Just a Quick One

Well, I haven't written in a day or two--I've been busy doing all of my Christmas shopping at the last minute since most of my med apps are in and my finals are over. I still have some to do, though, and I don't know when that shopping is getting done.

I'm waiting for the water to boil in the kettle, and then I'm going to head out, thermos of tea in hand, for my last day of work until next semester. I am so tired; I stayed up way to late watching Kung Fu Panda with my boyfriend.

It was and education experience, however, as I discovered that I am the Kung Fu Panda. How do I know this, you ask?

1) I am motivated by cookies and dumplings (or any other yummy food)
2) I'm cuddly
3) I lack claws
4) I'm starting at a "level 0" in my kung foo skills
5) I say things like "skidoosh!"
6) I have difficulty opening containers that everyone else find immensely easy to open.

So, yes, if you want my autograph, please let me know via comment and I'll see what I can do.

Well, water's boiling! That's it, gotta go.

This semester is over *yay*

I'm finished as of 5:30pm today (well the 20th, which is now technically yesterday). Ahh, what a relief. Now I can focus my efforts on other things, like my coming medical school interview and back-up plans for not getting into medical school, Christmas shopping, and creative stuff. I won't be going home until Tuesday, so I have a bit of time to clean up my dorm room, shop in the city and just chill.

I still haven't decided what I'm getting for many of my family members. I'll figure it out. Also, I have to get a gift for my family's yankee swap; something in the range of $20 to $25. I think I might get a movie or something. I'll have to see what's available.

The snow these past few days has been pretty crazy, and I've almost wiped out walking into buildings with slippery floors multiple times. It's pretty treacherous. But the snow makes everything look pretty, even if it is more difficult to get around. I would post pictures of campus and everything, but I'm not sure where my camera is at this moment; plus, I'm exhausted and just want to hang inside for a bit before drifting off into a heavy sleep.


I decided to do this writers prompt from the website "Writer's Digest."

After 42 years with your company, the day has finally arrived: your last day of work. Your coworkers throw you a lunch retirement party. After cake, one coworker asks you to reflect on your years with the company. So you do—and you hold nothing back.

Here's my response:

It's a cold afternoon, a week and a half before Christmas. I walk, wrapped in my oldest wool coat, to those doors for a final time. My last day (well, half day) of work. I can't believe I'm finally leaving this crummy office. I already cleaned out my cubicle yesterday; I chuckled to myself while Tom silently sobbed at his desk, which shares the cubicle with mine. Maybe that was mean, but I couldn't help it. Getting away from his disgusting habits is one of the many sweet things about retirement.

Today, Greg is supposedly going to get the office together to give me a "going away party." What that really means is that he's probably having us all go to the crappy chinese food place down the street--Chang's Dynasty--and have us pay our own way. Any time I've been there I've seen at least four cockroaches. I've actually kept a count--up until today I've seen, total, 389 cockroaches in that place, including one cooked in my lo mein. Years ago I suggested a different venue for our office luncheons; Greg took it as a personal insult and instead ignored all of my work for the next week. Normally, I would welcome him being silent, but when he ignored me, he instead talked to Tom and said, "Could you tell Cathy blah blah blah." It was more annoying than his normal personality.

I sit down at my desk and awkwardly turn to Tom, expecting his usual overexuberant, "Hey, Catarina!" with some added embaressing comment about my age. Yes, I am the oldest person in this office. But do I need to be reminded of it daily? Instead, he has already begun sobbing. Pathetic. I don't acknowledge it, and instead turn back to my desk. I carefully remove the latest Danielle Steele novel--I'm a sucker for romance--from my new Coach bag that my husband gave me in celebration of my retirement. I've been aching over this purse for a year, so I can't help but show it off, even if it is to people that I can barely stand.

After reading chapter or two, Greg and his secretary, Kate, approach my desk. For some reason she always follows him around, but rarely says anything. "So, hun, how's it hanging?" Greg asks.

I just stare at him. I'm almost twice his age, but he feels the need to call me "hun." I've always thought he was threatened by my work ethic; I was offered his position before he was brought into the office, but I declined, since I didn't need the extra headache of running this place. I would not have enjoyed worrying about the office in my spare time in addition to loathing being there during the day.

Kate just stands there, biting the black nail polish from her withered fingernails.

Tom sniffles loudly. I look over my shoulder and see he has his pinky up his nose. Lovely.

"Well, it's almost noon time. Lunch." He pauses, looking around awkwardly like trying to find something to say. He then looks at me for a good thirty seconds.

I stare straight back into his watery little eyes.

"You must be so upset to be leaving; you've been here, what, 50 years?"

I shake my head. It's been 42, but there's no need to correct him. The least interaction, the better. I am getting paid for these last few hours.

"Well, I know I'm glad--and you must be too--you came in for the half day today." He rocks back and forth from his heels to his toes.

"You made me come in for the half day. My husband and I had planned for a day off to visit our grandchildren." As much as I've told myself not to react to him, I can't help it. He always acts like no one could want anything better than spending time with him.

"You'll have plenty of time for your grandchildren. Anyhow, I just wanted to tell you to get your coat on and grab your wallet. Let's get lunch!"

And with that he walks off, Kate in tow.



Well, we receive our egg drop soups, and I pretend to sip mine. Better not actually eat anything here. It's an all day buffet, so there's one price for everything; I'm tempted to just get a glass of water and not eat, but that's not polite, and I have too much dignity for that.

Only Greg, Tom and Kate come. Granted, the office is small with only seven people in it; apparently, no one else wanted to come to Chang's. Go figure. Greg and Tom are on each side of me, talking across me as if I'm not there. Even though this is my going away lunch, right now I'm allowed to fade into the cracking faux leather seats. Kate gazes into her soup, not touching it, and then removes a brush from her duct-tape bag and begins to groom herself at the table. Were none of these people taught manners when they were younger? Not that it matters anyway; in this dump of a restaurant, brushing your hair at the table may improve the cleanliness.

I spot cockroach number on crawling on the wall across our table.



After we eat, Tom orders some fried concoction that's apparently supposed to be dessert. After it arrives at the table, he turns to me and says, "You got this, right? I mean, it is your party." I just ignore it. I keep counting down in my head--only an hour and a half to go. Just breathe. It's only a few dollars. It's worth it to prevent any further annoyance on my last day.

Kate, for once, comes out of her daze and glances over at me. She's a young girl, about twenty one or twenty two, I'd guess. She has jet black eyes, and, though I've never noticed before, they actually seem warm and welcoming. She chews on the edge of her lip and asks me, "You've been here since before I was born, right? That's a hell of a lot of time. What have you thought of being here that long?"

Obviously, I am taken aback. I've barely said two words to Kate since she started working here after she graduated high school. "Well, there's not much to say. I started working here when I was eighteen; I needed a job to support myself. I wasn't married like many of my friends." I gaze at my hands for a second. "I guess it's been pretty good." I pause. I am completely lying, and I don't like it. But if it helps me get through the last few minutes of this luncheon, then that's what I'll do.

Tom and Greg continue to talk over me. Tom sneezes in my food, but it's not like I was going to eat it anyway. I spot cockroach number two at the edge of the table.

Kate continues the conversation. "Yeah, I guess it's okay here. Maybe I'll wind up staying as long as you did." She frowns. "What else did you think of it?"

"Well--"

Just then, Greg, in an attempt to jump into our conversation and awkwardly hug me, knocks a dish of soy sauce on my new purse.

"What--why don't you--" I don't even know what to say.

"Oh well, it's just a bag, hun." Greg grins. "When I see the waitress, I'll ask her for some more napkins. What were you two ladies talking about?"

