meisa's lagoon

you know how sometimes when you move the covers away from the bed, you see a small spider or bug crawl away? it hasn't happened very often to me, and when it has happened i've usually gotten pretty startled and begin to have visions of the spiders being there crawling around my bed and my body as i sleep. then for maybe a day or two i try to keep most of my body and face covered as i sleep so no bugs crawl into my mouth.
well, today i pulled the covers back to change the sheets and saw a pretty large dark foreign something roll away. i jumped back, thinking it was a really big spider. but then i looked and instead, saw a SNAIL. has anyone else ever found a snail in their bed? bizarro.

Posted by Meisa at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

i've finally met a cat that i like.

i've always been a dog person. and not just a "oh, i prefer dogs to cats" person, but a "i like dogs and cats are evil beings that are trying to take over the world" person. but now, a cat has finally found its way into my heart.

so this cat...he lives in our alley and appears to be homeless. but it really seems like the guy just wants to be part of our home. he's broken into our house at least 5 times, jumped into our car, and in general, just seems to want to hang out with us. how could you not like something that wants to be with you that much? we've been shooing him out because khalid is allergic to cats, but i suspect that if that weren't the case, we'd be thinking about taking him in. he's kind of cute...in a cat like way.

anyway, everytime we have another encounter with him (like tonight where he jumped in through our window and wandered around our entire house for 10 minutes), i think about feeding him. based on his weight, he seems to be not-starving, so i'm sure he's fine. but i still feel bad. at the same time though, i know what feeding a stray cat leads to, so i'm trying not to give him anything. i bet you anything i'm going to cave pretty soon though. and then i'll give him a name. and soon enough i'm going to be buying little cat toys and wearing sweatshirts with kittens on them. i.....must....resist.

Posted by Meisa at 12:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

yesterday walking home from work along a bike path, i saw a penis.

immediately the image of that song "detachable penis" pops into my head and you would think that perhaps it was laying there, next to a broken toaster oven, and someone was trying to sell it for 22 dollars.

but no, this one was not detachable. it was very attached.

i had just passed 2 people (normal people...welll, as normal as you can get for berkeley) sitting on a park bench when i heard someone in the bushes. i naturally turned my head to see what it was. and there was a man peeing in broad daylight, facing the path for all to see. most men who pee in public would have faced the fence, but not in berkeley i guess. kind of a shocker, to say the least. i suppose i should be thankful that, while he was facing the path, at least the stream wasn't so powerful that it made it onto the passersby.

Posted by Meisa at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

i love having a blog. i feel a responsibility towards my blog, and i have been neglecting it so much. not for lack of action in my life, but more for lack of time and confusion about what to write. you see, i have now entered the realm of the working world. and i'm still in that adjustment period (at least i hope it is just an adjustment period) where work is pretty much my life. not that i spend all my time here. i do spend a lot of time here, but that isn't it. it's more that when i get home, i am so tired and yet already thinking about the next day of work. i'm hoping after this first trimester of school ends, i will be a little more adjusted and will have a life that occurs outside of work. plus i'm having a hard time knowing what to write. i spend my whole day with very internet savy high schoolers. and while i don't mind if they find and read my blog, i definitely don't want them to be reading anything about my life at school. but see, as i said before, these days, there isn't much life outside of school.
i just finished my first ever "back to school night". as a kid, i used to look forward to those a lot because it gave my parents the opportunity to meet the teachers i spent everyday with. now i was on the other side. verrrrry different. i spent a lot of the time wondering what the kids had said to their parents about me, as i used to report to my parents about my teachers. i wondered who came in with a preconceived notion that i was the world's most evil teacher, and who came in expecting to like me cause their kid liked me. thankfully, i received some "oh my son/daughter just loves chemistry" or "my son/daughter hated science before but they are loving it now." and if there were any parents prepared to dislike me, they didn't say anything. overall, it was nice to put parents faces to their children. i did some demos to wow them and answered some questions, and the evening went pretty smoothly. perhaps more smoothly than my actual classes. but controlling a room of 40 year olds is much easier than dealing with a room of very excitable 14 year olds.
i'm off to philadelphia for a wedding this weekend. then i'll be able to write about something that doesn't have to do with work. yay for weddings! yay for reunions of long lost college friends! yay cause my first back to school nite was good! (you see, my thoughts always come back to work these days)

Posted by Meisa at 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

i just finished my first week on the job. i have never worked so hard before in my life. theoretically, the hardest i ever worked should have been in grad school. but i used to walk down the halls back to the lab taking my sweet time. and when people walked fast i was always like "where's the fire, dude?" well, not really. but i always wondered why and how they could be in such a rush to get back to lab. it was still going to be there even if you got there five minutes later. but this week i learned. i learned what it is like to constantly be on the go and rushing to get to one place or another or get something done because you have a ton of people counting on you and a billion more things to do in the next hour.
i am responsible for the scientific education of a slew of teenagers. while that might not sound like much, it means a lot to me. i want them all to come away loving science - or at least appreciating it. i feel like if i do a bad job, i'm failing them. and let me tell you, even to do a bad job takes a lot of work. i've been so involved at work, that nothing else even came into my radar this week. my home life has fallen apart this first week of school. every room of the house looks like a tornado has gone through it. i wake up in the middle of the night remembering that i need to collect rocks outside for a lab, or that i promised i would take care of something or another for someone or another. a lot of stress. but i think i decided it's good stress. i've had a rollercoaster of emotions this week and i think at the end of it all, i've decided i like what i do. it's fun, and i'm contributing to the world. i get to build young minds, and that's pretty cool.

Posted by Meisa at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)