Technology

Those of you who know me, know I love technology. For the most part this has served me well, but boy it sure can be a royal pain in the you know what. I have been typing my thesis proposal recently, and the geniuses that be, made a lovely little program called EndNote, that makes the arduous task of citing references about as easy as possible. All I need to do is download a citation from the web, and Endnote formats the whole thing according to the journal style of referencing that is required. Ha, I can remember all of those classes in high school and college that taught "Chicago style" and other referencing styles. Talk about a pain. Well, kiss those days good by. The days of thoughtless citation are here. Call me lazy if you must, but I am quite happy to be called so for such convenience. Muaahaha.
However, this lovely technology caused me a great deal of grief recently. For some reason, this magical program, magically decided not to format the citations as needed, and in place of beautiful citations, it put these long computer-code like looking items in the text of my proposal. Now my proposal looked like gibberish (though it could be argued it was gibberish before this happened). I spent the whole day yesterday trying to solve this problem to no avail. AUGH!!! Then, to top it off, it rained like crazy yesterday with wind and all making my giant umbrella more of a sail than a water shield. This allowed my fake goretex jacket from China to act very well as a sponge. So I sat all day in wet clothes, no progress on the writing due to the technical issues, and then walked home in the wind and rain to complete the soaking. Steam was coming out of my ears. Never has grinding cardamom for dinner felt so satisfying.
Today, I became sensible and called the company that makes Endnote, and after being on hold for 25 minutes, they fixed my problem in about 1 minute. Now all is well again as my proposal appears to be normal again and I am in dry clothes.

An Atypical Day

This past Saturday was an unfortunate day of missed events for both Jori and I, but still a great day for each of us independently. On Saturday morning I went fishing with a labmate of mine. We left at about 9:00am which is fairly early for me on a Saturday morning. Fortunately my labmate drove. We went to a local state park that was fully decorated in fall foliage. It was a great morning to be out fishing. We were successful in catching 4 fish—2 each. We caught three bluegills and one smallmouth bass, but all 4 were much, much too small to keep. Still some satisfaction was salvaged in just catching fish period, and at 70F in November with a beautiful blue sky we greatly enjoyed the peaceful stillness of God’s creation. Around noon the fish went out to lunch or something because we didn’t even get so much as a nibble after that. We debated about heading back to State College around 2pm, but decided that it would be best to fish for another hour or so to avoid the football traffic (the game started at 3:30). So, around 3:00pm we headed back for town.
I arrived home around 3:30 to find a note on the table from Jori. She had gone to the football game with one of our fellow youth group leaders. As it turns out, our landlords stopped by our house shortly after I had left that morning for fishing and given Jori two free tickets. If only I had made it back an hour or so earlier when we had first thought of leaving! So, I spent my afternoon doing various chores and listening to the game on the radio. Sounded like a good game to boot. Oh well.
Later that night we were to go hear the American Boy Choir perform at a local church. Why they scheduled this on a football weekend, I’ll never know. Anyway, Jori didn’t make it home in time from the game, so I was left to go without her. Before I left the house I left a note telling her that I would save a seat for her in the back as long as I could fight the others off. The concert was amazing. The little pre-pubescent boys were divided into treble 1, 2, and alto. Just amazing. I’ll never complain about singing gospel tenor again that’s for sure. Just as the concert was ending, and just as I was walking out of the church, down the street just a few meters was a slightly out-of-breath Jori, who had tried her best to make at least part of the show. Oh well once again.
So the two of us spent our Saturday in a very atypical American way: the Wife went to the big football game while the husband went to a concert. The somewhat sad thing is that had we known ahead of time about the football tickets we probably could have both gone to both events together.

mmmmm, chicken enchiladas

About two years ago Jori and I found ourselves explaining to her Chinese postdoc, Bing what fart meant. Jori had another labmate who was prone to southern emissions, and who was not particularly ashamed to let it be known (perhaps because they are in a small room and it is hard to cover such things up). For most of the English lessons we gave Bing we were able to fairly easily explain what a word or grammar structure should be, but with this one he just didn’t seem to get it. After a lot of explanation he finally got it and told us what they call it in Chinese (sorry, I can’t remember it). We of course wanted to see the pinyin (phonetic spelling) in a Chinese dictionary so that we might better understand how to say such a crucial word. As it turns out the translation in the Chinese dictionary was: “to pass wind from bowels”. We all agreed that despite the hilarity, it really did quite adequately define what fart meant.

The reason that I bring this up is that a couple of nights ago at youth group we had chicken enchiladas. Oh, they were soooo good. However, by the end of the night, I was practicing some major butt cheek squeezing exercises. (before any of you might think of turning a “nose” in disgust, I ask if you may also have ever found yourself in such a predicament). Fortunately the night was almost over and it was time to go home. We walked home that night (me about ready to float home), and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I let out a "squeak" and apologized to Jori as I looked behind us to confirm that the closest person was about 200 yards behind us.

Those of you who know me may know that I usually walk pretty quickly, and so does Jori. In fact I almost never am passed by another walker. I’m not really saying this with some sort of pride, but just as a matter of fact for the continuation of this story. I was still as bloated as can be, and had to get it out of my system. Oh what sweet relief. I let out the wind from my bowels. You know, the kind that have a lovely assortment of natural tonal qualities that would set my nephews or niece rolling around on the floor for hours recounting its grandeur. Jori and I of course burst out laughing, at which point Jori looked behind us to see if the man who was 200 yards away might have noticed. Well, as Jori’s continued laugh with disgust indicated to me, he most certainly must have noticed. As it turns out, we had a speedy walker on our heels. This guy in a suit was right behind us—poor fellow. We tried to stop laughing in sympathy for the poor guy, but by this point we had the giggles—the kind you pray you don’t get in Church, and the kind that are virtually impossible to stop. We slowed down at this point to let the guy advance well in front of us. I can only imagine what he told his friends and family later that night.