I can't take it anymore. "Well, Greg, we were talking about what I thought about working here for the past forty two years. And you want to know something? I've had a lot of incompetent bosses in those past four decades, but none were as incompetent and irreverant as you." I pause and take a stabilizing breath. "First of all, you continue to call me hun, even though I've asked you not to multiple times. It's rude and sexist to refer to me as 'hun.' I'm not your honey and I never will be."

"Hey, Cath--" Greg tries to interject.

"No, I should have said this a long time ago. You are immature, and you don't shower often enough--which is why I cringe every time you try to hug me. As for my going away party, you have taken me and two incompetent fools to a restaurant that should have been condemned by the board of health long ago, and you expect me to pay for my own meal and our dessert. Doesn't that just seem a bit wrong?" I'm raging now and I can't stop. My purse lies ruined on the seat, and cockroach number three has been attracted to the sauce on what used to be it's perfectly embossed fabric.

"Hey, did you forget to take your meds today?" Tom asks. He laughs, weezing, like this is a joke. Like he's my friend and he has my permission to joke with me this way.

"Don't let me get started with you. We are not friends. You're pathetically emotional. You cry at everything, and you are probably one of the most disgusting people I have met in all my 60 years of life. If I was your mother I would be ashamed of you. You pick your nose multiple times a day and either eat the boogers or wipe them under your desk. Don't think I haven't noticed." My voice waivers a bit as I see he is beginning to cry. I was a bit sooner than I expected, but I am so emotionally removed that I don't care. "And you continue to refer to me as some 'old hag' or 'bag of bones' or 'senile sally' or whatever your not-as-clever-as-you-think mind comes up with. It's rude. People are supposed to respect people that are older then them--I have more intellegence and experience than you, and I deserve your respect."

Finally, I turn on Kate. But there, I realize I have nothing really to say. My anger cools a bit as I see her eyes shining. She is finally showing some vivaciousness. "Kate, I'm sorry i called you a fool a minute ago. But I have some advice--stop following this jerk" I point to Greg "around. He's not going to help you move on in life. He's not going to do anything except belittle you and ruin what youth you have by wasting it at the office. Go find a better place to make your living. Do something extraordinary. But don't stay here as long as I did. In fact, leave as soon as you can." With that, I pick up my soy sauce stained bag, wipe it on Greg's jacket, and leave, without paying my tab. I hope Kate doesn't get stuck covering it.

I guess I've still got some life in me, even after forty two years of keeping quiet. I clamber into my car, turn it on, and put my Josh Groban casette into the tape deck, hoping it will calm me down. When I look up, Kate is standing outside my passenger side door, waving and smiling. I roll down the window.

"I knew you had it in you. I've been waiting for you to give it to them for ages. Why else would I follow Greg to your desk?" She smiles. "Can I get a ride?"



Have a great evening :)

I think he's probably a monster

Charles Murray--Man or fictional monster?

Ok, so I guess he's literally a man (though I think, depending on your definition of monster, he could be both). But seriously, what time period is he from? Probably the 60s, because he has to be smoking something.

For those of you who don't know, he wrote a book titled "The Bell Curve" and a subsequent essay 10 years later; in both documents he basically twisted scientific research to support his own ideas, and added a few assumptions presented as fact along the way. Can you say confirmation bias?

I had to read an article of his for my final tomorrow; we discussed it in class a while ago, and though I thought his ideas were stupid then, I'm realizing just how even more ridiculous they are now that I've fully read the article. Please. Suggesting that there is a genetic difference in the intelligence of men and women or the intelligence of blacks and whites? Seriously? People are still doing that today?

I hope he cried when Obama was elected. I really do. *Laughs at the thought.*

You may ask, why is she blogging about this? Isn't she tired and doesn't she have a final to study for? Yes I am exhausted. Yes I still have over 1/2 of my studying to do. Yes, I think Charles Murray is a ho-bag, which is why I feel the need to write all this out.

So take this Charles Murray--I'm a woman and I spotted at least 15 holes in your arguments in a 10 page paper. So, basically, I owned you, and you think that I should inherently (actually no, not inherently; you don't like that word. I mean "intractably") be worse than you in general intelligence level (since I'm guessing you think you're one of the "extremes" of intelligence that you talk about). So, chew on that.

Maybe, when I'm a top doctor and you have some disease when you're old and decrepit, you'll come to me and ask me what's wrong with you. If this happens, I'll smile sweetly and say "Oh, I'm not sure, because I'm just a woman; since this is science it's not really my gender's area of expertise (even if I am a doctor and did go through medical school and subsequent years of training in a residency). You should be able to diagnose yourself though, right? I mean, isn't this a man's realm?"

OK, maybe I'm stretching what he's saying. He's not saying all men are better at math and science. But he IS saying that they are genetically predisposed to be better. And that is ludicrous. Just as ludicrous as his claims that whites are genetically more intelligent than blacks. Ridiculous.

Well, back to the studying. I just felt like writing something about how Charles Murray is probably the stupidest supposedly smart person I've ever heard of.

Am I getting older?

I feel like an old woman. Seriously. I have a crick in my neck that won't go away, and my limbs are stiff after sitting "Indian-style" in bed for 20 minutes, and when I try to movie it's really difficult. Plus, it's only 8pm and I want to go to sleep. This is the affect finals has on me.

I only have one left, but it's the mother of all finals--Animal Behavior. I loved the class; it was super interesting and the professor is really enthusiastic. But there is so much material, and I'm just starting to study. I think I need a cup of tea to keep myself awake.

I learned a new life lesson today. It's something I have learned before but just didn't take to heart. Here it is: You can't trust anyone more than you trust yourself. No matter how much you want to, you can't. Now I don't mean in a life-or-death situation way; what I mean is that if you have a gut feeling about something, then go with that gut feeling. For example, for my final today on Cognitive Psychology, I had reviewed most of the material once. However, we'd watched 4 movies in class, and I wanted to go back over them. Each one was between a 1/2 hour and an hour long, and I thought that, if the professor had taken the time to show them, then it would be good to go back over them.

However, a friend of mine in the class had gone to the last class of the semester, and I had not. When I was asking them if the professor had said anything about the exam set-up, they said that they couldn't remember, but that the professor had said that the movies "wouldn't play a large part" in the exam and that we just needed to know "general topics." Well, the general topics of the movies were also in the lecture notes. So, even though I thought that the movies were going to be important, my friend had said that the professor said they weren't that important, so I didn't re-watch them.

When I arrived at the exam today, I felt really well prepared. I'd made flashcards for all the material and gone over it multiple times. However, upon receiving the test, I noticed almost the whole short answer section was from the videos, which I hadn't reviewed. In going over the exam, about 20% of the material was from those videos. I was a bit upset with myself, as you can imagine. I was on the edge of an A and an A-; now I'm not sure that I'll get even an A-. So that's that. Live and learn. That's how it goes. From now on, I am vowing to myself that I will study how I think it is best, and not listen to others. Let them do what they think is best, and I'll do what I think is best. Then we'll see who winds up on top.

Oh, and a biology fact? Instead I have decided to post this cartoon:It's by someone named Joe Sayers; so kudos to him. This work is his work, not mine. I just really thought it was funny.

My brain is fried, but I still have 2 more finals. I was attempting to study for Cognitive Psychology, but it wasn't working. My mind keeps wandering.

Like one time, I was talking to this kid who I'm pretty sure was really high. He said, "You know, how does that work." When I asked him what he was talking about, he said "Those duck-hunt Nintendo guns. How do they work? I mean, you point them at the TV, but how do they know that's where the gun is pointing. That's pretty high tech."

Now, this kid used to get on my nerves a lot, but he had a point. How do those things work? Well, I have a distraction oriented mind, so I decided to take a break from the psych studying to look it up. Apparently, the gun detects the white light of the duck from the TV screen, and if it is aligned correctly, the game registers a hit. Pretty genius! If you want to read about it, see this link.

