LoL#27: We're live in 5,4,3, (2...1....)

Coming to you live from the mind of Lisa B it's the Not So Late Show with Lisa B! Our special guest today is Lisa B! Let's welcome our host Lisa Baker!!!

Thanks Mr. Imaginary Announcer Dude!! Thank you all for joining me tonight as well, I'm Lisa B and welcome to the Not So Late Show. I wanna bring out my first (and only) guest of the evening - a close personal friend of mind and, I don't think she'd mind me saying this, a total lunatic of a girl. Please welcome Lisa B!

Thanks Lisa, glad to be here!

And how are you doing tonight, Lisa?

Quite well, actually. Especially considering all the crazy stuff going on in the news right now.

Yeah, let's talk for a minute about that. It looks like we're officially in the midst of the second Gulf War. The bombing of Baghdad last night was an image I'm sure none of us will soon forget. Definitely scary stuff. Meanwhile Chicago tonight is teeming with anti-war protesters.

That's right Lisa. Lake Shore Drive was actually closed down this evening.

Now how is this affecting your work plans for tomorrow?

Well, luckily my bus doesn't take Lake Shore to get to the hospital, although most of my lab group does use that route. I heard that protesters were marching along Michigan Avenue and if activity keeps up tomorrow at the intersection of Michigan and Chicago I may have difficulty getting to work. My only hope at this point is that none of it turns violent.

I see. What are your thoughts on the anti-war movements as a whole?

Tough question. I understand their point of view, but I really feel that the time for "let's not go to war" sentiments is over. We've past that point, people, we are at war and disagreeing with it is fine but in all honesty, public opinion is not going to change what's going on. Any way we can get a lighter topic to discuss here??

Hmmm. Illini basketball's doing quite well.

Heh heh. Yeah. Not such a great transition there, but yeah, the boys are rockin it up. There's a March Madness pool at my work, which I didn't officially enter, but I've been very vocal about my hopes for Illini All The Way. I'll be catching a lot of flack if the boys lose.

On a totally different note, the LoL's have been severely lacking in shoutouts lately. Do you want to do anything to remedy that?

Yeah. Totally. I have major overdue birthday shoutouts going to the super spiffy Stacey "slovett" Lovett and the always awesome Jigga Jessica D. Sorry I'm a little late ladies but hope you both had great b-days!! :)

Anyone else you're forgetting?

Probably, but I'll just have to apologize later. My mind is on eighty different tracks these days.

Why's that?

Well, you know work's been pretty busy. And then last weekend was just way too much fun and I didn't sleep near enough...

Sounds like you were quite the partying gal?

Not really but I was down in Champaign and it was just an all out great time. Entertainment Night majorly rocked!

Entertainment Night?

Yeah it's illinilife's yearly variety show. As they like to say "Entertainment Night: There's a reason it's not called a talent show!"

So what were your favorite acts of the evening?

Igor's poetry reading and Kristy, Heather, Erika and Laura's "Friends" video!!!

Are you just saying that cause those were the acts by members of your i-team last year?

Yeah maybe, but they were really awesome! ;)

What else did you do in Champaign?

Mostly just hung out with super cool people that I don't see enough of these days. And I drank way too much.

I didn't think you were much of a drinker.

No I mean I drank too much caffeine! I think my grand total for the weekend came to 184 ounces of Mountain Dew alone. Plus some coffee, diet coke, vanilla coke, cherry coke....

Wow. That's uhh...dangerous yet impressive.

Thanks I think my hands are still shaking!

So you said you've got a lot on your plate these days, what else is new?

Well, I'm hard at work organizing the serve-a-thon we're doing at church. I've finally got a pretty good handle on that. And I did something really crazy today...

What's that?

I registered for the MCAT.

That's the Medical College Admissions Test, right?

Yeah. It's on April 26th which frighteningly enough is only a little more than a month away. I've been studying a little on the train, but I plan to kick it into high gear (as Emril would say: Take it up a notch - BAM!) over the next couple weeks. The registration alone almost sent me into panic attack mode, but for now it's all about baby steps. First step sign up to register, second step complete the registration. Check and check. Next step, super study, final step take the test!

