I don’t think Samson likes my new job. He seems especially sad in the mornings now, and the outpouring of joy when I come home doesn’t quite make up for the guilt I feel in leaving him alone all day. It’s worst when I have to feed him, walk him, and head right back out the door for taiko.

As much as he claims to miss me, though, when I’m home, he doesn’t ever want to snuggle with me. He will ask for and accept belly scratches, but if I’m sitting on the bed, he’ll head for the couch, and vice versa. I guess he just wants me . . . around.

Today I worked my first full eight-hour day at my new job. During lunch I spent twenty minutes walking to and from a post office that, oddly, doesn’t accept mail or sell postage.

This morning Samson ate some other dog’s poop and threw it up on my carpet. Of all the kinds of vomit, poop vomit is near the top in terms of horrible smelliness.

And now I’m home. Working all day means that, well, not much else happens all day. I’m sure the rest of you have figured this out already. Makes for boring blog posts. Sorry about that.

What did I do today? Oh right, I started a new job. It’s my third part-time job, and it puts me at around 35 hours a week total, which is close enough to full employment (minus the health benefits) that I’m no longer overcome with shame and despair when someone (my parents, say) asks what I do for a living.

This one’s more or less a legal job, in that I’m doing some research to support the development of new legal-type software. And when I say “legal-type,” I don’t mean software for legal typesetting (how awesome would that be?), but rather software that helps businesses do things that they might sometimes pay lawyers to do. How’s that for vagueness?

Anyway, my job today consisted of looking up information online to enter into a big empty spreadsheet, and that, seriously, is an enjoyable way to spend six hours. Plus, the office, unlike most, was not teeth-chatteringly cold. What more could I ask for? Again, seriously. This is not sarcasm. The job is a good fit.

Oh, and have you seen this new video of an awesome superconductor demo? Physics does some pretty amazing things. I mean, there’s everything in the universe ever, which is pretty neat. And also superconductors.

(Also also, watch the video that comes up in the top left when that one finishes. Zoom zoom!)

Hey look, it’s the first day of NaBloPoMo! Instead of writing a whole new post for the occasion, I’ll publish this old draft I’ve been saving in the hopes I’d someday fill it with more content. That counts, right?

For one of my three part-time jobs, I translate engineering reports into documents that managers and the IRS can read. The firm I work for has many clients, so I get to skip around and see reports from all kinds of industries. Usually I have to Google a few terms of art per report to understand what’s going on; this is the best part of my job. So far I’ve learned a tiny bit about molding plastic parts for car interiors, packaging peanut butter, assembling wooden doors, and a bunch of other fun-sounding things. I try not to burrow too far into Wikipedia, but, you know. Here are some crumbs of knowledge I’ve picked up along the way.

There exists an instrument called a swellometer*, whose name reveals a difference between engineers and physicists, I think. Physicists will go full-on Greek or Latin when they make up names for things; engineers, being more practical, I suppose, aren’t afraid to throw a little Anglo-Saxon into the mix.

An individual stalk of bamboo is called a culm.

There is an engineering unit called pound-force. My physicist’s eye first read this as pounds multiplied by force, which makes little sense because pounds already measure force (weight is the force of gravity pulling you towards the earth). But Wikipedia tells me that no, in engineering-speak, this unit should be read as “pound (the force kind, not the mass kind).” Apparently pounds are sometimes used to measure mass—who knew? Also, how confusing.

Related Wikipedia knowledge: When you use pound to mean force, the preferred unit of mass is the slug. At least it’s consistent: a slug is the mass that a pound of force will accelerate at 1 ft/s^2.

Oh wait it gets better: There’s also an version of the slug that uses inches instead of feet, called . . . wait for it . . . a slinch. Or slugette. I prefer slinch.

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* Upon further research, the swellometer appears not to be a measuring instrument at all, in spite of its name. It’s more like an apparatus that causes wood to swell, after which the swelling is measured by an ordinary micrometer. I’d call that a swellifier. Swellator?

Anyway, you can see why a job like mine exists. Engineers, however rigorous they may be in their measurements and spreadsheets and 3D models, can be a bit imprecise with language.

So it’s been a month. I’m sure you’re all thrilled to finally hear that I didn’t die in a fiery plane crash. In fact, I had a pleasant, if short, trip to Nashville to see my brother graduate and then a lovely week in Vancouver with John to celebrate the last few days before he turned his life over to the Man.

Yes, my fiancé is now working full-time for a huge worldwide (but relatively non-evil, IMO) corporation. It would be tragic if it didn’t pay so damn well. Still, I haven’t seen him much lately. They put him up in a hotel in town for the first week of training and flew him out of state for the second week.

I’ve started my own summer job this past week—an unpaid internship at a place downtown—so that’s kept me busy. The job’s only vaguely related to law, which is fine by me. I’m planning to find a standard summer job clerking at a small firm for the second half of the summer, but I might as well diversify a bit for now, right?

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For two weeks now, Houston’s been hotter than … well, a mild fever. Which is hot, as air goes. And despite the lack of rain, it’s still a wet, heavy heat. At least the drought is keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Biking to work has become a somewhat icky endeavor; I’ve learned to bring an extra shirt to change into when I get there.

*****

I saw a car today with three bumper stickers: a Mac apple, a Houston Astros sticker, and a sticker that looked like those oval country/vacation spot stickers with initials in them but actually stood for “Jesus Freak.” I don’t know why the combination struck me as odd, but I kind of want to meet this person.

*****
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Browsing the internet on my lunch break*, I noticed that I’ve been slacking on the blogging front lately. So here I am.

I took Sam to the vet this morning for a check-up and a squirt of something-something vaccine up the nose. I told the vet one of his eyes had been red off and on lately, but it hadn’t seemed to bother him too much. She took him into the back for a tear test and found out that my poor puppy is making almost no tears and has horribly dry eyes. And his cruel, cruel mother had let him suffer all this time. She didn’t say that second part out loud.

So now I have a tube of goop to squirt into his eyes once a day. I have to hold his eye open and squeeze a line of goo the consistency of Vaseline onto the surface of his eyeball. The vet techs managed to do it with two of them holding him still—I can’t wait to try it at home by myself. I can only hope he’ll understand how soothing the nice happy goop is and come running for it every morning. Hey, it could happen.

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Before I talk about work I’d like to share a quick story from today’s evening walk. The story is that a bird pooped on Sam’s head. Better him than me, I thought, since he didn’t notice and probably would have enjoyed it if he did. But then at home when I tried to wipe off the mess with a wet paper towel, he ducked and I got poop on my hand. So I didn’t escape unscathed after all. It figures.

Okay, work. I’m still thrilled to be there, even though I emptied my candy jar in the first two days. I’ve had to bring in and eat *fruit*, can you imagine? I finished my first practice assignment in cite analysis today and will probably get to start on a real assignment tomorrow, assuming I didn’t completely miss the boat on the practice one.

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Today was Day One of my summer job as an editorial assistant at a sweet little publishing house that puts out a series of handbooks for practicing lawyers. If you practice in Texas, you can probably guess who they are, but I won’t name names.

No complaints about the facilities so far. Far from it, in fact. I have my own computer at my own giant desk in my own V-shaped “cube.” It even came pre-stocked with supplies: notepads, tape, tissues, a stapler and staple puller, paper clips, a white-out pen, white-out tape, and a rainbow of pens and highlighters.

The best part? My own candy jar, pre-filled with chocolate goodies. Hey, I would’ve done this editing work for you for free if you’d asked nicely, but now you’re going to pay me AND throw in a few mini Snickers to boot? Dude. I’m gonna edit those manuscripts SO THOROUGHLY.

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