-Margo

PS--Biology "fact" (I've been saying fact; but much of what I've been posting are really theories or trends from data): Many studies on homosexuality have shown that there may be both genetic and environmental factors determining if a person is or is not a homosexual. However, there is another trend apparent: the more older brothers a guy has, the more likely he is to be homosexual. Interesting, huh?

A little poetry (for serious!) and other things.

Two finals done :)

Tomorrow is a day off (though I do have to work and meet with my supervisor), so I can catch up for studying for my other two finals. I also wanted to catch up watching House, but unfortunately there wasn't an episode yesterday, and there isn't going to be another one until January 19th. I'll have to occupy myself with other things until then.


Here's a nice sonnet I wrote a little while ago. It's titled Earthen Sky.


The clouds are lazy, dipping, diving slow,
So each one seems a giant spool of air-
Filled cotton candy. If the world would care
To flip, I could be there, I'd stand below
The ground as cushions made of water blow
Away from here, and I'd be standing there,
On clouds like finest silk, my body bare
But wrapped in fluffy goodness as its clothes.

A throne, my seat below the Earthen Sky,
So soft and gentle, laying down I could
Be watching mountains, oceans floating by
And if my lips allowed escape a sigh,
Contentment, it would signify. I would
Continue there, below the Earthen Sky.


I wrote that last year for a class. I liked it, so I figured I'd post it.


I also have some time, so I figured I'd share a story. About a month ago, a friend of mine and I were gallivanting around Boston, MA. We hadn't seen each other for a few months, and so we had a lot to catch up on. We often like to do random spontaneous things together, so we decided to go to the first Church of the Christian Scientists and check it out. Although we've both lived in Boston for a while, we'd never been there, and it was supposed to have a really cool globe that you walk through there (I had no idea what that would look like before I went), and we figured it would be the first stop on our day of adventure. Let me tell you, that place is AWESOME. I am by no means a Christian Scientist (I mean, I support modern medical tactics so much that I am applying to medical school), but their area is really cool looking. They also have an awesome reflection pool--my friend and I wanted to jump in it, except that it was cold out and it looked like it was snowing. They also have a museum there to Mary Baker Eddy, the founder to Christian Science, and the Mapparium, which is pretty cool to check out--it's a giant glass globe that you walk through. In addition, they have a place in the museum where you can make your own personalize clip-art kind of picture dealing with spirituality and healing. My friend and I had some fun with that. After you make a picture, the picture is displayed on a giant projection screen for a while (at least a 1/2 hour, as we walked by the screen again before we left), so that others in the museum can see it. Basically, if you have time, go to the Christian Science Center and check it out.

After that, we went to this cafe and got lunch. It was some cafe near the Prudential building that serves breakfast all day long, and apparently had a giant fish on the door of the bathroom (I didn't see it, but my friend did). Following this, we walked to the Boston Common just to take a walk; there we saw this man, a dog, and a woman staring in the direction of the dog calling "Maple, maple, came back here." We figured she was calling the dog until the man and the dog walked away, and the woman was still calling for Maple. We then realized she was calling the gray squirrels, and she had a box of peanuts in her hand. We continued walking, but then turned around and sat back down on a bench nearby to watch her. She had names for all the squirrels. My friend thought she might have been an animal rescue person or something, but I think she was just crazy. However, she was dressed in a nice winter ski jacket and khaki's and some hiking boots, so if she was crazy, she was dressed well for a crazy person.

We enjoyed watching her for a little while. She even attempted climbing up one of the trees after one of the squirrels. After a while, the lady's friend showed up, and so we left and went to Newbury and Boylston Streets. Now, we didn't really have any money to buy stuff, but we couldn't help but stop at Filene's Basement. That place has some of the most awkward clothing. We each tried on the same outfit: a pair of hideous Armani pants that were priced at over $3,000 (these black pants with this god-awful red, green and gold pattern on them) and a violent magenta blouse that we couldn't figure how to wrap correctly. When we'd put the clothes on, we came out and laughed at each other. My friend claimed we were wairing pimp's pajamas. I wish I had a picture. PRICELESS.

Finally, we went on a quest for cupcakes, but did not find any. Instead, we walked all the way to Cambridge to some place that had make your own S'mores, which was a decent substitute. That was probably the greatest day of this whole semester, just because it was so spontaneous and amazing. Oh, the things you can do with practically empty pockets and imagination.

Until next time
-Margz

PS--Bio fact: I think I bombed my mammology final, and one of the short answers dealt with an oosik (but I got that one right :) )
But for a real fact (more psychology than biology, but to me they are both interconnected): people remember faces wholistically rather than by parts, which is why facial composites created by witnesses to crimes are often not accurate. (Wells and Hasel, 2007)

Looks like another all-nighter for me. Goodness gracious, what a day.

However, I have decided to write to you all about something that is bothering me. I often feel like, when I begin writing, I have almost nothing to write about, but that I still want to write. As such, if you are just visiting my blog for the first time or if you are a returner, if you have any ideas you would like me to write about, hear my opinion on, or just in general anything at all, please feel free to comment any time and let me know.

I also wanted to talk about caffeinated beverages. Sometimes, I wonder where the world would be without them. I'm not sure what culture can take credit for the idea of drinking beverages with caffeine (I'm sure it's multiple, as many drinks themselves have caffeine), but whatever culture(s) it is, the world is in debt to you. Most people have probably heard the slogan "America Runs on Dunkin'" for Dunkin' Donuts, and that's almost true. Although America does not run on their exact brand of coffee, I know many people that can't get out of bed in the morning without a cup of tea or coffee. I, personally, only drink caffeinated drinks once and a while, but during finals period, I just keep drinking them. Of course, it helps that I got a free 2 liter bottle of Mountain Dew.

Although I wish I could just curl up in a ball and go to bed right now, I think I am going to instead make myself another pot of tea, and continue studying about the vomeronasal organ in rodents and infrasonic production in mystecites. Good night.

Bio fact--the vomeronasal organ is a waste of my time.

All-nighter

A break for me

Why are all these people happy? No one I know would be remotely this happy while doing homework and studying. Especially the first two with their piles of books. Clip art is so unrealistic.

Taking a break so that hopefully I will be able to focus after this.

Here is a fun and nonserious poem that I have decided to write. It is titled Books.

some books are great
they stimulate
you to create
a world awaits

but texts, BORING
i want to fling
my ears do ring
with text book things

can't concentrate
but tests await
i want to sing
do anything
but read this crap.


PS, you may not realize it, but this poem has perfect meter and rhyme scheme except for two deliberate exceptions--the change in the meter in the line that ends with BORING, and the last line which adds an extra line that does not rhyme with anything. I did this on purpose--Shakespeare and other great poets did stuff like that on purpose too; obviously this poem ranks with those. Add it to your Greatest Classics collection.

OK, back to the books. I don't know or care if i did a bio fact for the day. I don't think i did. Whatevs.

Goodnight to everyone that doesn't have to stay up. Wish me luck on my exams in the next week :).

Walking down the street can be quite educational

At least I've been studying a bit. I also am in the process of submitting 2 more applications (woop-dee-doo). The website for one application keeps stalling out, so because of this I've decided to take a break while it takes fifteen minutes to load.

I realized something interesting today. There are some people in the world that are really fake, and you can't help but dislike them, even if you don't know them that well. There is this one girl at school here, and when I first met her, she seemed nice. We were part of our residence's student government together when I was a sophomore and she was a freshman. However, the more I got to know her the more I realized her giant smiles with those little peg-teeth were full of fake emotion. She didn't really care about anyone there at all--it was all an act. I saw her walking down the street today, and as I passed her, our eyes met, so I waved and she gave me that smile--ugh. It sends shivers down my spine at how over exaggerated it is. But then again, I realized that I don't really like her much, so my smile was fake too. I just hope it wasn't as obviously cheesily fake and horrid as hers.

