Oh, and another thing

Another Great Achievement from my posting hiatus: five stars on an "expert" level song on Guitar Hero. Beat that, Clark!

Don't Panic

I will be up in Logan from the 19th to the 23rd, getting trained as a Certified Interpretive Guide by the National Association for Interpretation. So if I don't post any blogs, don't panic!

Scouting

Seems like Clark always has fun nerdy stuff that I want to comment and expand upon. When he posted that he had found the OOTSSOERAAAP, it became my new "greatest thing ever!" for the day. I am surprised, I have to say, that Clark doesn’t list himself as earning that many badges. They’re all so loosely defined, I figure I qualify for about a dozen of them. Here’s how I see it:

The "talking science" badge.
Assumes the recipient conducts himself/herself in such a manner as to talk science whenever he/she gets the chance. Not easily fazed by looks of disinterest from friends or the act of "zoning out" by well-intentioned loved ones.

Considering that I have ruined dates in the past with discussions about water surface tension and the gory details of the Ebola virus, I'm a shoo-in for this one.

The "Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah, I've got a TV gig" badge.
In which the recipient plays a significant science performance role in TV. This badge is nullified if recipient is always shown wearing a lab coat.

I don’t necessarily have a regular gig, but I’ve been on TV a lot. I’ve wrestled a giant African pouched rat on live TV, and was wrangling an armadillo on Wednesday. Surely that should count?

The "arts and crafts" badge.
Because you can't have a bunch of badges without an arts and crafts badge. This one assumes the recipient has all manner of "craftiness" with a science geek twist.

I'm not well-versed in the girly arts, but I do make origami elephants…I make food chain paper chains…

The "I'm pretty confident around an open flame" badge.
Recipients have demonstrated proficiency around open flames in laboratory settings.

Self-explanatory. Looks like a Young Women's award, doesn't it?

The "destroyer of quackery" badge.
In which the recipient never ever backs down from an argument that pits sound science over quackery.

Do not even TRY to convince me that Intelligent Design is actually science. You won’t win.

The "sexing up science" badge.
In which the recipient has had experience with things such as selective breeding, crossing, mate selection, prokaryotic conjugation, fertility studies, STD related microbiology, and/or any other acceptable interpretation of the badge.

Please see my post titled "I'm not dead."

The "I've touched human internal organs with my own hands" badge.
In which the recipient is "hopefully" doing something that is somehow related to human health.

Human Biology 260, anyone? I think a full semester in the cadaver lab is more than adequate for this badge.

The "has frozen stuff just to see what happens" badge (LEVEL I)
In which the recipient has frozen something in the freezer for the sake of scientific curiosity.

Ah, the infamous Twinkie, Cupcake, and Peeps Failure Testing.

The "dodger of monkey shit" badge.
One of our self-explanatory badges.

Um, yeah.

The "inordinately fond of invertebrates" badge.
In which the recipient professes an arguably unhealthy affinity for things of this category.

It’s not for nothing that the kids at work call me "the bug lady."

The "I know what a tadpole is" badge.
In which the recipient knows what a tadpole is.

Check.

The "I'm a scientist who is fundamentally opposed to administrative duties" badge.
Presumably a badge with a consensus even stronger than that seen in the global warming arena.

Boy, if I never had to do personnel paperwork again, I would be very happy.

Valentine's Day

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, as I'm sure you were all made aware. I think the constant onslaught of jewelry commercials ("He went to Jared!") should have been adequate warning. Hopefully now Jared and all of his jewelry compatriots will take it down a notch. Or twelve!

Gah, I hate those Jared commercials. They have basically no redeeming value. Okay, the radio ones aren’t so bad. Not much worse than, say, the Shane Company commercials. But the TV ads are just annoying. "Hey," the ad people must have thought, "I know who will make great spokespeople for our product! People everyone can really relate to! Professional ballroom dancers!"

"Oh, I don’t know, Bob. Is there any way we could make that commercial better?"

"How about an INREDIBLY ANNOYING tag line that can be repeated in totally obnoxious tone of voice by every person in the commercial?"

"Gee…that means we have to pay them all for having speaking parts."

"Trust me, Stan. It will be worth it."

