Call Me a Quitter

So.....I am in graduate school. It is the bane (?) of my existence. I hate it. Hate it. HATE it.


Why am I doing this to myself? I'll tell you why....because I have NOTHING else to do.

Here are the top ten things my advisor has done/said that make me HATE graduate school, my advisor and inadvertently my life:

10. "How's Tricks?" He said this to a Canadian schoolmate of mine one afternoon. She was confused. To her, AND the rest of the world, "How's Trick's?" means how much do you cost for a sexual favor? This terminology stemming from the prostitute industry which refers to sexual favors as "tricks" and thus asking "How's tricks" to a prostitute is shorthand for "How much for sex/blow job/ hand job".....you get the picture. The Canadian thought perhaps our country had a different understanding of this phrase and when she asked us, we said, "No, no we don't."

9. "Is she hot?" My advisor asked this question of a previous lab tech in our lab when he was inquiring about whether or not the tech he was planning to hire to replace the leaving tech had a "hot" girlfriend. Turns out the tech leaving knew the potential hire, so he just asked casually about the new hire's girlfriend, "Is she hot?"

8. "The only person who scored as low on their GRE as you did was dyslexic." My advisor said this to ME....ME!!!! When he veiwed my GRE scores for grad school. Ok...maybe I didn't do that well, but SERIOUSLY who says that to people? And BTW...I didn't score THAT bad...not bad enough to liken me to a dyslexic person. Jerk.

7. "It's not rocket science...." He says this when anyone he knows ANYWHERE has a problem doing something that I can GUARENTEE he himself has no idea how to do and instead of admitting that he just makes you feel stupid.

6. "Things are getting all loosey goosey." He just says this when he doesn't know what is going on, which is never, so he says it a lot.

5. "What am I, a mushroom in the forest?" Again, he says this when he doesn't know what is going on. What I guess, and my labmates guess he means is that we don't tell him what is happening so he is a mushrrom off in the forest somewhere that is unaware. What we THINK he should mean is that he is a super tall doucher who looks like a giant penis and thus has a mushroom head.

4. "Maybe it's a little sexier...." He said this tom me when referring to part of my thesis project. It was a portion of my project that was to include biochemistry. Does that sound sexy to anyone? ANYONE? I didn't think so. Man, that guy has some serious sexual problems.

3. "By gosh and by golly...." I am not even sure what the fuck he means when he says that shit.

2. My advisor regularly doesn't show up for bi-weekly lab meetings that when we miss he sends out emails to the lab saying that "attending lab meetings should be viewed as mandatory and if you can't make it I need to hear about it in advance with a really good reason as to why not." Please...sometimes he just doesn't come. No explanation....than makes jokes about it the following week. I have better things to do with my time than MAYBE going to a meeting that you will MAYBE decide to show up for. Jerk.

1. "I couldn't disagree with you more..." Word on the street is he said this to his wife when he first met her. He clearly has a way with women. He says this to all of my labmates all of the time. What I love is that this might be the ultimate put down. I mean think about...say it to yourself. He not only doesn't agree...but he could not begin to think of any way possible that he could disagree with you in any way at all anymore than he already does. You are so wrong, that he can't think of one thing that could be more wrong or farther from the truth than from what you just said. You are clearly the most stupid person he has ever met. A mentally disabled person couldn't say something more stupid since he can't think of anyway that you could be more wrong. It seems to me that what we would have had to say to him in order for him to respond like that is to just grunt or groan and not actually give him an intelligible answer. Doesn't it? I mean you have to say something COMPLETELY non-coherent in order for there to be NOTHING that could be more wrong. Just a thought.

Well....with that said...my advisor is clearly a jerk.


Cheers!

There's more....

If you are reading this and have not yet read my blog entitled, "Pimp MY Ride," than I refer you to that blog first. The reason being that this is a sort of continuation of that blog.


I came up with two more reasons why having my window in my car smashed sucks.