But I also realized, in that same encounter, that dispite disliking someone there are some things that you can't help liking about them. For example, depsite this girl's terrible smile and overall not attractiveness, she has the best posture out of anyone I have ever seen (rivalling one of my friends in high school who had been a dancer her whole life). It's not that I like that she has great posture. It's more that I'm jealous that she has great posture. Despite disliking her, I still am jealous of the fact that she always carries herself with poise and confidence. Whenever I see her, it almost serves as a reminder to push my shoulders back and my sternum up and out.

It's cool how you discover these little interesting life lessons just while hurriedly walking down a crowded street.


PS--bio fact of the day
Human hair on average grows at a rate of a 1/2 inch per month.

As if I need more reasons to procrastinate

Yes, I started this blog to replace my other forms of procrastination. I figured it would be fun, and maybe entertaining for others. However, it's helped me procrastinate on my finals studying for two days, haha. Probably not the best use of my time.

So here I am at almost 1am sitting and writing in my blog instead of studying for my cumulative Cognitive Neuroscience exam that is on Tuesday morning (though I think I'll be fine).

Today was a pretty good day, though. I woke up, got ready, and then watched some Top Chef while I waited for my boyfriend Mike. I sometimes imagine that I would be amazing on that show, but then I remember that I hate to cook. I love competition, though, so maybe I'd be good. I am an ok cook when I feel like cooking, which is probably once a month at most.

Mike arrived, and then my mom showed up maybe ten minutes later with my sister. They picked us up and took use home, where we fed my pet turtle (who can attack fish like Jack Bauer destroys terrorists--"One shot kill," like my boyfriend Mike said), which ate a gold fish within 2 seconds of me dropping it in the tank (Mike even missed it, because he was talking to my sister).

After a half hour of getting ready, my family piled into two cars--Mike, my sister K and I in one car, and my mother and father in the other--and drove to the local gardening store to pick out Christmas trees. This is a family tradition, and this year Mike joined us which was great. We picked out two trees--a big one for the family room and a smaller one for the living room.

We returned home with one tree in the trunk of each car. Mike carried the trees inside for us (he's so helpful and wonderful :) ), and we put them up. They were pretty good picks, and I can't wait to see how they turn out when the branches fall a bit and the trees take their final shape. I didn't stay to decorate them, which makes me sad, but I'm hoping my mother and sister will save me a few ornaments when I return after finals.

After that, my family sat down and watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (the original, not one of those sequels that aren't half as good. We own it on DVD; my mom, sister and I are huge Christmas movie fans, so we have a pretty large collection of them). I think my dad would have rather been watching the football games, but Mike had never seen Rudolph (which I didn't even know was possible, since it's played every year on major network channels), so my mother and I decided that was a situation which was in dire need of remedying.

I hadn't seen it in a couple years, and I was astounded by how mean all the reindeer and even Santa Claus were in the movie. I knew the reindeer were mean, but I'd forgotten how discriminatory Santa had been until the very end. I'm surprised I liked Santa as a child, though I guess the end he does redeem himself by finding homes for all the misfit toys and having Rudolph lead his sleigh. The movie does have a great overall message--even though they phrase it in a poor way (something like "even misfits have a place"--I think the message should be phrased something more like "everyone has a place and no one is a misfit" but I'm being picky); everyone has something to contribute, and if you overlook people because they are different, you may miss their truly special gifts.

So I think Mike liked that (though like my dad he may have rather been watching football; if that's true though, he didn't tell me :) ). Then my dad went and bought milk (including some for me to take back to school with me) my mom made everyone dinner--a roast and mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans and rolls (all my favorites--yum! Am I making you hungry?) . Then she brought Michael and I back to school, where I promptly took a nap. So here I am now, writing in my blog.

So in case you wanted a complete overview of my day, there it is, all spelled out for you. Though I did leave out the part where, while picking out trees, my dad said in a really loud voice, "They don't have much of a selection, do they?" Haha, he's funny. He also told me today, when putting the giant plastic trash bags for the trees down on the floor under the tree stands, that in college people used to buy those for halloween and cut two holes out for eyes. When asked if they were ghosts, they would reply, "No, I'm a human condom." Oh, my dad has the sense of humor of someone less than half his age. I love it.

He kept giving my boyfriend tips on how to put up a real Christmas tree, since Mike's family always has a fake one. It was so cute to see him teaching my boyfriend all these household tradition things. It made me happy.

My mom and sister were really sweet. I know they all miss me, and as much as I'll miss Mike over break, I miss my family and friends too, so I'm excited I'll be heading home soon. Then I can watch Christmas movies and wrap presents with them. This is my mom's favorite time of the year, so it's always great to be home to share it with her.

I hope everyone is having a great time leading up to the holidays, whichever holiday(s) you celebrate. Enjoy the season, and be happy, even if its just for your family and friends.

Good morning!

Good morning everyone!

I'm going home today to help the family pick out a Christmas tree, so I don't know if I'll have time to post later. So here's our interesting biology fact of the day:

Female fruit flies will only mate once in their life, but males mate approximately five times a day. That's it. Have a good one!

Biology Fact! I forgot *hits forehead*

So, I wanted to make this blog be not only full interesting stories, imagination and stuff going on in my life, but also have one interesting biology fact per day. I think it's important that people learn about the world around them. So, I decided to go out and find an interesting fact of the day.

We're going to pretend it's still Saturday the 13th of December, so that this fact counts for Saturday.

Interesting fact:
Male Birds of Paradise, found in Australia and islands between Australia and Asia, have the craziest courtship dances and/or coloration. The males their dances and colorful plumage as tools to attract females, and the females use the male display in order to decide whether he is good enough or not to mate with (similar to the way human women choose male partners based on their chivalrous behavior, manners, personality and looks). See the links below for some links to bird dances that will probably be some of the craziest things you'll ever see. Enjoy :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEUOuDsJdyw (I find the music on this one slightly annoying)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6txRk4INLc&NR=1 (I personally like this one :) )

Have a good evening. I'm going with my family and boyfriend Mike to pick out a Christmas tree tomorrow. I hope everyone else's holiday season is going well!

Another one's in!

I just submitted another med school application... 2 days before the deadline.
Pretty nifty. It's done. :)

Now I'm doing laundry and procrastinating on my studying.

So, I have decided to post any short stories I write on this blog as well. I think it would make for an entertaining read. Don't expect frequent stories, I'm not that creative, and I haven't written any since my creative writing class last semester. Here is my first one. It's titled Freed by the Sea.

“Are we ready to go yet? You’ve spent over an hour triple-checking the equipment. We’re late.” She threw him an apple, but he wasn’t looking, and it hit him in the head. She held her laughter at the back of her throat. He was such a goon.

He looked up. “Hold on, Clara.” He stared intently back at the checklist for what seemed to be another ten minutes. Clara used this time to pack a few extra apples for her lunch. Who knew how long it would take for them to find the correct sample area once they were down there.

“How much can you recheck that thing? We used it yesterday, it was fine.”

“You call it fine when the oxygen gauge suddenly stops working?” He gave her that I can’t believe you look and she knew to stop. He was so type A; he’d been that way since undergrad at the University of Rhode Island. He’d studied Ocean Engineering, and she’d studying marine biology. They’d been lab partners in freshman Chem. Even on the first lab, he’d watched her with what had seemed to be haughtiness; later, Clara realized he was just being really careful. He needed everything done his way, because in his opinion his way was the right way. He’d told her he’d picked her out to be a klutz when she walked into the lab and knocked over the beaker of hydrochloric acid, sending the TA running over to clean up before anyone burned themselves.

