Mountain Biking

After re-habbing my knee 3 times in the past 15 years, I'm beyond sick of stationary bikes. They make me feel like a gerbil. When I was griping about how out of shape I was from writing my thesis over a year ago, my husband bought me a mountain bike for Christmas. He promised that he would teach me to mountain bike. In the 2 years I've had the bike, I've gone trail riding exactly 3 times. The first time, I ended up falling sideways off a little bridge and landing in a bush (have I mentioned that my sense of balance sucks?). Not a bad place to fall, but I ended up with a branch up my nose and a very nice cut. Made for some cute pictures at a family party the following week! I did much better the second time a week later. However, since that time, I haven't gone trail riding. It's been over a year. Last summer, the weather was abysmally rainy for the first part of the summer and then I was prepping for my defense through the second part of the summer. So I was not surprised at how badly I sucked trail riding this past weekend. I wiped out twice. The first time in sand that I didn't have enough speed to make it over and the second time when my bike bounced unexpectedly and I got tossed over the handle bars. Meanwhile, my husband was battling deer flies while waiting for me to catch up with him. Two days later, I have some really nice purple splotches all over my legs and the palms of my hands (can we say death grip on the handles) and my husband's arm is swollen from all the bites. I think its bizarre that I can't wait to try again....

D.C. Career Fair Adventure

I just returned from a quick day trip to DC to attend a career fair. I got to the DC metro stop where I was supposed to meet my cousin about an hour early. To my surprise, I was greeted by a gentleman I shall refer to as "Spear Chucker". I refer to him as Spear Chucker because he was carrying a "spear"- or rather a long tree branch that he was using to stab at people (didn't actually make contact) like a spear while raving. Spear Chucker was wearing jeans that were slit up the sides nearly to his hip and up the inseam nearly to his crotch. The effect was that of him wearing daisy dukes with extra material hanging to his ankles. When he started staring at me, and muttering snob because I didn't answer him (hell, I couldn't even understand what he was saying) I decided it was time to go for a walk. I was right down the street from the White House, so I thought I'd go see if it was still blocked off like it was the last time I visited DC. It wasn't, so I joined the tourist groups and walked on by. When I turned to return to where I was suppose to meet my cousin, one of the security dogs went nuts on a van pulling onto the White House grounds. Said dog was trained to find explosives, so security and the local police quickly herded all the tourists (and me) back in the opposite direction I was traveling. At that point, I had less than 10 minutes to get back to meet my cousin. I had to walk 2 really long blocks in the opposite direction in order to head back to the meeting point. Somewhere along the way, I noticed Spear Chucker following me, but luckily, he got distracted by a group of Japanese tourists who wanted to take pictures with him. Finally met up with my cousin for a really nice lunch (Thanks Cuz!).

After lunch, I headed over to the Career Fair. At this point, I was 2 hours early and thought I'd walk around some, as I love that area of DC. However, when I got there, people were already queuing to enter the Career Fair! Yikes! So I went into a coffee shop for about an hour and then joined the queue. I got to chat with some really nice people while I waited and I also got to do some serious people watching. First thing I noticed is you could tell who was going for a legal position- they all wore black suits with white shirts. The next thing I noticed is that business attire has a very wide definition. There were 2 girls that walked by in outfits that can only be described as hoochie-mama. One of the guys behind me made the comment that "Do you think those girls know that Bill Clinton is no longer in office?" It was pretty mean, but as we were all thinking along those lines, we all laughed. Then there was a girl that walked by in a tux jacket with a pink tulle ballet skirt. Not sure what sort of position she was looking for. My absolute favourite outfit for the whole day though, was the blue velvet suit. It was worn by an older Asian lady- complete with Mr. T starter kit! She seriously looked like she wanted the position of "Elvis impersonator." Did I mention it was 90 degrees and we were standing in the sun? I do think the guy behind me had it right- "I hope to God she isn't wearing it because it's the best outfit she has!"

After the adventures of standing in line, the career fair was relatively tame. I got to speak to reps from each of the agencies likely to hire someone like me. None of them had brought scientific hiring managers, which was disappointing, but I did get email addresses for scientific hiring managers at various organizations. I also got to ask each agency which grade they would consider me. Each one assured me that grades are the same across the government- and then each one told me a different grade! Still, that is useful information I couldn't have gained anywhere else! After about 2 hours, I had spoken to every agency I wanted to, spoken to a few extra agencies that didn't have lines and attended 2 presentations about applying for federal jobs where all they did was hawk "The complete idiots guide to getting government jobs". At that point, the lines for some agencies went out the door and around the building and I decided to leave. All in all, it was a pretty fun day and I felt like I got something accomplished.

Unsweetened Ice Tea

In the past week, I've been to 4 different restaurants. Not a big deal to some people, but a fair number for me! I ordered unsweetened ice tea at each one (OK, I'm boring, but I don't like lemonade and I'm trying not to drink soda). At 3 of the 4 restaurants, I got diet iced tea aka iced tea sweetened with saccharine. Since when has it become acceptable to give someone diet iced tea rather than tell them that you only have sweetened iced tea? Saccharine, commonly used to sweeten diet soda and iced tea, has never agreed with me. So if they told me that they only have diet, I would have ordered something else. However, I know people that get violently ill from consuming saccharine. What if these restaurants served them diet iced tea instead of unsweetened iced tea without telling them about the substitution?

When will restaurants realize that sometimes you order something a certain way because that is the only way it won't make you sick?