1. (or 8 depending on how you look at it) I had a REALLY fuckin' good driver's license photo. I mean I got compliments on it ALL the time. Now, I am going to feel all this pressure to take a goood picture, and it will likely make me look a lot like a man when all is said and done. Or I will have a shit in my nose. One of the two. Anyway....we all know how hard it is to take a photo for your license. And this one was a real gem.

2/9. Turns out the little triangle window.....or the rear passenger side vent window....as it is called in the auto parts world costs more than a fuckin' windshield. Can you believe that? Windshield: $186, Rear passenger side vent window: $589-$955, Paying to be fucked in the ass by some douchebag who breaks into your car? Priceless.


So there you have it again. I was robbed. Maybe I should rob someone. Would that make me feel better? Probably not. I did get a free load of laundry in my building today, so that puts me up a dollar. Plus my wonderful boyfriend, whom I love, told me he got us tickets to see Ween and The Flaming Lips at Red Rocks Ampitheater in Denver, CO while we are there on a road trip. Can anyone say "HOLY SHIT!!!" I can, and just did. Yeah, he is the best. So, REALLY I am kind of breaking even for the day because I am pretty sure the tickets were spendy. So thanks Jon, thanks guy in the laundry room for the load of laundry and thank you douchebag crackhead bum for showing me that I really can choose my attitude about things and that I should never leave anything of value in my car (oh wait...I didn't. As I have said, my wallet was WORTHLESS.....).

Pimp MY Ride

So.....got up this morning. 5:30 am. Was "looking forward" to a beautiful out on the coast. Do a little boating and a little "science." I hopped into my car and was perplexed as to why my wallet wasn't there. See....the day before I had spent the day at the river doing a little nude sun bathing. I was exhausted when I got home and just decided to leave my wallet, cigs, etc in the car since I knew I would be up at 5am to work. I KNEW the wallet had been in the car. I turn around to look in my back seat and what do I see????? Any guesses?

A crackhead bum sleeping in my car.


Just kidding...that would be a WAY better story. No, I saw that my back right triangle window had been busted out and was lying in my backseat. Apparently, a crackhead bum had broken my window and stolen my wallet. There are SO many things wrong with this situation. Let me just run through them in a list style.

1. I have no money. By no money, I don't mean no cash in my wallet, I mean NO money. EVEN if I was dumb enough to not cancel my credit cards...which I'm not by the way... contrary to popular belief, I still have no money in my bank account to make them work. HELLO....duh.

2. Windows cost money to replace apparently. Money which I don't have any of (refer to #1).

3. The car thief didn't take my ipod nano. I am not complaining about this AT ALL. I am merely stating an obvious oversight by the thief. The nano would have been worth WAY more than my wallet because I have no money (again, see #1).

4. The thief did not take a nearly FULL pack of smokes from my car. Makes me kind of think it wasn't a crackhead bum. Because we all know that crackhead bums smoke.

5. By stealing my wallet, I am now out a driver's license and my favorite wallet. It took me about 2 weeks to find this wallet. I loved this wallet. Couldn't they have just taken all the useless items out of the wallet and left the actual wallet? I mean seriously. I would assume all they wanted was cash or money (which I have none of) but did they really need a new wallet? That's what I thought.

6. I don't know if I have made this clear enough...but they ONLY took my wallet and I have no money (plus I canceled my 2 cards in there this AM.)

7. It seems SO suspicious to me that they only took my wallet, that I am pretty sure they planted a bomb or something in there. I mean why would you smash someone's window just to take a wallet full of receipts and other useless items?

Well there you have it. I have been robbed. I feel so violated. I guess I have been robbed before, but it never gets easier. Fuckin' crackhead bums.

I'm Black

I’m black. Not the really dark kind of black, but the slightly tan yes my mother was a white woman, kind of black. I’ve been black my whole life. Hard to believe considering I grew up in Wyoming, but true.