He hadn’t changed much. He still had to make sure everything was perfect before they went on another journey to the trench. But, as much as Clara hated to admit it, she actually was glad he was so careful. That way she didn’t have to stress out. And Clara hated stress almost as much as she hated being on land. That’s why she was glad to be doing this field work. Anything to keep her sea-bound, exploring the underwater trenches of the Atlantic Ocean. She wasn’t too interested in the chemosynthetic bacteria she was studying, but, man, she loved going down into the depths in the little sub named the Underwater Research Instrument (URI, which was also a tribute to their alma mater), even if it was a little small for her liking.

The URI was Chris’s baby. He’d designed her and had been part of the team that helped build her six years ago. The URI was still tugging along, but definitely needed adjustments once and a while. For one thing, the oxygen gauge. When it had stopped working the day before, Chris had blown a gasket himself. “Shit. How the hell are we supposed to know if we can breathe if this fucking thing isn’t working?”

“Because we’re still breathing,” Clara had said. They both had known there was enough oxygen in there for two days if they needed it. She hadn’t understood what he was so worried about. They were only going to be down there for, what, two more hours, and then they’d begin their four hour trip resurfacing. So six hours total. There was no way they’d need an oxygen gauge to tell them how much time they had left. But sure enough, Chris had changed plans as soon as any malfunction took place—he’d decided that it wasn’t safe to be under one and half miles of water without a working oxygen gauge to tell them that they could breathe. That’s why there were trying again today. And she was already irritated.

As much as she loved going down in the submarine, the research when she got back to the boat was wearing on her. She just wanted to be back in the deep, exploring the ocean. When she was on the bottom, it was like she was in a whole other world. That’s why she was so interested in the ocean. The particular research she was doing now centered around the chemoautotrophic bacteria she could find near deep sea thermal vents in the Atlantic; the research itself was boring—taking DNA of the samples, amplifying it, studying it. But the actual field work—going down the URI and seeing first had what most people can only see in the pictures of their textbooks—that was what kept Clara going from day to day.

Prior to this, she had been doing research on fin whales in the Mediterranean. After five years of hard work and nights of caffeine overdosing in order to decipher the language of the whales, the World Wildlife Fund decided that her research was no longer important and stopped funding her. She called her boyfriend Gerry who was still in Rhode Island, to tell him what had happened and that she’d probably be returning home soon, and not just for a vacation, but for good. She’d mostly been e-mailing him from Spain, because the phone calls were expensive; she hadn’t actually talked to him in over a month, and it had been nice to hear his voice. That is, however, until he told her that he’d been seeing someone else—for a few months.

Clara had needed a drink. She went out to a small bar a few blocks from the water, one that seemed to attract more locals than tourists. This was probably because it was not the ideal Spanish bar—it almost reminded her of the bars back home. She ordered a margarita and just sat there, mostly keeping to herself and listening to the conversations in quick Spanish around her. She continued to drink until the bar closed—trying to dilute her mind with the alcohol until she could no longer remember what Gerry looked like or the sound of a fin whale calling its calf.

She woke up the next afternoon and realized she was in need of a strong espresso. She walked a few blocks to the café. While waiting in line, she felt a tap on her back. It was Chris. She was so surprised to see him, she gave him a big hug and made him spill his own coffee all over the place. She replaced it, ordered her own coffee with a double shot, and they got to catching up after years of not seeing each other. In the end, Chris told her about the open position in the lab he was collaborating with on his current project. She followed up on the tip, and was now aboard the Triton, researching something that, although she wasn’t interested in it, kept her connected with the ocean. She guessed that’s how life worked: when a door in life is closed, a hole is blown in the wall, and you run out screaming into the unknown, but you survive, whether you like it or not. Clara happened to like it.

Clara zipped up the lunch pack and looked back over at Chris. She’d never found him attractive, with his five foot five stick-figure frame and his constant five o’clock shadow. He was too controlling for her to handle in anything other than friendship anyway. She liked freedom—being able to pack up and go anywhere at any time. In fact, she’d only been in one semi-steady romantic relationship, which had recently ended due to her inability to commit and her persistent temper, which flared up against most people who were anything like her. Many acquaintances—she didn’t like to call them friends—from undergrad at URI had thought that she should date Chris; but, they didn’t really get Clara and Chris’s relationship. To Clara, she and Chris were nothing more than good friends. Even though she hadn’t seen him since undergrad, once she began this research with Chris, their friendship had picked right back up where it had left off, and Chris had the courtesy not to ask why she hadn’t contacted him for years. He probably hadn’t wanted to know, anyway.

Chris was now talking with Mack, another engineer on the URI team. Beyond them, she could see the small waves lapping the hull of the Triton, the vessel that was housing the research and URI engineering teams for their 6 month long expedition.

“Yeah, I think we’re good now, but want to check the left vertical thruster one last time? I just want to make sure it’s in top condition. It had a little delay yesterday, made the ride back up to the surface a little shaky.” Chris looked in Clara’s direction, and said, louder, “Gave Clara a little scare. You know, women.” He winked at her.

“If I remember correctly, you were the one who was worried. I didn’t even notice. You practically screamed.”

Mack laughed as he went off to check the thruster.



Finally, Chris declared the URI to be in “tippity-top shape.” Clara grabbed a long t-shirt and wool sweater, because it would be cold on the descent before they reached the thermal waters of the trench.

“Ready, Clara?” Chris said.

“I wouldn’t have to be ready if you hadn’t cut our trip short yesterday.”

“Come on. I was keeping both of us and the URI safe. It’s in the manual that if anything happens I don’t like, I can resurface us.”

“And who wrote that manual?” Clara stared at him through the silent pause. “You did. Because you have to control everything.”

“Let’s just drop it, okay?”

Clara put her hands on her hips and looked at the lime green Converse Chucks she was wearing. He was right, of course. She didn’t want to be annoyed with him the whole trip. Besides, she could never stay upset for long. She had a strong temper, but it cooled as quickly as it came, which is something that most people couldn’t understand about her. When she looked back up, Chris was grabbing his forehead, his eyes shut tight. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I got a little headache, nothing to worry about. I think it’s just ‘cause I haven’t eaten yet today. Thanks for packing me the lunch.”

“No worries. We’ve got Tylenol in the first aid pack in the sub. Let’s get going.”

Mack was on the deck, ready to operate the controls to lower the URI into the water once Clara and Chris gave the signal. Clara climbed the ladder to the sub and placed the lunches and extra clothes inside. Then, she hopped in, followed by Chris, who pushed the hatch up into the doorway and turned the wheel to make it super water tight. Clara knew, from her short training about the sub, that everything in the URI had to be not only water tight but pressure resistant, because the pressure down there was so great that it could crush a person, or anything not made to withstand it.

Chris picked up the radio. “Mack, we’re ready. Let her down.”

“All-righty, Captain!” There was laughing on the other end. Clara could picture Mack, choking on his coffee after his own overenthusiastic response. Then her stomach lurched, and she realized they were being lifted off the Triton’s deck and into the water.

Clara looked out the small portal on her left. She wasn’t very fond of the confined space of URI, but it was the only way that she could see first hand the greatness of the deep sea. “When you designed this thing, couldn’t you have made it less coffin-like?”

Chris rolled his eyes and shook his head in an overdramatic way. “We’ve been over this a million times. Its small design makes it more resistant to pressure.”

Clara knew this of course. But it had become tradition over the ten previous trials for her to ask Chris that same question. She smiled, because sometimes it was fun to annoy him.

She felt them hit the water and begin to slowly sink. She heard Mack come on over the radio. “All right guys, we’re ready to detach the tail so you’ll be free of the Triton. You ready?”