Then apply to med schools.

Well yeah.

So now Lisa, I really have to ask, why in the world are you composing this e-mail as an imaginary interview with yourself?

Good question Lisa, I was actually just about to ask you the same thing.

Well, I suppose if you can write an entire e-mail from the perspective of your nose, there's nothing too loony about interviewing yourself.

True, except the whole thing is pretty loony. I think I've just been watching too many Late Night TV talk shows. I mean seriously, if Jimmy Kimmel can have a network Late Show than I can justify the fact that I deserve my own imaginary Not So Late Show.

There's only one problem.

What's that?

We've sort of passed the point of Not So Late. You've officially reached the Letterman/Leno hour.

Then I guess there's only one thing to do.

What's that?

Say goodnight, Lisa.

Goodnight, Lisa.


Imaginary Interviewfully Yours,

lisa :) [...& lisa :)]


p.s.

I can't say end this without a p.s. It just wouldn't seem right.

Whatever you say Lisa, but regardless of Chi-town protesters, you do have be at work bright and early tomorrow.

You sound like my mom! But don't you have one more funny story about work to share?

OH yeah!! See we use these pipet tips at work that are these little plastic tips for pipets.

Hence the reason you call them pipet tips?

Heh heh, yeah. Anyhoo, they come in little boxes of about 96 and we refill the boxes of them and autoclave them so theyre sterile. The problem is though that sometimes if the boxes get a little worn you have the problem where the tips stick to the dispenser rack but the dispenser doesn't stay in the box.

How's that a problem?

Well, you go to take out a pipet tip with your pipet and you end up taking the whole dispenser rack out of the box and they're no longer sterile.

That sounds annoying.

It is! And actually it happened to me the other day as I was talking to Alex and I held up my pipet with the rack of 96 tips stuck to it and proclaimed "This has got to be the most annoying thing in the world!" Except as I turned to throw them all away, the rack fell off the pipet onto the floor scattering all 96 plastic pipet tips all across the room. We both started laughing and all I could say was "I stand corrected!"

Wow Lisa, you're such a spazz!

Yeppers!! It was really funny though. Anyhoo, it's time for me to be in bed.

Goodnight all!

Goodnight!

:)

LoL#26: SomeTHINK out of the ordinary...

Some apologies:

My last e-mail was boring, sorry. I'm even sorrier for having spazzed on the send button and ended up sending it twice. I also didn't even get an LoL out last week. My abition for a weekly e-mail has become a bi-weekly thing (but I doubt that that fact bothers anyone and some of you are probably even glad for it). :p

But enough with the sorries. I should be Canadian because then I could sound much cooler by saying "soory" instead of "sorry" and if you don't know what I mean by that intonation of the Canadian accent just watch Jeopardy sometime cause Alex Trebek says it all the time. "Ooh, I'm soory, the answer we were looking for was What is Tashkann...." Or not. But alas, I'm back with another week (or every other week) of the insanity that is the so-called Life of Lisa. (applause, applause....yeah right!)

So I was walking into work the other day and there was a sign on the sidewalk kind of like a "Caution: Wet Floor!" but it said "Caution: Watch for Falling Ice!" (Some of you remember my descriptions of the extensive bridge like walkways that connect the multiple buildings of the hospital complex,) I guess with the weird freezing-thawing-freezing weather we've had there's been problems with massive icicles forming on the walkways over the streets and sidewalks and ensuing chaos caused when gravity works its wonders on said massive icicles. Needless to say my eyes were focused upwards as I walked into work with odd wonderings of having to use all my sick time to recover from the injuries sustained from being unsuspectingly impaled in the forehead by a falling icicle.

