No plus no equals no

I twittered about this about two weeks ago, but figure I have time to tell the whole story now.

A couple of Fridays ago I went to the bar with my friends. I was sitting at a table with them when a girl I know walked by. She saw me sitting at the table, and came over to say hi. She talked for a few minutes, but I was trapped against the wall, and she was talking to me across the whole table, so I told her I'd go outside and sit with her in a little while so that the conversation wouldn't be so awkward.

Only one of my friends at the table had ever met this girl before, so as soon as she walked away they all started telling me to go outside right then and talk to her.

I told them that I would go out there, but not right then. I waited about an hour, then went outside to talk to her after I'd already had to get up and use the restroom. When I got outside I looked around and couldn't see her anywhere. Cursing myself for waiting so long, I called her and left a message saying that I was sorry I had missed her if she'd already left, and if she hadn't she should text me to let me know where she was and I'd come back out. Then I went and sat back down with my friends.

Friend 1: That was fast.
Me: She wasn't out there.

Just then, she and one of her friends walked out of the bathroom and went back outside.

Friend 1: There she is right there. Go out there and talk to her right now.
Me: No. I just left her a message. If she texts me, then I'll go out.
Friend 2: What is wrong with you? That girl is really cute. Go out there.
Friend 1 (to Friend 2): He could have that girl if he wanted her. She seeks him out every time she's here.
Me: That's a bit of an exaggeration.
Friend 2: Go out there.
Me: If I go out right now I just look desperate.
Friend 1: You are desperate. You aren't in a position where you should be playing hard to get.
Me: I'm only going if she texts me.
Friends 1 & 2: You're an idiot.
Me: Maybe.

A few minutes later she texted me: I was in the bathroom.

Me: See? Now I can go out there.

So, I went outside and sat with her and her friends for a while.

Now, a little back story here is necessary. The first night I met this girl was at the same bar. That night she told me about how the bar owner (who is extremely creepy) kept asking her out. He does that with a lot of girls that come to the bar, but he seems to be very persistent with her. He gives her and her friends free drinks all the time, and sometimes he'll corner her in the hallway that leads to the bathroom to get some one on one conversation and/or to ask her to go out with him. It's creepy, but she tolerates it. Probably so she can keep getting free drinks.

Of course, I take every chance I get to make fun of her about this guy's apparent obsession with her. I'll periodically send her emails or texts that say "[Bar Owner] misses you." It never gets old. At least not from my perspective. (You may have noticed that about me and my stupid jokes.) So, when I first sat down I asked if he'd hit on her yet that night. She said he had. Of course he had.

After sitting there for a while, she and her friends decided that they wanted to do a round of shots. She joked about how she was going to find the bar owner and flash her boobs to him to see if she could get some shots for free. I said that if she did that it would be the highlight of his life, and there'd be no way he could say no.

Her: Of course he wouldn't be able to say no. Nobody has ever been able to say no to these boobs.

I tried to get our server to bring the bar owner out, but she wouldn't, so the plan never came into fruition. At least not while I was there. After sitting there for probably too long, I told her that I needed to go back inside because I felt like I'd abandoned my friends. I also needed to leave soon, and had to settle up on my part of the bill.

Her: You're leaving? You're not even going to stick around long enough to see my boobs?
Me: I'm sure they're fabulous, but I have to go.
Her: [pouting]
Me: Do you see this? [motioning to my body with my hands] This is me saying "No!" to your boobs.
Her: That's the first time that's ever happened.
Me: [Waving as I walk away].

It may be time to rethink my priorities in life.

Go ahead and mess with me, you'll find out what'll hap'm

Over the weekend I got into it with a spiny desert plant.

I think I lost.

I was wasting my youth on grinding down my teeth

I've mentioned before that I grew up in small towns, but you don't really get a sense of exactly how small until you see this aerial photograph on a postcard. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Dutch John, UT:

You know the town you live in is small when you can just circle your house on an aerial photograph and expect people to be able to use it as a map. Sure this is a pretty old picture, and there are a few more buildings there now, but you get the point.

(I've circled the house that I lived in for three and a half years. Feel free to visit, but be aware that the family that lives there now might tell you stories about me that aren't necessarily true. Also, they might not be receptive to complete strangers coming up to the door to ask about me. On second thought, don't feel free to visit. If you feel that you must, just drive by and wave).

As you might imagine, when you live in a town that small, sometimes it's hard to find things to do in order to keep yourself entertained. I mean, sure there's world class flyfishing three miles away, rock climbing, mountain biking, hiking, river rafting, along with a 91 mile long reservoir where you can swim, boat, fish, etc., and it's all within ten minutes of your house, but who wants to do that all the time?

