counts though)
• Curling up under the blankets
• Hot chai
• Pumpkin Pie
• Apples

Geez, why does everything turn back to food with me? :p

After work, I was taking the recycle/trash bins into the garage when my neighbor came bounding up to me across the front yard.

“We got a new puppy!”

“You did?! Well congrats!”

“Yeah, we got a new one because our other dog died.”

“Aww… I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, our old dog Stacy died.” (I sorta’ figured when I saw the cross erected in the backyard with a bouquet of flowers and a small rock with a dog in front of it.)

“Well what’s your new dog called?”

“Chloe.”

“Chloe? That’s a nice name.”

“Yeah our new puppy… her name is Chloe.”

Then my neighbor ran back home, I’m sure to make sure Chloe felt welcome in her new family.

The first time blooming since we got it so it’s a bigger deal. There’s another bud right above it but it’ll be a while before that one will be ready to open.

September 15, 2007 4:07 PM

September 15, 2007 6:38 PM

September 15, 2007 8:38 PM

September 16, 2007 3:22 PM

September 17, 2007 2:38 PM

In’it just so gosh darn purty?

Yesterday, I was talking to a lady at the gym who handles research grants. She said that because of the recent flatlined budgets, many grants have had to be reduced or cut. Understandably, because of that, some research programs have had to reduce staff, cut equipment funding, and slow down or sometimes even halt their research projects. She also mentioned that sometimes some offices she worked in ran short of paper and basic supplies before the year ended while other offices were giving everyone a color printer at the end of the year. There’s something wrong with the system when funds can’t be diverted where they need to go. I know the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service was dinged earlier this year for giving their SES’s generous bonuses while crying for operational money. I believe they ended up defending themselves by saying that the money appropriated for salaries (including bonuses) could not be spent elsewhere. Ok, so then I ask, why did you request that amount for salaries instead of where you were short on dough? Why didn’t you ask for more overhead money and less pad-your-wallet money?

Before:

After:

Three ladies paid me a visit at my office yesterday.

Hi, sorry for interrupting you…

No problem, what’s up?

We’re ordering new wooden furniture for this office to swap out the metal pieces. Did you want your metal bookshelf replaced?

Nah, the metal one is fine.

Are you sure? Because everyone else is getting wooden bookshelves to replace their metal ones. You’ll be the only one here with a metal bookshelf.

Yeah, this one is perfectly fine and I don’t want it to go to waste.

Oh it won’t go to waste, it’ll be used elsewhere.

That’s ok, I’m fine with this. No need to waste government money.

<talking amongst themselves>

<whip out the measuring tape, measure the office area>

Guess what time of year this is? This is the last month of the federal fiscal year. If money isn’t spent by the end of the month, it goes back to the Treasury! *gasp* What an awful thing that would be because our federal deficit isn’t large enough. I’ll be getting a wooden bookshelf AND a wooden lateral file. Fancy schmancy. Sorry cancer patients and diabetics. Your cure will have to wait. Clearly uniformly furnished offices are a bigger priority than say, disease research.

The problem isn’t us misappropriating funds though. Money that is appropriated for office supplies by law, cannot be spent on anything but. So the money wouldn’t have gone towards a science grant had we not wasted it on furniture anyway. Hope that made you feel better.  If not, go suck on a piece of candy, it’s probably your blood sugar.

Just imagine the size of the welt that would have resulted from THIS!

I woke up laughing my butt off this morning. I dreamt I was with my cousin, Special K, picking out glasses and she bought the most hideous pair of old man bubble glasses for herself. Think 70s obscenely large rims.   The look on her face as she put them on, seriously thinking they were the most flattering accessory one could stick on a face made it all the better.  I took one look at them and busted out laughing.  Oh and my sister was shopping with us too, only she gravitated towards the books and surprisingly only bought two.

Interpretation: I need a new pair of glasses. Guess what I’ll be doing this Labor Day weekend?