Open House Weekend

"This is the boat's dry lab. Over there is the wet lab. This is where we do all the science on the boat. Different groups of scientists will bring their own equipment on board. The dry lab is where they put all the electronics equipment and computers. The wet lab is for anything to do with seawater samples or chemicals. The idea is to keep them separate from each other.

"Over here we have the computer that controls the equipment out on deck. See that circular looking thing right outside the door? This computer controls that. As we put it overboard and send it down to the bottom of the ocean, we can watch the data come in in realtime on the display. Also, all those tube things are water bottles. When we send it down, they're open at both ends - and when we see some water we want to collect, we can push some buttons on this rack over here, and it'll close up, so we have a sample at the depth we want.

"That display tells us how deep the water is where we are now. It's coming down from the bridge. That's a giant magnifying glass with a light. Those are immersion suits, which are for if the boat sinks. That's just the eyewash. No, they don't actually let me go out on the cruises. I know nothing about global warming, quit trying to make me say something authoritative."

... is what I did for four hours yesterday.

"Sometimes you have to lose some money to keep the customer. We could've either given him the $25 that the former manager owed him, so that he would keep coming back to buy food and therefore give us more money in the future, or we could make him pay the entire amount for his food now and never see him again. I see we've chosen the latter, and now we'll argue about it for my entire shift."

... was the three hours after that.

"braaaaaiiinnnsss....."

... was the rest of my day.

As for today:

I'm 34.

Mmm... sushi.