gold star number one

love in an elevator
Originally uploaded by with an eye.

I've finally got some of my trip pictures online. All the Florence ones are up. Three hundred and ninety nine of them from the 4 days I was in Florence.
too. many. pictures.

But please go look at them...and leave some comments too - I ran out of steam with the titles and the captions!!

www.flickr.com/photos/with-an-eye

example

I registered with a website today and we all know how that goes now - with "internet security" a big issue whenever you register for something and have to give out your email address you then have to wait for the confirmation email. But then you have to go a step further and validate this by clicking on some button, going to some link, or replying in some manner. I understand the security measure here, to prevent people from signing up for things under someone else's email address, or being able to later claim that this was not what they wanted. However, the confirmation email I got today began with one sentence that seemed to be a very polite attempt at explaining why I had to go through all this crap:

We require this step to protect our relationship with you

It struck me - what a good idea this is. An initial step that is required in order to protect the relationship. I'm thinking of saving this email and using it in many other instances in my life. You want a ride from me, first you'll receive an email indicating that I require this step to protect my relationship with you. You want me to go to your party, first you'll get this email. You want to buy me a drink, have my phone number, take me to dinner, EMAIL. Then I will require you to go to a webpage, check of that you agree to the terms and conditions, and maybe make you enter a string of letters and numbers that are artfully disguised behind a mess of criss-crossed lines and stripes. Can't ever be too safe!

cupcakes

I heard the best advertisement on the radio today - it was one of these anti-marijuana ones, but I think we're stretching it a little bit here. (I'm glad I get to type this because when I tried recounting it this afternoon to my friend Jess I messed it all up because I was laughing too much)

Here's how it went.

Girl (in a very serious voice):"A week ago my friend Amanda told me to smoke pot, and I did. Two minutes ago she told me to shoplift and now I'm here with a cupcake and frosting down my pants and it doesn't want to stay there. The store manager keeps looking at me, like he knows something."
Store Manager (sounding kinda gruff): "excuse me girls, can I help you"
Announcer: "Live above the influence..."

I'm sure the announcer said something else but I couldn't hear it because I was laughing to hard. SERIOUSLY - they said "and now I have a cupcake and frosting down my pants and it doesn't want to stay there". I'm sorry, forget the whole marijuana part, who shoplifts a CUPCAKE? by putting it DOWN THEIR PANTS? Where is this store with cupcakes laying around so that you can easily shove them down your pants? All the stores I know keep the cupcakes safely behind the counter. I never thought of it before, but this is obviously an attempt to keep the potheads from shoving them down their pants!

who is this girl? and as my friend Jess pointed out - why were her parents allowed to procreate?

the greatest words in the world

On Wednesday I decided not to go in to work so that I could, instead, go to Fenway Park and try to buy tickets to the Red Sox game. My friend picked me up at 10am, and we drove into the city and began our quest for tickets. After a bit of looking, and some lunch, we then got the BEST TICKETS EVER. We were sitting right behind home plate - it was awesome. I've been to a few red sox games in my day, not nearly as many as the friend who was with me on Wednesday - but a lot. It always amazes me how I never cease to be excited to be there. And then when the announcer comes on and says "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Fenway park - America's most beloved ballpark!" - oh I love it!!

They played the Kansas City Royals, the second worst team in baseball. We met one of their fans at Stub Hub and she was hoping to see them get win number 32. (for those non baseball fans out there - each team has played about 96 baseball games so far...And Kansas hadn't won 32 of them yet!) It was a good game, Josh Beckett was pitching and Gabe Kapler was playing, and Doug Meintkiewicz was in town. We saw Ortiz bunt, and it was pretty. Manny hit a homerun and there were about 5 amazing catches in the outfield.

One of the things I love about following a baseball team is getting to know the players tendencies. Most people remember Nomar's glove thing, and maybe people know Ichiro's samurai stance before batting, - but there are so many others!! Big Papi who spits in his glove and slaps his hands together before each at bat, Manny taps his bat twice behind home plate, Gabe Kapler (#44) stands perfectly straight before walking into the batters box. I caught that one on film - although I'll admit maybe I was just trying to take a picture of his bum because he's cute!! Coco Crisp does something that I don't quite understand - between each swing he bends down and picks up some dirt, then he spits into his hand, and then he grips his bat. So basically each time he is making mud on his hands and then rubbing it on the bat. YUCK. And he doesn't use batting gloves.