Clara grabbed the radio before Chris could; she stuck her tongue out at him and batted his open hand away from the radio. “It’s called skill,” she said to Chris, before pressing the button on the radio. “Yeah, we’re ready, Mack.”

“OK. Make sure you turn on the UQC so we can contact you once you’re fully submerged.”

“Will do.” Clara nodded to Chris, who flipped the switch to the UQC. A little red light went on.

“All right, you’re disconnected.”

“Thanks, Mack.” Clara gave the radio back to Chris as the URI was engulfed by the salty water of the Atlantic.

Clara sat back and prepared for the four hour descent. Chris was not only the chief engineer of this expedition but one of the pilots of the sub. She’d done most of her trials with him as the pilot. Although she’d had a general training in using the research equipment and using the UQC, it took a lot more training to learn to drive the URI. It involved too many switches and multiple joysticks; even after going down to the trench over ten times, she still had no idea what most of them did, and she’d finally lost interest in it all together. She didn’t want to be a pilot, so it didn’t really matter.

She hunted in her bag for one of the apples she had packed. She put it in Chris’ outstretched hand, while he now carefully steered the URI, keeping it level in the water as they traveled downward.

The apple rolled out of his hand and his eyes closed.

“Chris?” Clara poked his shoulder, and his eyes immediately reopened.

“It’s that damn headache again.”

“Tylenol?” She lifted the first aid kit from where it was attached to the side of the cabin. She found the Tylenol, and pulled a small Nalgene of water out of her bag. “Here.”

He popped the pills in his mouth and swallowed them without water. He tipped the Nalgene to his mouth, and water trickled in. He swallowed that too. As he took the meds, he was careful never to take his right hand off the controls, keeping the URI straight. He steered the sub like he was a grandmother driving in a school zone. “Much better.” He sighed.

“See, I am so helpful.” She grinned.

“Nice to meet you, So Helpful.”

“Very funny. HA HA.”



They continued their descent downwards. It took a few hours, because the URI didn’t move very fast.

Both Chris and Clara snacked on their lunch and added layers to their clothing, talking for a bit. Clara found this the best way to distract herself from the boredom of the mid ocean layers, where relatively few fish could be found to interest her, and there was so little space in the sub that she couldn’t move around, especially with her relatively tall five-foot-nine frame. That, and listening to her iPod while looking out the window. She had a whole playlist of Star Wars music that Chris had given her. It was the music from the old trilogy, which they both shared a liking for, and she especially liked to listen to it as she “boldly went where few men—and even fewer women—had gone before,” as Chris always liked to say—another sci-fi reference. It was kind of cheesy, but it made her smile.



Finally, they got to the rift. After the first handful of trials she’d almost gotten used to this giant underwater crack in the Earth. But Chris had orders to stay away from the edge. If for some reason they lost power and dropped down there, the URI wouldn’t be able to withstand the pressure at much greater depths. Plus, the heat inside the rift would surely boil them alive. The rift was an opening in the earth’s crust, and the temperatures around it climbed from 60 degrees to almost 600 degrees Fahrenheit. And it was just creepy looking: black and gray smoke came out of it like a chimney. Clara thought that maybe Hell was buried underground, and the rifts were its gateway.

The only light that illuminated the bottom was from the URI now, and had been for the last two or three hours. Water was thicker than Clara had originally thought; she hadn’t realized until her first Marine Biology class in college that light only penetrated the first 100m of the ocean.

“You remember the general area where we were yesterday?” Clara said.

“Yeah, I remember. We were a little west of here.”

Clara looked out the window some more. She could never get enough of the mystery down there in the deep ocean. Chris seemed unaffected by it, though she knew he enjoyed it as much as she did. Clara had seen giant tube worms, and other weird organisms had been reported, like giant jellyfish and squid. They seemed to be huge replicas of many species found in shallower waters, something researches liked to call “Gigantism.” Clara imagined one day she’d see a giant shrimp—how totally oxymoronic. However, her research now didn’t focus on any of these interesting animals. Instead, she was doing work on chemo-autotrophic bacteria—bacteria that make energy from the chemicals in the rift, similar to the way plants make energy from sunlight. Until a few decades ago, people thought that life could only exist where there was light, but these rifts seemed to be proving that scientific fact to be a flaw.

“Hey, Mack?” Chris was on the UQC, and the transmission crackled a bit, as usual.

“Hey, bud. You at the bottom?”

“Yeah, we made it. We’ll call you when we're resurfacing.”

“All right, and if you need anything, don’t be afraid to ask.”

Chris laughed. “How would you get us what we needed? Expect us to wait down here for a week until another deep sea sub can bring us an extra sweater? Because it’s kind of cold down here.”

“Hey, Alvin would only take 5 days to get here. Don’t exaggerate. And, you can’t be that cold anymore. You’re at a hydrothermal vent for Christ sakes. Over and out.”

“See you, Mack.”

Clara saw Chris turn off the UQC to save battery, and the little red light went off in confirmation. “All right, to the west.” The horizontal thrusters kicked in to push them forward.

“We were at the edge of that cave last time, remember?”

“Yeah, Clara. I got it. We should be near there soon.”



Finally, they got to the collection site. Clara began to operate the mechanical arms on the outside of the submarine with the only controls she had learned to use in the sub. She grabbed a large rock. It’d be covered in the chemosynthetic bacteria, and that’s what she needed. She carefully directed the arms to the collection basket, a container also located outside the sub that would hold all her samples until she and Chris returned to the Triton.

As Clara carefully guided the arm to a new rock, the URI jetted forward. “What the heck are you doing, Chris?” She looked over at him.

Chris was seizing. His body was shaking, and his mouth was foaming. Clara just stood, dumbstruck for a second. He was all over the controls, pushing buttons and moving the steering as he thrashed around. The URI responded to his sporadic movements, tumbling and tossing, zooming forward and then crashing to a stop, bumping upwards and smashing downwards. The exterior and interior lights went out, and the dim inside emergency lights flashed on. She tried to move but couldn’t—she felt like all her bones and muscles had been replaced with Jell-o. Finally, her will overpowered her seemingly dead muscles, and she snatched Chris’ shoulders and guided him to the floor of the sub. It was still small, but there was more room for him to squirm around there without hurting himself or the sub. Without thinking, Clara grabbed a water bottle from her bag and emptied it on his head and body. There was a sizzling sound, coming from somewhere, but she ignored it. She needed to get Chris back to consciousness.

His movements became smaller and less violent, and Clara once again threw water on him, hoping it was helping, though doubting it at the same time. Soon, he stopped, but was still unconscious.

Clara began to cry. “Chris? Chris? Wake up—please. I don’t know what to do with this piece of shit sub.” She sat with her back against the wall of the cabin and hugged her knees. She squeezed her eyes tight, trying to keep the tears from flowing down her cheeks. She was just a biologist. Why the hell hadn’t they taught her how to operate this thing? She knew the basics of the equipment she’d be using, but all the switches, gears and joysticks had been left to the professional pilots.

She opened her eyes. It was still dark outside. She grabbed the first aid kit. All that was there were some bandages, gauze, tape, gloves, Neosporin and the Tylenol. Really helpful—nothing to wake the unconscious pilot. She poked Chris a few times, but no response. Then she remembered the UQC.

She tumbled over to the panel where the UQC was located, and flipped the switch. She picked up the receiver and said, “Mack, you there?” There was no response, nor was there any interference buzzing to suggest the UQC was working. She looked down. The little red light hadn’t gone on. She flipped the switch off and then back on again. It was soaked, and the light still hadn’t gone on. Shit. The water she splashed on Chris must have gotten on the controls, including the UQC. How could she have been so stupid? She was never good in emergency situations.