(Just like anything else, those things become commonplace and somewhat boring when you can do them anytime. Take living in Vegas for example. Sure, strippers seem like a lot of fun, but when you're seeing them every single day it gets a little old. Then you have to start looking for something else to spice things up - like snorting cocaine off a stripper's breasts. Strippers and coke: Don't try to tell me that's not a winning combination.)

Anyway, in order to ease the boredom of living in DJ, sometimes I would end up doing stupid things. Like the time when I knocked up my girlfriend and got married. Or the time when I did this:

My mom HATES that picture. The reason? I'm hanging off the edge of Flaming Gorge Dam. She's such a Quaker. But seriously, this is something that could have resulted in me being the recipient of my very own Darwin Award. Let me show you a different angle:

Sure there was a rock ledge about twenty feet below us, but if for some reason I would have slipped, and then missed the ledge, it would have only been about a 500 foot fall. Maybe you'll believe me now when I say it's a miracle that I survived to adulthood.

We've got everything down to a science so I guess we know everything

It's time for a biology lesson. Here is a picture of a chloroplast. Look at it and study its components. Take as much time as you need.

Now that you've had some time to study, I'm going to give you one of the multiple choice questions I gave my students last week.

Q. All the parts of a chloroplast are

a. the outer membrane, inner membrane, stroma, thylakoid and grana.
b. the outer membrane, inner membrane, chloroplastal matrix, thylakoid.
c. the thylakoid, grana, cristae, outer and inner membranes.
d. the stroma thylakoid and grana.
e. your mom.

Including choice 'e' probably wasn't the most professional thing I've ever done, but oh well. Take that The Man!

Lipstick and callous and fishnets and malice

My students have their lab final this week. After spending a few hours holding an open lab for them to come in and review the material, we had to make them leave so we could start setting up the exam. It normally takes a while to set up because we have to dissect specimens for each of the labs they've done since the midterm. This time it took us about two hours. When we finally got close to finishing, one of my friends decided that we needed to speed things up a little bit.

Her: That's the way it's going to be. If anyone doesn't like it, they can just kiss my ass.

Me: I don't like it.

She turned and walked across the room toward me.

Her: [Minnow], do you appreciate your scrotal sac?

Me: Yes, I do. In fact, I'm the only one who appreciates my scrotal sac right now.

Exploding egos in the night

Yesterday I went back to hang out with the nasty little parasites in Arizona. Oh, and two lovely ladies too.

We got a later start than we initially planned, in part because one of the ladies had never been to Hoover Dam and wanted to stop there, but also because the other had lost some stuff that morning and had to go back to retrieve it before it disappeared for good. We were successful on both of our respective missions.

This time, when we got to the Colorado River I did swim, and let me just say it was FREAKING COLD. I knew that the second I waded in, but since I'd already decided I was going to do it (and to prove that I'm a MAN), I dove in and swam for a short while. My feet were numb when I came back out. It was refreshing though.

After my swim, there was another short delay in getting to the hot springs because I couldn't remember the last part of the trail. After running around on the rocks for a while looking for it I finally decided that the best thing to do would be to follow the arrows that were painted on the rocks. Shortly after that, we made it to the hot springs, and this time there were no fat naked European men sitting in the pool (which I may have omitted from the story last time), so that was a plus. We hung out for a short while and then decided it was time to head back to the car.

Unfortunately, it was actually past time to head back to the car, because it got dark on the most technical part of the trail. I had forgotten about all the scrambling we'd done the last time I went. Normally it wouldn't have been a problem for me, but normally I'm not trying to scramble with a 75 pound Rottweiler either. The dog was amazing, but there were a few parts where we weren't sure how we were going to be able to get her across certain parts of the trail. At one point, I was trying to scale a waterfall with her, and lost my balance. I couldn't grab onto anything without dropping the dog, so both of us fell about six feet. I landed right on top of the dog, but stuck my arm out so as not to crush her with all my weight. It worked because I didn't break any of her ribs or anything, but I didn't think about how easily I could have broken my arm doing that until afterward. Luckily the only thing that came of it was a few scrapes.

By the time we scrambled over our last rock wall it was completely dark. We had two headlamps, and plenty of water, so we weren't too worried about survival (at least I wasn't - I can't really speak for the ladies), but we did lose the trail a few times. The good thing about hiking in the desert is that you can almost always see where you need to be. We could have made it back to the car even if we hadn't found the trail again, but that wasn't completely necessary. Just necessary enough to angle our way to where our path intersected the trail.

It was quite the adventure, and what better to go with the end of an adventure than a nice meal at a Mexican restaurant? Even with that, I'm pretty sure that at least one of the ladies is never going to leave her house with me again.