Tales from the Steppes

2006-02-02

1:03 p.m.
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No music because I have a new officemate and I am trying to be good. But it is so hard. Perhaps I need to find my old headphones. Maybe if I wait a few weeks, until we get past the superpolite stage, I can ask her without fear that she said she didn't mind but is really sitting over their grinding her teeth.

This weekend is the Groundhog's Revenge in Ohio and I have been looking forward to this trip for some time. This may be my favorite race of the year. It is a real low key affair - no tshirts, no fancy gear needed, no hypercompetitive people. Just a map and a compass and 6 hours in the hilly woods. Well, there is also the hash house for afterwards, with hot food and beverages. The whole trip has some of my favorite elements to it. A road trip without the mongols. A day in the woods. A hot tub for afterwards. What's not to like? Of course, the high is going to be in the thirties and they are forcasting snowshowers for the day. And I am sure there will be a lot of mud because it is supposed to rain for a couple days before the race. These are mere technicalities and only add to the allure of the hot tub.

But then I had a major graceless moment yesterday. I had a pile of fieldwork that I needed to do so I had looked at the weather and picked yesterday as the winner. I should digress a moment and explain this part of my job. (You were not expecting anything educational, were you? Me neither.) Before applicants are allowed to submit development proposals, they must have an approved plan showing all of the natural and manmade features on their site and within 100' of the property line. All forests, wetlands, etc need to be delineated and described. Sounds pretty easy but there are a lot of things are open for discussion and interpretation. Like what I was checking yesterday on one particular property. We require buffers around all perennial and intermittent streams and sometimes these buffers are huge - more than 175'. However, we do not require any buffer around a stream or channel that is ephemeral - only has water in it in direct response to rainfall. So the point at which a stream goes from ephemeral to intermittent is often a point of contention, as this determines where the buffer starts.

So back to my story. I was walking up a stream to find this point and to make sure I agreed with the applicant's engineer when I caught a root on the back of my boot. This caused me to pitch headfirst towards the water and land on both of my knees on the rocks. Definitely a graceless, bruising moment. In the ensuing "Oh shit, what have I done to myself" moments, I failed to notice that I had also lost my sunglasses. Sigh. So now my right knee is like a bruised grapefruit and the prospect of moving fast for 6 hours on it is seeming a little less tasty.

Only a little though.

The Peroxisome You scored 70 Industriousness, 22 Centrality, and 23 Causticity!

You are the peroxisome! The peroxisome is an important organelle in that it detoxifies almost all toxic substances entering the body by oxidizing them into hydrogen peroxide, and then further detoxifies the peroxide into harmless water and oxygen. You are the reason we have any sort of resistance to toxic substances. In real life, you are always working in the background to make sure everthing runs as it should. You tend to be very good at handling situations requiring tact, or fixing potentially volatile situations with your good humour and charm.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 66% on Industriousness You scored higher than 0% on Centrality You scored higher than 99% on Causticity

Link: The Which Cell Organelle are you? Test written by fading_shadows on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Pretty lame, but it made me laugh.