Lastly, we got to see Papelbon pitch - and he's just amazing. And such a cool guy too. When he comes into a game the whole place goes nuts, applause, cheers, chants. It's awesome. Everyone stays standing just a bit longer and claps just a bit louder when Papelbon is on the mound - and he deserves every bit of that!

Let's Go Red Sox!!

time flies...

I am helping out at an Almuni event for my college next week. It's for the incoming freshman and their parents - to meet the alums and listen to how much we loved the school and to see how cool we are now and to give them hope for their own futures! I'm very excited about it, because I did love my school and I am cool now, and I'd like to give people hope for their futures. But, these kids, that will be starting in colleges around the country at the end of next month...

they are the class of 2010. that's right. two thousand and ten. '10.

twenty-ten.

(clearly I can't get over this!)

nostaglia

I don't know why I thought of this story the other day - perhaps it's because I've made friends with a few of the janitors at work, but I remembered a story from college about the cleaning guy, Effrain. And I thought I would share.

It was my sophomore year, and I was living on the second floor of Sanford Hall (ahhh - Sanford, the old apartment!) and we had the nicest cleaning guy. It turned out I had a 8 or 9am class everyday - so I was always up and showering early. Our room was conveniently positioned right across from the bathroom and the kitchen. It took a few weeks for Effrain to realize that I was always up early, but he caught on. He also noticed that I would let him clean the bathroom first so that I could be the first one to use the sparkling bathroom!! It started slowly, but eventually we fell into a little system. I would wake up and crack open the door. Then I would sit and check my email or whatever and wait. When Effrain was done with my bathroom he'd knock lightly on the door (so he didn't wake up my roommate) and I'd run in to get ready! He was so sweet. Some days if he was running late he would come up and start on the second floor bathroom just for me. All year it went like this - and I was the first one to use the newly cleaned bathroom!

I can't believe I forgot about this, it seemed so important at the time!! Thanks Effrain!

did we try to fight it?

I had the opportunity to be in the car for a while today, and Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" came on. Great song! And it allowed me some time to think. One of my favorite teachers in high school, Mr. Meyer, had us analyze this song once. It was 'history' class - but really it was more 'life' class, since he really taught us more about where we were going than where we had been. He gave us the lyrics to this song one day and we went through and discussed each event and how it was important in the development of the 20th century. We had to write a paper about it, not cataloging the events, but explaining why they were grouped together the way they were in the song and how things as different as British Beatlemania and the Bay of Pigs Invasion were pivotal in shaping that point in time. It was a cool project. Today, when I heard the song, I wondered what would make it into a current version of the song. At the heart of it, I bet we'd find they are all the same. Are we making the same mistakes over and over? Or are we really trying to fight it?

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye"

Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye.

Josef Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockerfeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc

Roy Chon, Juan Peron, Toscanini, dacron
Dien Bien Phu, and "Rock Around the Clock"

Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team
Davy Crockett, "Peter Pan", Elvis Presley, Disneyland

Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai"

Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide

Buddy Holly, "Ben-Hur", space monkey, Mafia
hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no go

U2, Syngman Rhee, payola, and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs Invasion

"Lawrence of Arabia", British Bealtemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beat Patterson

Pope Paul, Malcom X, British politician sex
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say?

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon, back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline
Ayatollolah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan

"Wheel of Fortune", Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law
Rock and Roller Cola Wars, I can't take it anymore

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on....


this site has references to all these major events - and even some papers similar to the one I was asked to write once.
http://www.teacheroz.com/fire.htm

If anyone has the desire to try and write a new version of we didn't start the fire I'd love to hear it - hell, I'll even help if you want....

analyze this

I'm prone to having some weird dreams - very vivid and often very bizarre. There was this recurring dream I had when I was younger where my grandmother and I were staying in someone's house and then the house caught on fire. While we were trying to escape from the house we were shrunken down to about 2 inches tall. We were able to slip under the closed doors, but the stairs became a big obstacle. Once we finally made it out of the house we were in the middle of the desert and still two inches tall. And I distinctly remember having this dream about half a dozen times between the ages of 7 and 9.

Then there was the time where I had a continuing dream. I had a dream one night that involved me trying to run from these scary things - they really resembled the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz, but they were on wheels and wheeling around after me. I woke up just as I was trying to barricade the door of my grandmothers house and keep the monkeys out. phew! But, the next night when I went to sleep...we start right back up at me barricading the door in my grandmothers house and the monkeys trying to get in. They did. And I kept running. I'm fairly certain the monkeys left my grandmother alone.