She breathed in enough air to completely fill her lungs and looked out the closest portal. She couldn’t tell what was going on or where she was, because there was no light outside, and the light from inside the sub barely illuminated an inch or two around them. She looked back at Chris lying still on the ground. He was still breathing—she could see his chest moving up and down.

She knelt down next to him and realized his head was bleeding a little. Nothing serious in comparison to everything else happening. She reached for the practically useless first aid kit and took out some gauze, medical tape and the Neosporin. She spread the Neosporin on the cut with her bare hands. The gloves seemed worthless nuisances at the moment. She placed the gauze over the cut, then taped it on as best as she could.

Chris’s eyes opened. “What the fuck happened?”

“You—you had like a seizure or something.”

“What?”

“A seizure.”

They sat in silence for a second.

“What happened to the lights?” Chris had sat up and was looking around.

“Well, when you began seizing, you were all over the controls. You bumped a bunch of switches and the sub went crazy—I don’t know. The UQC isn’t working.”

“Why’s everything wet?”

She bit her lip. “I—I tried to revive you by splashing water on you. I didn’t know what else—”

“You splashed water on me in a sub with electric controls? How dumb can you be?”

“I was trying to save your life. Hey, maybe if you had told people how sick you were really feeling, we wouldn’t have gone down today and we’d be safe back on the Triton waiting ‘til you got better.”

“I didn’t know I was this sick.”

Clara knew that neither of them wanted to admit how deep the trouble was that they were in. “Okay, Okay. Let’s figure out what is working. We need to fix this. I can’t have gotten everything wet.”

She and Chris began checking the switches.

“Did you turn off the external lights off for any reason?” Chris had stopped and looked at Clara, his mouth slightly open.

“No, they went off when we hit something while you were seizing all over the control panel. Why?”

“Because if there’s a malfunction with them, the outside emergency lights should go on too, like the ones inside. Automatically.”

“But they didn’t. Is there a switch for them or—“

“No, Clara, they’re automatic.” His voice was higher pitched than normal.

Clara was confused. “Okay. So the outside light’s not working. Let’s just figure out what else—“

“Clara, if the outside lights aren’t working, that means that they got shorted—water got through the hull somehow to the wires that connect the emergency lights to the power source. That means that half our stuff won’t work. We’re fine in here, for now; the hull has multiple layers. But the thrusters might not work, because heck, their wiring is in the same compartment.”

The reality of what was happening began to sink in. Still, it made Clara feel a little better to know that they weren’t stuck here just because she’d poured water everywhere. And she had complete faith in Chris to fix everything. He was the engineer.

“Well, I’m sure you designed ways for us to float up to the surface without the thrusters. I mean, this thing has to be kind of buoyant, right?”

“Yeah, kind of. I have to release some things with manual levers—it’s not done electrically, so it should work. We’ll have to get rid of the sample basket and some of the extra weights we have on the outside of the sub that helped us sink to get down here in the first place. That should make us buoyant.” He sighed.

Clara knew he didn’t want to have to do that. Leaving behind parts of his precious URI was, to him, like giving the doctor the okay to amputate his child’s leg.

“OK. I’m going to release the collection basket. We may not start moving at first, and when we do, it’ll be slow. So I’ll wait at first to see if we can tell if we’re moving. If it doesn’t feel like we are after a few minutes, and since we can’t see outside to be able to tell, I’ll drop a weight or two.”

Clara was glad to be in this with Chris. He was much better in emergencies than she. “Chris, thanks for putting up with me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I hope you don’t think I just like hanging around with you to laugh at you.”

“Well, you’re funny. When you’re laughing at me, I’m laughing at me too.” He smiled for the first time since he gained consciousness.

“I just want to let you know that you’re a good friend. Getting me this job, helping me with my grades at URI, and even just being my friend when I wasn’t always the nicest. I appreciate it.” She looked down for a second, then back up at him. “I’m really sorry I lost touch with you after college.”

“Let’s just get this thing back to the surface.” Chris pulled a lever, and as the sub shook a little bit, Clara felt lighter.

“Is it gone?”

“I think so. Let’s wait a minute.”

A few minutes passed, but nothing happened.

“OK, here goes another one.” Chris pulled another lever, and Clara really felt the sub rise this time, but very slowly.

“Alright, we should be at the surface in about four or five hours.”

Clara hugged him. “I don’t know what I would do without you. You’re the helpful one. Well, except when you seize out on me and destroy the submarine I’m in.”

They laughed.

Thud. They felt it and heard it at the same time. They’d stopped moving.

“What?” Chris stared dumbstruck. He tried to look out the portal to his right, even though it was way too dark to see anything.

Clara followed his gaze. That portal looked much smaller than it had before. She immediately started feeling claustrophobic and had to sit down. The floor of the sub was wet from the water she’d splashed onto Chris.

“Clara—“ He stopped himself, swallowed, and began again. “Clara, you said that when I was seizing, I jetted the sub forward?”

“I think so, I told you I was so confused and scared that I’m not really sure what happened. We were moving all around.”

“Well, I think we jetted into that cave.”

“What?” The sub was getting smaller. Was there still enough oxygen in here? “So now what do we do?”

“Umm—“

Chris, the fantastic engineer, the builder and designer of the URI, didn’t know how to get his own sub out of here. “They’re not going to find us, are they?”

“Well, they’ll find us; but they won’t suspect anything is wrong until a few hours from now, when I don’t call up to the surface to say that we’re coming back; and then they won’t assume for sure anything’s happened until we don’t resurface 6 hours from now; but by the time they can get another deep sea sub here after that—I mean, Alvin is the closest. And you heard Mack. It won’t get here ‘til 5 days from now. We only have enough oxygen for two days.” He looked at the oxygen gauge. “Or less, seeing as the fucking oxygen gauge isn’t working anymore, so I can’t tell.” He sat down in the pilot’s seat, and Clara saw a look of resignation on his face.

“Are you telling me we’re going to die down here?” Clara’s voice was small. She crossed her arms, clutching at herself.

He just stared at her. Clara could tell he was clamping his teeth down on his tongue. He rolled his head to the side and looked out the portal into the darkness.

“It’s not your fault, Chris.”

“I can’t even get my own piece of junk to get to the surface.” He punched the side of the cabin. “Pathetic.”

“Don’t blame yourself. I don’t want to be stuck down here with you blaming yourself.”

They sat in silence. Clara tried to keep her spirits up, but the longer she sat there, the antsier she became. She kept checking her watch, trying to guess how much oxygen they had left; they’d been in the submarine for about seven hours—so enough oxygen for forty-one hours. Chris just stared out the small window. He hadn’t moved.

“Chris, remember that party on Columbia Street in South Kingston?”

“What?”

“You know, that party? In that big old vacation house that Sharpe and Allen and a few of their friends were renting for the year? The one where I found the basketball players hanging you out the window by your ankles?”

Clara knew he remembered it vividly, even if he didn’t want to admit it. If it had been her, she’d want to forget it too. It was an embarrassing scene. At the time, she’d laughed with the basketball players about the situation—especially since they’d decided to throw him outside just because he’d been complaining that his beer was warm. But she’d convinced them to bring him back inside.

Clara remembered that his lips had been blue, and his face had been wet and red. Chris had left that night without saying a word, and the next day he acted like it had never happened.

“Listen, I’m sorry about that night. I shouldn’t have laughed at you—“

“That was forever ago. It’s not important.”

“No, it is important. I may have been laughing, but I was scared at the same time. I mean, if they’d dropped you—“

“I told you, just drop it.”

They sat in silence for another few hours. Clara began to listen to her iPod again, but its battery ran out of power. She couldn’t take it anymore. “We’re not just going to sit here and wait. I can’t do that.”

Chris looked at her. “Well what do you think we should do?”

