Friday, August 29, 2003

He's like Dennis Miller filling in for Sean Hannity!

Dennis Miller is filling in for Sean Hannity at this very second. Some highlights:

"If I'm on an airplane and I see a guy sitting there looking like the Shoe Bomber, I'm calling the stewardess over and I'm saying, 'Hon, unless this guy is playing harmonica for the J.Geils Band, I want him off this plane.'"

"When he put that helmet on, Dukakis looked like president of the Fisher-Price People."

"People who say they didn't know smoking was dangerous are lying through the hole in their trachea."

"Doesn't Condy Rice strike you as someone who has actually led the life Hillary keeps insisting she always has?"

"The United States has put the world on notice: We've circled the SUV's."

Maaaaagnificent.

PDF files RULE!

Today I have to fill out a grant application, and the engineers I'm working with don't have any of the info I need to put in there. Oh... wait... let me just reach into the SECTION OF MY ASS where I keep the Flood Insurance ID # for the City of Podunk. Even better, the application is a PDF file.... I have to use a typewriter. When was the last time ANYBODY used a TYPEWRITER? Look at all those teeny tiny little lines I have to even up with the information I do not have. Seriously, I'll take Gary's collapsed lung over this shit.

Thursday, August 28, 2003

Further Hatred For the Elevator

ENGINEER: Did you have a good day?

ME: It was okay. A Tuesday.

ENGINEER: Tuesday comes between Monday and Friday!

God I hate the elevator.

Wednesday, August 27, 2003

Day Jobs

Once when my other baby cousin, Kaitlyn, was paying me a visit, she discovered a set of stacked coasters and began taking them apart, then piling everything up again. She had everything upside down at first, and I was leaning down to help her when my mom said, "Let her do it herself."

"But I don't want her to know that the world is hard," I said, then sat down like a proper conservative.

She'll figure it out eventually.

Answers

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board has released its results. No surprises; a chunk of insulating foam on the external tank struck the reinforced carbon-carbon on the leading edge of the orbiter's left wing, which allowed destructive heat to seep into the vehicle during re-entry.

Is this engineer-speak? You're damn right it is. But this engineering bursts from the Earth.... and sometimes, it sets us right back where we started. Much love to you, my Columbia Seven.

Tuesday, August 26, 2003

What Just Came Out Of My Cousin Michelle

A BABY!!!!!

A brand-new beautiful baby boy, Tyler John. As he is my blood relative, I sit confident in the knowledge that he is gorgeous and incredibly smart. His mama is a microbiologist and his dad has a PhD. He is going to have the best science projects in the history of the planet. ("And what's your project, Tyler?" "The Death Star.")

He's the first boy in my family to be born in over thirty years. Hey, no pressure, Tyler.

'Tis strange-- today is also the day the findings of the Columbia investigative board will be released. The week we lost her, one of my best friends sent me a bouquet of flowers with the news that in nine months I was going to be an "aunt." For each sorrow, a joy.

Womb Update

Classes start tomorrow at my alma mater-- or, as I call it, The Womb-- and I would give just about anything to be one of those freshmen. God I miss The Womb. Dining hall sucked, there was no air conditioning, and a foreign person standing in front of a large room tried to make me do math, but that was The Time, man. You balanced an ironing board across two crates and called it a table. Once you're out of The Womb, there is no getting away with that anymore.

Monday, August 25, 2003

Different Elevator, Same Elevator Hatred

Different elevator, no less horrifying: My friends and I were at a tourist attraction (they are hard to come by, here in Florida, but we managed) with a parking garage. We were on maybe the fifth floor, and when we ran out of the $2.45 worth of Fun Money we'd allotted ourselves, we headed for the elevator. Already congregated around the "up" button were a group of teenagers who had obviously been there for a while.

Since this was a high-traffic area, there was of course one elevator car which moved floor to floor at speeds of up to .0000000000001 micrometer per hour. We were about to start walking when it arrived, and as we piled in I pushed "5" and one of the teenagers hit................... 2.

The car creaked upwards, the door closed behind them, and mah main homey Flipper said, "All right, who's going to be the first to say it?"

I will: YOU @$&@!;?^%$ KIDS, YOU COULDN'T WALK UP ONE FLIGHT OF STEPS?!??!!?!?!?!?!

Sunday, August 24, 2003

Can Do

My grandfather and I watched the Travers Stakes together. He is dead, but he was there, because Pat Day won.

The horse I don't have particularly strong feelings for; it's Day I'm concerned with. Like most people of his generation, my grandfather followed horseracing quite closely, and he would always tell us, "When in doubt, take the horse under Pat Day."

The year he died, we did just that. My sister and dad had the opportunity to attend the Kentucky Derby in the GE box, where they put a wad of cash on the nose of Pat Day's mount. Back at River Downs in Cincinnati, I did the same, placing a racing bet for the first and only time in my entire life. (He--and the horse-- promptly lost. I know.... that was almost such a cool story.)

It was a record crowd at Saratoga today. It was also a happy pair here in Florida.

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