Last night was the first time in a while that I have had a really bizarre dream. I needed a haircut, so I called a salon to make an appointment. I spoke to the woman who would cut my hair and she didn't have an appointment at a good time for me, so she agreed to stay open later so I could make it. The hair place was in this freakishly large empty building, so it took me about 20 minutes to walk from where I parked my car, through this mall-like building that had nothing in it. Finally I arrived at the salon. Out comes my hairdresser who was in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the hips down, and had these mis-shapen hands. She was extremely nice and we sat down with some books. She asked what I wanted to have done with my hair and I said I didn't know. Then she said "well, let me ask you this. Are you happy with the way your hair looks on a daily basis? Do you like the way it looks when you visit your grandmother?" After this consultation they told me that my haircut would cost $150. (In reality I normally pay $20 for a haircut, so this was crazy to me!) But I felt like since she had stayed open late, given me this consultation, and was paralyzed and with mis-shapen hands, I owed it to her to say yes. Then all these people came to the salon and they had a birthday party and then I woke up.

What I'm noticing is - all of these very strange dreams involve my grandmother. why is that? I'm not asking for an explanation of the shrunken 2 inch people, or the presence of the desert, or the monkeys on wheels, or even the paralyzed hairdresser with mis-shapen hands. I'm sure those are all very interesting and proof of some neurotic tendencies that I am already aware of. But, my grandmother? Why is she in all these weird dreams? That's my question.

and of course...

i would have just finished writing that last entry when I decided to check my email.

and all i have to say now is:

blech.

someone loves me

I came home tonight, from a fabulous night of nacho eating, beer drinking, and Rachel Rey watching, and as I was walking from my car I felt as if someone was watching me. I looked up and saw Mia starring down at me from the living room window. She watched me the whole way down the driveway and over to the front door. When I got up to the apartment door she was there with her paws under the door trying to get me. I wish everyone had a Mia sitting in their window waiting for them to come home, it's so nice!

is this thing on?

wow - it's like i have nothing to say since i've returned to the country. I guess nothing seems quite as exciting anymore! And that right there is the downfall of this thing, you can all tell when I'm really boring and have no stories to tell.

Todays topic - I'm old. I mean, I'm not old. really. But I just had a birthday and today I am falling apart. My whole body hurts, but in places where OLD people hurt. It's not like I pulled a muscle, or have a bruise, or got a really cool field hockey injury - no. my BACK hurts. my HIP JOINT hurts. my SHOULDERS hurt. Aren't these things that start to hurt when you start slipping downhill?? I mean, it's been a week - how did my body pick up on the fact that I've moved out of the first quarter of my life already!

Soon I'm going to be writing about the smell of bengay, using too much powder, and stringing bars of soap up all over the place!! (those last two are for my parents, and I can hear them laughing from here!!)

one point twenty-one jigawatts

I have a folder on the desktop of my computer with slightly under 3 gigabytes of pictures and movies from my trip!! As soon as I can go through them I will post all the pictures...

but it may take me several light years.

i'm home

it's 11:30 pm on Saturday, and I'm showered and in bed. But, to put it all in terms of Boston hours:

the last time I was in a bed it was 7pm on Thursday night.
the last shower I had was at 4am on Friday morning.
I've been wearing this outfit since 5am Friday morning. (not entirely true - since my parents brought a new outfit to the airport, so I was able to change around 730pm.)
since 7am on Thursday I've slept about 6 combined hours, all on a plane, and have been on three different continents.

bonne anniversaire a moi

4 words

I'm. On. My. Way.

picture it

I was forced to check out of my hotel today at 3pm. I was not leaving for dinner until 5:45, and not leaving for the airport until 9pm. They nicely held my bags, and there was a place to shower after using the pool - so I spent a few hours pool side, showered, and now had 20 minutes before I needed to leave. So I sat with a drink and my French Glamour magazine to kill the time. From across the hotel lobby I spied something on the TV. COULD IT BE? That familiar pattern of green and brown. white and red. grey and blue. and then in all it's glory - that BIG GREEN MONSTER! ESPN was showing a red sox mets game. OH MY! I practically RAN across the lobby, knocked down a very confused group of Japanese tourists and parked it in front of the TV. There they were - Schill, Tek, Youk, Lowell - it was maybe the most beautiful thing I've seen in weeks. For those of you who know me, you know I am only exaggerating a *tad*. I mean, Duomo, Campo, the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Merlion, they've all been wonderful. But, the Boston Red Sox. come on now, does it get better than this? (oh, and string instrument band in the hotel lobby bar is currently playing a classical rendition of EVERY SINGLE disney song!) Hakuna Matata!

