Great ideas gone wrong

One common misconception is that Ph.D.s are really smart. Some of us are, but most of us only know a lot of useless knowledge about one teeny, tiny little area. For example, if you want to know about the degradation of acrylic polymers as studied by EPR, I’m your woman. But if you want to know about something that really matters, say … how to make sure your souffle doesn’t fall or how to change your oil, I’m not the one.

But we can usually manage to make it through life without too many mishaps or embarrassing moments. In fact, for most of us, you would never know that we had a Ph.D. just by looking at us. It’s like some sort of reverse superpower.

But occasionally, just sometimes, our specialness shines through for the world to see. Take for example my trying to learn to solve the Rubik’s cube. I was in lab one day and a Rubik’s cube just showed up. I fiddled around with it and set it down, no better than when I started. The next time I turned around it was solved! I messed it up good and set it down again. This time, I saw one of my students solving it. I was extremely jealous and resolved that I would learn to do it.

During the Wednesday of the last week of classes, it was time. Wednesday is a scratched day because office hours, classes and lab take up 8.5 hours of the eleven that I usually spend on campus. I went to the trusty internets (because you can find ANYTHING on the ‘web) to find a good cheat… errrr… method for solving it. I found one and was slowly working my way through it during office hours. However, when it came time for lab, I decided that I would print out the cheat so I didn’t have to be stuck by the computer. (Lab was checkup and students were working on final write-ups. No rocket science or rocket fuel so I didn’t have to pay attention. I didn’t even have to wear safety goggles!!)

Sounds like a great idea huh? What do you see that’s wrong with this picture?

Funny how green, red and blue all come out grey on a black and white printer.

Good thing I can laugh at myself and don’t fail all of the students when they start laughing at me.

Two blogs is hard

Ack.

I don’t know how my sister does it. She keeps up THREE blogs while teaching and being a new mother. She posts everyday with photos usually. I can barely keep track of where the camera is, much less get the photos on the site.

Although, if I actually did post Project 365 photos everyday, I might not cheat. Of course, it would be photos of my cats or feet everyday, but it’s a photo, no? (How many commas in that sentence? Should I go for the world record?!?)

Anyway.

Yesterday, we went to the Dry Tortugas. Two hours boat ride there and two hours back for about 1 hour of snorkeling. We did take a tour of the fort and eat lunch, but it seems like a lot of travel time for such a small amount of time in the water. But if the weather is nice, it is a great boat ride and really wonderful out there. If the seas are 5 ft, I wouldn’t recommend it.

The cool part of the snorkeling was the baby nurse shark that Jeff found. He’s a shark researcher and has been looking for one of these “neonates” for a couple of years. One of the students kind of stumbled upon it.

He was so excited and about a million photos were taken. Only two had me in it. This is my favorite one:

Can you guess which one is me?

Nope, not the one with the shark. Not any of the smart ones looking over to the right.

Yup, that’s me in the yellow suit on the right, with my face in the water. Not snorkeling or swimming. Just standing bent over with my face in the water.

I am truly a dork.

Ya know, they give Ph.D.’s away as door prizes…

About an hour ago, I was feeling sorry for myself because I wasn’t as creative as one of my friends. Now, I’m just pretty much wishing that I wasn’t so … me.

The story:

Husband is out of town – in California drinking wine… er, at a meeting. I am really tired. I got up at 5:30 this morning to go on a tour of the Pfizer plant in Kalamazoo. I was having a nice, relaxing evening at home, catching up on the usual domestic stuff: paying bills, petting the cats, cleaning the kitchen.

I made corn on the cob tonight as part of dinner. Instead of just throwing out the water, I thought I would use it to water the flowers on the front porch. Being green and all that stuff. As I I was walking out the front door, I was thinking to myself: “Don’t lock yourself out of the house. That would be really stupid.”

Do I really need to finish this story? Can you see where this ends?

Yup, I locked myself out of the house.

This is only the second time when I didn’t have any roommates/husband to bail me out. And it’s 11PM, again. And I’m only wearing my PJ’s, again. But this time, I was wearing underwear.

Long story short – I have an amazing friend and she came and let me into the house. Laughing all the time.

The upside, I met some of my neighbors and they were really nice. I’m going to deliver some flowers to their house tomorrow.

The downside, it rained this evening and the worms were out. And I didn’t have shoes on.