Yes, I'm strange like that sometimes. (Okay... LOTS of times....) Perhaps an even odder thought, though, is thinking about what happened to our escaped lab mouse. We were doing mice experiments last week and we had nine cages from the Vivarium brought into our lab because we were sacrificing the mice from three different experiments. (That's the scientific way of saying that we were killing and disecting 45 mice that had tumors or were controls for tumor experiments - it's all humanely done so don't go calling PETA on me). Anyway, we keep five mice in each cage but somehow in moving, shifting and rotating all the cages around trying to group all the mice by what experiment they went with, we think one got out. To quote Tina "There's only four in here.....uhhhh....close all the lab doors....." We never found the little guy either. I had a dream that night though that I got home from work, found him in my backpack, and decided to keep him as a pet. I even named him Placebo (which would be a really good name for an escaped lab mouse) but unfortunately I'm doubting that his real fate was anything near as pleasant as the one in my dream.

Speaking of weird dreams though, I have been having way too many lately. They're not your typical random dreams either. Like the missed the train and couldn't get to work dream. Or the panicked in the middle of the MCAT and couldn't even remember what eggs were dream. Or the hooked up with that guy from church dream. Or the back in college and living a normal life again dream. I'd take any of those. Instead I'm having freaky Paul Callan style dreams or all out absurd ones that usually wake me up in fits of laughter. And since I promised this to be a funny e-mail I have to tell y'all about the latter. Placebo the Lab Mouse was one in a long string of absurd dreams including one about Chicago - the movie, not the city - but the one I have to relate quickly is one about Blockbuster video.
*Cue Dream Sequence*
So me and two of my friends went out to Hollywood video and picked out a couple movies. I hand them to the clerk with my rental card and he says "Alright these're due back at noon" and I said "Noon? I thought I got them for five days??" And he said "No, that's Hollywood Video, this is Blockbuster." Which really confused my dream self because I walked into a Hollywood video. So I said "Oh I thought I was at Hollywood. So these are due back at noon tomorrow?" and he says "No, at noon today." And I say "But it's already 1pm!" And he says "Oh, then I guess they're overdue" and takes the movies away from me. That's when I woke myself up cause I was laughing out loud.
*End Dream Sequence*
The whole thing stemmed from being at Hollywood video the night I had the dream and having the clerk tell me that there was a late fee on the account. When I asked what movie he replied "Earth versus the Spider" (which was a B horror flick my dad rented) and I joked with the guy that of all the movies to be overdue it had to be one that was hideously embarrassing to admit to having been checked out on my account.

Now's the point of the e-mail where I revert to apologizing because this e-mail is way more psychotic and long than I originally intended but on the flip side I guess I owe you all a couple good laughs. I'm not quite sure too if it's going to be laughing with or at me, but most likely it's a bit of both.


PsychoDreamfully Yours,

lisa :)


p.s. Shoutouts to anyone who picked up on any of my bizzarre and obscure references in this e-mail. To explain a couple:
Since probably only two to four of you have any clue what the deal is with the Paul Callan reference, Paul Callan is this character (played by Skeet Ulrich) on the new Monday night ABC show Miracles. He's this X-Files type investigator of paranormal stuff (miraculous stuff instead of extra terrestrial) but he always has these freaky psycho dreams that usually in a twisted bizarre way relate to what's about to happen to him (which we -the audience- have decided 9 out of ten times is a near death experience). So yeah a lot of my dreams have been weird and eerie like that - minus the near death experience and X-Files'ish investigations. There's a little too much to explain there so I'll just say that yes, some new TV shows out there actually have these things called "writers" ;) and Miracles is a super cool show (Mondays @ 9Central on ABC). It has Angus McFayden in it too who was Sandra Bullock's boyfriend in Ya-Ya Sisterhood but is even more well known as Robert da Bruce from Braveheart - he's super cool. Oh and the other random reference was in the "Tashkant" mention and I probably spelled it wrong but it's from the Coca-Cola mini-film thing that used to be on all the AMC movies ("I'M A WINNER!!!!!!!") and there's only a few of you that will think that's funny and even fewer will find it funny that the bowl falls twice...hee hee. And there was also an obscure Summer School reference in forgetting what eggs are and the sentence after that is funny for another whole slew of reasons too. Some of you heard the details of my Chicago dream (those that haven't probably never will) but I'm going WAYYYYY too long on this ps! Love to all!!

:)