I need to start remembering to bring one of my other notebooks – my non-lab-official notebooks – so that I can actually sit around and write on something without staring at the computer screen. And to make sure my handwriting is still a-okay. This was easier at ESF because I live out of that lab nowadays; it’s more convenient than the locker downstairs in Moon, which is still pretty convenient.
So I’ve murdered another pair of earbuds. I mean, it was bound to happen: earbuds and I unfortunately do not mix. These were on the way out for a while, and I’m not too horribly broken up about it. I mean, something about a $6 pair from Big Lots doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, but I was desperate to use my mp3 player OUTSIDE of the car as well.
Plus I think at that point I was running column after column after column… that’ll make you crazy if you don’t take the proper precautions!
So last Friday was the REU/RET picnic, which started at 11:00am. So around 10:50 I poured some more of this chromic acid oxidation mixture into the filter (I have had enough of fine frits for the rest of my life), changed into capris and flipflops (not wearing jeans and sneakers to the beach, thank-you-very-much), found Paola and Brad, and headed down (well, up, I guess) to North Beach.
We got there and there was no food, which we were only slightly put out about. We stood around and talked to each other. We hiked back in to where the food was supposed to be – apparently they’re not allowed to serve food on the actual beach – and Margaret was not happy at all about the wait on the food.
When the food came, it was boxed lunches, and the sandwiches were pretty gross. I ate probably 85% of mine before giving up, and I had the fruit cups (I picked around the grapes) and passed on the chips. They had rice krispy treats, which was nice in a third grade sort of way. But hey, I have nothing against third grade.
Then we tossed around a frisbee, some people played volleyball, they took some pictures… and eventually I headed back to lab, because after all, there are only two more weeks of research left, then one of clean up and presentations, and then it’s over. Which is crazy. But I digress.
As I was changing back into my jeans, I had then upside-down at one point, and I was quite fixated on being sure that my debit card did not fall out of my pocket (I was, of course, changing in a bathroom stall). I heard a plink, and immediately my hand flew to the back pocket that had had my debit card in it. I have no idea why I didn’t just invert my jeans so that they would be the right way up.
My debit card was still in my pocket, so naturally that begs the question: what fell? I looked around a bit, and didn’t see anything on the floor. And then I saw something perched happily on the floor of the toilet.
Now the thing you have to understand about my earbuds is that they were seriously dying. They were the kind that has the doughnut-shaped rubbed inserts for your ears, so that the sound is funneled in and they tend to be more comfortable because the rubber is flexible. So the earbuds – both of them – had broken in half along the poorly made seam, where I had half-speaker and half-insert. The speakers are, of course, connected to the headphones’ cord. The inserts are not, so I keep them in my pocket.
By this point, the speakers had also come undone from their hemispherical docks, and were dangling from the ends of the exposed wire. Earlier in the week, I had managed to somehow rip one of the speakers (just a flat, dull silver disk of a thing) from its mooring, so the right earbud is useless. Therefore I had started carrying around only one insert, for the left side.
For whatever reason, it really, really bothers me to have an earbud in and no sound coming from it. It makes me feel all lopsided, and just taking the earbud out makes it better. Maybe it’s a control thing. I don’t know.
But anyway, I had just one insert with me. It had been in my right pocket, and it was now sitting on the floor of the toilet, grinning up at me with its doughnut face. I was quite perturbed, and tried to figure out what to do.
Should I save it? Should I put my pants on first? Do I really want to stick my hand and wrist and possibly part of my forearm into a public toilet (flushed, of course, I’m not THAT gross) just to save an insert when I already have one more and I don’t use more than one at a time anymore? If I do happen to save it, do I want to put that in my ear? Will I get some sort of terrible coliform-carried inner ear infection which will destroy my ability to walk?
Eventually I decided to put my pants on. Clearly, with pants on, I could make a sound decision. I would be the one wearing the pants in this relationship.
As I put them on, I turned to the side. These are little stalls, you understand. And as I did, I heard the tell-tale pre-whooshing noise that is the harbinger of you’ve-presumably-left-now-so-I’m-going-to-flush watery doom in these automatic toilets. I turned around and watched helplessly as the insert, no longer grinning but certainly silently screaming, was sent down to some wastewater treatment plant where the coliforms are killed off by chlorination and the like.
For a moment, I was frustrated. And then I started to laugh – and to desperately hope that I would never have tried to retrieve that insert anyway, even if the automatic flush had not saved me from a potentially poor decision. So then I finished putting my pants on, and my shoes on, and resigned myself to a Mika-less afternoon in lab.
Good times. I’m ridiculous.
My left knee really hurts today, and my lower back is threatening to ache and I really have no idea why my body is upset with me, but whatever. There’s not much to be done in lab today. I wish I could find Brad, though, because with only two weeks of real research left, I’d like to go out with a bang.
Of course, first I had to relate the story. I have one insert left. That’s all I need.
And by the way, that chromic acid oxidation... oh well, a story for another day.
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