cultural similarities

I'm over here where night is day and day is night - half a planet away - and I'm struck by how similar life is here. I spent the last two days working in one lab, and it's just like at home. When the boss is gone everyone leaves early, when a few lab members separate from the group they immediately chat about the others, there is little time for sleeping, or eating properly, or grocery shopping. The youngest female member of the lab is given a hard time, is the butt of jokes that make her seem like a wild party animal (whether she is or not), and is question about which boys she is dating now. You get sleepy after lunch and need a coffee break, and at the end of the day when you finally get home from work you sit and stare at the wall for a bit and then start working again. I guess if science is a universal language, than being a scientist is a universal lifestyle. There's comfort in that, I suppose.

lion city

The members of the lab I am visiting have been very good at taking turns taking me out at night to see different parts of the city - it's just enough to keep me seeing the sights and not too much to make me feel like a real pain in everyone's butt. Singapore is quite lovely at night, along the river. The skyline is pretty, like any city skyline. And then just behind the river is this row of "colonial" houses. They have all been turned into bars and restaurants now - but they used to be warehouses where boats would bring goods in for trade, and deliver them to the warehouses. At night all the lights are shining and reflected in the river, people are everywhere - but still it's very quiet. It's kind of amazing to see.

There is a big statue of the Merlion, which is half Lion half Mermaid, and a mythical creature that one of the native Singaporeans claims to have seen. It has become quite a legend in Singapore and a symbol of the country. The big statue is currently being cleaned, and covered in some signs that say "please excuse me while I take a shower" but, there is a littler fountain version that is still visible.

Yesterday I had a day off from the lab so I was out doing some sight-seeing and some shopping. I went to the National Botanical Gardens, which was very lovely. The best part was the National Orchid Garden. The Orchid is the national flower and there were SO many of them. It was amazing. They also have hybrid orchids, which are cross-pollenated to create new strains. They've also created V.I.P Orchids, which are special hybrids named after important visitors. Laura Bush has one, as does Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth II, and many other notable politicians and the like. They were all so beautiful - I took MANY pictures, which don't quite capture their beauty, but I tried.

curiosities

why, when I landed in Paris at 9:15pm, was the sun still high in the sky?

why is the alphabet not the same in all languages but numbers are? but why aren't they pronounced the same?

why did some people in some places decide it was normal to drive on the left side of the road, while other people in other places decided it was normal to drive on the right? is one better, or are they just different?

why is it considered the best to be at the TOP of the hotel, when it takes the longest to get up and down from there?

why does Diet Coke (Coca-cola light) taste so remarkably bad in other countries?

why don't Americans care about the World Cup as much as the rest of the World does?

if I flew home the other way, and skipped my birthday, would I stay 25 for another year? would I want to?

jet lag

I arrived in Singapore on Sunday evening. It was a long flight, but it really wasn't that bad. When I got in I wasn't very tired - but I had no trouble falling asleep. It was Monday during the day that it caught up with me. I spent the morning training some people in their lab. They took me out for a nice Singapore lunch. Here there are these open food courts, I suppose like a food court in a mall, where there are many different options - but these aren't in a mall, just stand alone all over the place. If you know me at all you know I am an extremely picky eater, so I hesitate to say that my lunch was *good*. It wasn't BAD. I think it was chicken, supposedly chicken, and tofu, and rice. I'll admit to eating ALL of the rice, some of the tofu, and some of the chicken. The city is incredibly clean - they call it the "fine" city because there are incredible fines for just about everything. Enforced fines. Fines for littering, feeding the pigeons, spitting on the ground, not flushing the public toliet. I could definitely live in a world where people don't litter, don't feed the pigeons, don't spit on the ground and always flush the toilet! But, I guess living in fear of being fined or worse may not be worth it. Gum is also illegal here, because they had a lot of trouble with gum getting on everything, streets, sidewalks, benches, etc. So it's just not legal here anymore. All of the people I have met so far are very nice, and they've offered to take me out at night and show me around. But tonight, tonight I am going to sleep. I am going to shop a tiny bit in the mall at my hotel, and I am going to eat (likely nothing classically singaporian) and I am going to go to bed!

Wednesday is a day off, and I've lined up some things I'd like to do. Hopefully there will be pictures from THAT day!