As a black woman from Wyoming, I naturally have an appreciation for the mountains. I skied as a youth and found that I was really bad at it. Something about too many trees in the way of my greatness. The real defining point of my future in snowboarding was when I ran into a tree, my ski flew off into the woods and some snowboarders came by and kindly fetched my ski for me. I am pretty sure they saw the collision and wanted to get a closer look at me. After this showing of kindness I decided there was only one thing left for me to do…snowboard.

Fast-forward several years to when I could actually afford to go regularly. I was in college at Western Washington University and Mt. Baker became my home mountain. I had never really thought about it before, but I began to notice that I was one of very few black people at the mountain and really the only black female. Hell, I am the only black person most of my friends know and like I said I am only sorta black.

This observation led me to think about why black people don’t snowboard and what if they did. What would become of the sport? I led myself to several conclusions. The first being that black people don’t snowboard because they don’t like snow. Which is silly because really black people are safer in the snow. Send some pro patrollers to rescue two separate riders lost in the back country, one white, one black, and my money is on them finding the black person first based solely on the fact that black contrasts with white (uhhh yeah white like snow). It is said that black people can’t swim so it could just be that black people just don’t like water no matter what phase its in, liquid, solid or gas. Furthermore I decided that most black people just don’t live near snow. Most of the black people I know live in New England or in the south. I took a group of my black friends from Virginia snowboarding once in Utah and they all hated it. One of them made it down the bunny hill in about an hour and then just gave up. She spent most of the afternoon sipping a 40oz of Old E at the lodge (I’m kidding we all know they don’t serve Old E in Utah, it was Coors Light).

Anyway, I am getting off topic. My next revelation was what would become of the sport of black people caught on. The answer is simple: Pure and total domination. Lets just take a look at other sports. Basketball, football, track….black people are the shit. Short of swimming, I think its pretty clear that black people are athletically superior to a white person. It may have taken 100 years for a black person to play golf but look what happened when they did.

Quite frankly, if black people can get over their aversion to water they could probably rule the world.

I caught a fish and it gave me AIDS

No....it didn't really give me AIDS. Do fish get AIDS?? I guess I should know. I'm the fuckin' fish scientist right? Well anyway...heres the story. I went fishing Saturday with Jon and his parents. It was my first meeting with Jon's rents and I think it went well, especially because I spent the better part of 2 hours wrangling a like 7 foot sturgeon that we couldn't keep anyway because you can't keep sturgeon over like 5 feet. Anyway....


His Mom wasn't suppose to come. It was just suppose to be me, Jon and Jimmy...aka Dad. BUT Jon's Mom came too. YEAH!!! Jon wasn't pleased. I think he thinks his Mom talks too much, which doesn't bode well for me because all of you who know me know I talk A LOT as well. The highlight of the day was when Jon's Dad hit a wake, sent Jon's Mom flying out of her seat onto her ass, then smiled and laughed really sly like while looking in Jon's direction. Did he mean to do it? We'll never know. Mom was a trooper though.

I think the second highlight was that Mom and Dad drank beers on the boat with us. My parents wouldn't do this. My parents of course DO NOT own a boat, but if they did, there wouldn't be beer within like 100 feet of it, unless another boat passed by close enough to hand me one.

The final and most important highlight was the aformentioned fish wrangling. I am 5'4.....I am small. This fuckin' fish outweighed my ass I bet. I fuckin' reeled that bitch in for EVER while Jon's Dad called his friend's to tell them about it and about how Jon's girlfriend was reeling it in and it is bigger than she was. Good times. The fishing pole actually broke during this adventure and I had to give up chase. I would have won though. That big ol' sturgeon gots nothin' on the Sea Mistress....yes thats me.

The only real downfall of the day was discovering that Jon's Dad is by no means an environmentalist. And when I say this, I mean he made the follwing comments, "Global warming isn't happening," and "You have to get natural resources where they are, I mean they only exist in certain places." True....Jimmy, and most of those places happen to be the last wild landscapes in earth. No matter though. I liked his parents and I think they liked me. Jimmy invited me to come fishing again. Maybe I'll get some more blogs out of this.