Ugh.

Actually, regarding Shane Company commercials – I kind of like them. There’s something very reassuring about Tom Shane and his general demeanor. This is not a man who will try to rip you off. He won’t pull a fast one on you. He’s barely awake enough to read the ad copy, for goodness sake! But really, I think the Shane Company commercials are the best jewelry commercials, except maybe those old de Beer’s commercials with no talking at all, just that "diamond commercial" music. You can hear it in your head right now, can’t you? A diamond is forever.

So anyway, yesterday was Valentine’s Day and I actually had a date! Amazing, I know. We all thought this day would never come. If you want to know who won the Westminster Dog Show, I can’t tell you. For a change.

But I digress. Elliott and I went out for dinner and a movie. He picked me up at home, and came bearing roses! Beautiful red roses! I’ve never got flowers before. When I woke up this morning my whole room smelled like roses. So nice. I think I would have taken them to bed with me if they were cuddly at all.

We went to Café Trio for dinner (site of our first date, though at a different location because the downtown location had an hour and a half wait), and then to the Century theaters on 33rd (also site of our first date!) for a very long movie after 10:00 at night (also like our first date! Kudos to Elliott!).

Side note: Elliott is wicked good at Ms. Pack Man.

Side side note: Why is it Ms. Pack Man, and not Mrs. Pack Man? Mr. and Ms. Pac Man do get married in the game and start having little baby Pac People, do they not? Such are the mysteries of Namco.

To bring everything back full circle, the movie we watched last night was Blood Diamond. I had wanted to see it for a while, ever since we saw The Departed and Leonardo DiCaprio was very good in it. He’s very good in Blood Diamond too, even if the movie does seem to be about three years long. It’s a compelling story and brings out lots of good points and isn’t too preachy all the time, and is only marginally cheesy at the end (that could have gone very cliché very easily, but didn’t) . . . but . . . I think they could have tightened it up a bit in the editing. How many times do we have to see the main characters be attacked by rebels? How many minutes of footage do we have to watch of people walking all the way across Sierra Leone? It’s beautiful country, but I think a lot of that could have been trimmed without hurting the movie at all.

This is also the third movie I’ve seen wherein Leonardo DiCaprio plays the hero and then (spoiler alert) ends up dead at the end. Oh Leo, will you never win?

Anyway, it’s a pretty good movie. If that’s the kind of movie you like to watch, you should watch it.

I'm not dead

Okay, so it turns out that the absolute best way to get people to make comments on your blog is to not post anything. Good to know.


In response to all of your inquiries, no I am not dead. I'm still here, the weather is not high of 30 and low of 21. I've just been busy working and going out, and haven't taken the time to update here. Sorry! I didn't know you all were so interested!



Anyway, here's a little rundown on my busy life. I was on 97.1 KZHT on January 26th to promote our "Mating Dances and Wild Romances" class that we teach every Valentine's Day (or thereabouts). In this class we teach all about how animals flirt, about pheromones, sexual dimorphism (the differences between sexes - i.e., antlers), coordinated breeding between zoos ("computer dating"), etc. etc. It's a really fun class, catered dinner, tons of fun. I was on the radio with "The Morning Zoo" for about 10 minutes. By January 29th, the class was full! We added a second day. It's full! So we added a third day. Incredible. It's about 1/3 full so far.



To really appreciate how remarkable this is, two years ago, we couldn't give away spots in the class. No one was signing up for this thing. Now I think we could teach it every weekend in February and it would go.



Anyway, so this morning I went on KSL TV to promote the third night of the class on "Studio 5," which is the station's morning chat show. You know, on right after Rachael Ray. They have a cooking segment. You all know what kind of show I'm talking about. We (the PR girl and I) took the armadillo with us and did a little segment with one of the hosts to plug the class. So hopefully it will fill up - fingers crossed!



My segment of the class, by the way, is the pheromones bit. I get up there and act all goofy (very Eddie Izzard-ish) explaining how the different types of pheromones work. I think all of this stuff should earn me a badge! I hereby award myself the "sexing up science" badge.

If nothing else, I think I have earned that one through breeding Dr. Jeffery's fruit flies.