LoL#19:Jokes, TV, Trains & Rat eyes

A polar bear walks into a bar and says "I'd like a gin and..................tonic please."
The bartender hands him the drink and asks "Why the big pause?"
Polar bear says "I dunno, my dad had them too."

Heh heh....thought that was kinda funny. And I couldn't think of a more random way to start this e-mail than with a polar bear joke. And it's also a special shoutout to everyone who's ever played the "Don't think about Polar bears" game.

Speaking of bears, my friend Hank was speaking at the youth group at church on Sunday and he was using an analogy about sports fans that get really excited about games and he said "I know you've all seen on TV when the Bears are playing and the camera scans the crowd and finds those four guys with their shirts off and their chests painted. The first guy has the B, then the next has E, then A, R....oh wait I guess that'd be five guys."

It was funny. And for the sake of this being a frivilously overly random e-mail, I vegged out Sunday night in front of the TV. I was reading my Entertainment Weekly (the coolest magazine on the planet!)but I couldn't help noticing that the program of choice from my parents was "The Crooked E: The Enron Scandal". Now sure the collapse of Enron was one of those tragedies destined to make it into the made-for-TV-movie hall of fame (or rather hall of infamy...) but this one surprisingly enough starred neither Sally Field nor Kellie Martin (it did have that guy who played the evil lawyer dude on Angel though...). But anyway, leave it to CBS to turn the Enron scandal into a love story.

It was totally cheesy. Speaking of things that make me really annoyed (like overly cheesy TV movies) I was on the train for an hour and twenty minutes yesterday! Normally the train portion of my commute is 35 minutes but we hit a car. Nobody was hurt or anything. Some car just stalled on the tracks and someone left it there or something. But the ironic part of this story is that normally I take a 5:22 or 5:44 train home, but yesterday I got off work a little early and caught the 5:00. Here was me all excited to be getting home at the early evening hour of 5:32 and the train goes and hits a car. Then it was funny cause when we finally got moving after being stopped for so long I look at my watch to see 6:10 and the announcement comes over the speakers to say "We are experincing delays due to an accident with a car stalled on the tracks. There are no injuries. This train is approximately 20 minutes behind schedule and Metra apologizes for any inconvenience". Some guy behind me was obviously really annoyed cause he yelled out "WE're already 40 minutes late, is Metra gonna apologize for not being able to count?!?" It was funny. But seriously, I'm still trying to figure out what kind of Space-Time CRACKtinuum exists such that leaving work a half hour early means I get home an hour later than if I leave on time. *sigh*

And speaking of weird things about work, Alex (aka Sparky, aka the really cool Russian PhD that I work with) comes into the lab this morning tosses a stack of petri dishes on the counter, says "Rats!" and leaves. I'm thinking "Uh, oh, someone's having a bad day" so when he comes back I say "What's wrong?" and he says "Huh?" so I say "Is something wrong?" and he gives me the "You're on crack" look and shakes his head so I return the "You're on crack" look and mutter "Oh". A minute or so later Tina comes into the lab wheeling a cart full of cages with our little furry friends - the rats. Turns out today was the day for rat corneal angiogenesis assays. That's a fancy way of saying we're doing some not so pleasant things to rats' eyes for the sake of finding out if a drug we have can stop tumor growth. Yeah, my conscious is a bit torn about the whole animal testing thing but what we're learning from it (and if it works) is actually worth the cost. [Would you rather kill 25 rats or a six month old baby with cancer?] It was funny to explain my misunderstanding of the "Rats!" exclamation though because Alex explained that if he was ever actually angry or upset I wouldn't understand it because - in his own words - he does all his best cursing in Russian.

Anyhoo, sorry this e-mail got really long, blame Metra.


Randomfully yours,

lisa :)


p.s. Shoutout to the super spiffy James "TheGiantPeach-Frodo-Darkknight-UnkyJames-PortableDanceParty-KFJ-TooManyNicknamesToRememberRightNow" whose birthday is on Saturday!! Happy 24th!!