I love Mos Def and I want to have his Love Child

That's it. That's all I have to say about that.

Can I Get a WHAT WHAT?

I have a problem.....its not herpes, AIDS, or the HIV. Its far more serious and life threatening. I have "I'm a girl" syndrome. I don't know when, where or why this happened but it has become the bane of my existence.

So....as you all know I am a fish scientist of sorts that studies marine science for my masters. On occasion myself and two of my lab mates, Ali and Joanne, take our unamed boat out to the coast of WA to do some "science." And by "science" I mean no we really do science. Thats neither here nor there. The point is we hook this boat up to an EZ LOADER boat trailer, trailer it out to the bay, do "science" in the bay, come home. Pretty easy right? Yes....until we all began being plagued by "I'm a girl" syndrome.

What is that horrible affliction you ask? Well...it all started on a trip myself and my lovely lab mates and took to the coast for 5 days. The first was that we couldn't get the boat to start. We tried pumping the gas line, waiting, playing with the gas tanks, the battery....nothing worked. We were at a breaking point (this was day 4 of 5 16 hr work days on like 5 hours of sleep....delerious anyone?) so we decide to go to WDFW and ask for some help. Brian was more than happy to come over. What happens? The damn boat starts right up and purrs like a fuckin kitten. Seriously. Alright, fine. We got the boat on...lets get it out of the water. OH but wait. We need to hook the EZ LOADER up to the van. Sounds easy...EZ LOADER. Its just a ball and a hitch deal. NO WAIT...its not working. We try for a fucking hour...NOTHING.....so what do we do? We of course ask for help. (seeing the trend....seeing the "I'm a girl" syndrome trend?) Some guy drives over to help us in a big blue truck....we were 10 feet away but hey if the guy wants to drive whatever. He saunters over to us....BAM trailer hooked up. I don't think this guy could even read or write (we are talking about the Long Beach Peninsula of WA) but he could hook up a mean boat trailer and make three very well educated girls look dumb.

So....2x....no big deal right? I don't NEED a man. Or do I? Fast forward to today. Just a day trip to Willapa. We go to hook the trailer up AGAIN....it doens't fucking work. To make matters worse the dame kickstand gets so stuck I couldn't move the fucker with all my mite. So what do we do (pattern?????)? We ask for help. Homeboy walks right over BAM hooks the fucking trailer up. Does it end there? NO....LATER we can't get the fucking gas cap off the van. WTF you say??? No shit. First of all I hav been filling up gas tanks for years. I worked at like 3 gas stations. What do we do? You guess...you finish this story cause you know where its going.

Now...you see what I mean? You all know me as an independant woman. What is my problem? Is it all of us? Do we create some sort of trifecta of girliness when we're together? I don't know, but what I do know is next time I am using a condom.

I should be...

Studying for a test.

You've all been there. That test is in like 3 hours and you haven't studied at all but its the end of the semester/quarter and you sort of just don't give a fuck anymore. You know what I'm talking about.

I have been "studying" for this test all day. I am tired and I feel like I really haven't learned a damn thing all semester. I haven't actually been studying mind you...I have been "studying."

Why are there finals? You don't want to be there, I don't want to be there. Can't we go out and have a beer or something instead? Why we gotta ruin the mojo of the semester and the course by having a final. A COMPREHENSIVE final.

The thing is my advisor will kill me if I fail this class. Actually he won't be happy if I get a B. So I really should study.

The OTHER thing is right now I have the highest grade in the class. I don't want to study. I mean if I technically have 100% right now, than how bad would I have to do to get a B? Maybe fail? I don't know. How bad could I do? Right? RIGHT?

Well the answer is pretty bad. Especially if some doucher from class decides to rockstar the test on me....I'll cut you.

Anyway...I am going to go "study" again. Maybe I'll take a nap. Who needs a college education anyway? It would be awfully cool to say I was kicked out of grad school.

My advisor is gonna kill me.