“Well, we’ve got those mechanical arms. What if we just try to push ourselves out with them?”

“They aren’t made to have the strength to push the whole sub, especially now that we’re pressing up against the ceiling of this cave.

“It can’t hurt to try.” Clara grabbed one mechanical arm and looked at Chris. “You going to help me?”

Chris grabbed the other arm. “All right. Let’s see first if we can even touch the cave walls.” He seemed to have regained some determination. Clara thought this was probably because he had something to occupy his mind. If he could focus on a possible solution to their problem, then she knew he didn’t have time to focus on what would happen if their problem couldn’t be solved.

Clara used the lever to slowly move the mechanical arm around in the darkness. It was odd to do this without being able to see where the arm was. She couldn’t eve tell if it was actually there; it may have fallen off in the collision with the cave walls.

“I’ve got nothing, how about you?”

Chris was still moving his arm around. She saw his motion stop short. “I’ve got a piece of the wall, I think. Let’s see if I can do this.” He put all his weight on the lever and pushed, so that the arm would be pushing towards the front of the sub; if this worked, the sub itself would move backward. Clara could see that his jaws were clamped together in the effort of trying to push the sub out of the cave.

“Nothing.”

“Well, let me help.” Clara came over and sat opposite Chris, the lever between them. “On three. One, two, three.”

Clara held onto the lever while leaning backward with all her weight. She felt the sub move slightly. Then it jerked, and Clara fell backwards. Chris fell forward, almost on top of her.

Chris quickly got up. “Damn it.”

“What happened?” said Clara.

“The arm snapped. It’s not like it would have worked, anyway. We don’t have enough strength to push fourteen tons, even if it is in the water.” He sat back down, this time on the ground.



It was another four hours before they spoke again. Now, they only had about thirty two hours of oxygen left.

She’d though Chris was asleep, but then he said, “If I could have chosen who would be down here with me—anyone in the world—I would have chosen you.”

Clara didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything.

“I mean, not the dying. But being here with me in my last moments."

More silence.

"Why didn’t you call me after graduation?” Chris stared in Clara's direction.

Clara still didn’t say anything and looked away. She didn’t want to talk about it.

Chris pressed on. “You kind of just disappeared off the face of the earth. You’d told me you were taking a year off and you’d be around Rhode Island somewhere. Why didn’t you call?”

“I don’t know. I have a habit of messing things up. I mean, look at my relationship with my parents. By the time I was eleven, they’d shipped me off to school in New Hampshire because they couldn’t stand me anymore. People just get sick of me.” Clara played with her lime green shoe laces.

“That’s not true. People don’t get sick of you. Most people I know from college wanted to know you better. I think you just don’t open up to people.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t. Most people don’t know lots of things about you—you don’t give them a chance to. You’re just a charming face at a party, or a smartass in class. You make people laugh, and then you vanish before they can ask what happened.” He slid across the floor of the sub so he was sitting next to her. “I think I’m one of the people who know you the best—I know you like Star Wars and that key lime pie makes your nose itch and that when your ears get itchy you think its because people are talking about you behind your back. I know that you cry when you watch Bambi and that you hate mint toothpaste.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I called you plenty of times, but you never answered. I e-mailed, and my e-mails were returned. So why didn’t you call me?”

“I didn’t want to talk to you, all right?” Clara looked up. She was yelling, but she didn’t care. “I wanted to remember my friendship with you as being happy. I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing. It was only a matter of time before my temper flared up and you hated me, just like everyone else I ever got close to.”

“Like who? You never get close enough to anyone.” Now Chris was shouting, and Clara slid away from him a little. Chris began to talk again, this time more softly. “I just figured you were sick of me or something. If that’s the case, it’s fine. But don’t lie to me and say that you were afraid you’d get mad at me or something.”

“You don’t understand, Chris. Do you want to know why I hate my parents? Because I got to know them. I know it sounds stupid, but it makes sense. I figured it out freshman year of college. As a little kid, you idolize your parents—you think they are perfect. When I found out that was a myth—that they weren’t perfect—I resented them for it.” Clara looked up. “You know, I was a mistake. I wasn’t even supposed to be alive. My parents got married because my mom got pregnant with me.”

“You’re not a mistake; you’re amazing. It doesn’t matter how—"

“That’s not the point. The point is that I find flaws in everyone I get to know. For instance, my best friend in elementary school was really nice and sweet. Sure, she had a few minor flaws—she’d snort when she laughed and sometimes boogers would fly out, and she often forgot to brush her hair, so it was like a giant rat's nest. But when we got to middle school, she started ditching me all the time. I had no idea why, and so I thought maybe I had done something wrong or something. It turned out that she was hanging out with this group of girls who were really snobby and mean. That’s not the problem though—the problem was that all of those girls, including my friend, found a new hobby of cutting me down every time they had the chance. I was so glad to get out of that place and start over at that boarding school—away from my parents and my classmates.”

Clara took a breath. She hadn’t talked about this to anyone, and it felt good to get it off her chest, even if she was stuck in a dark submarine.

“And then, when I went to the boarding school, pretty much everyone already had friends. I spent my time reading about different countries, imagining myself traveling. So, naturally, I got to know the geography teacher pretty well—Mr. Herman. He was really nice to me. He let me do my homework in his office after school, helping me where he could. We talked about different countries and customs, and he even gave me cookies once and a while.” She wasn’t sure if she should continue talking, but she couldn’t stop; she closed her eyes so that she could pretend that Chris wasn’t there. “But, obviously there was more to him than I thought. One day, after school, I was doing my homework in his office, as usual, and he shut the door behind him when he came in. He hit me a few times, and then—“ She grabbed her knees. “And then he—he made me do stuff. I—I don’t want to talk anymore.”

She felt Chris’s arm on her back, but then she felt it lift quickly. She just sat there, her head buried between her knees. She wasn’t crying. She was just embarrassed. It was a long time ago, and she’d dealt with it in her own way.

“Clara, I—“ Chris stopped, and Clara looked up.

“It’s fine. I didn’t mean to say all that. I just couldn’t stop talking—It’s like it wanted to come out. It was a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I told you, it was a long time ago.” Clara looked at Chris. His head was leaning on his own shoulder, and his hands were in his pants pockets.

“No, I’m sorry for getting you this job. It’s my fault you’re here.”

“No, it’s not. You are the smartest person I know. Look at me, Chris. You are the smartest person I know. You couldn’t have known we’d get stuck down here.”

Clara knew no one was there to help her anymore. No one could reach them. She shivered. This was the last place she would be, this death trap. She couldn’t stand it. She put her hands on her hips and stood up straight. “Let’s say we take our fate into our own hands.”

Chris looked up. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, do you want to wait ‘til we die from suffocation? Let’s just do it ourselves.”

“What, do you think I carry a gun or a knife down here or something? What are you talking about? We probably still have enough oxygen for at least twenty-four hours. Something could happen.”

“Nothing’s going to happen. There are no currents this deep, so we’re not going to get pulled out of here. Plus, the oxygen gauge isn’t working; we won’t know we’re out of oxygen until we can’t breathe, and then we won’t have enough strength to do it.”

“What—”

Clara looked at the entry portal, and knew that now Chris understood what she was thinking. “It’ll be quick. We’ll be crushed by the pressure before we even get a chance to exhale.” She was shaking, but she ignored it.

“O-Okay.” He was shaking too.

“Let’s turn the wheel to the portal together. You ready?” She grabbed his hand and squeezed it.

He squeezed back. “Wait—Clara, I love you. I’ve loved you since I met you, and I’ve wanted to tell you, I just—I was real glad I bumped into you in Spain. I mean, I’m not anymore, but—”

“I love you, too.” She squeezed his hand again, and then bent her head down slightly to kiss him. The distinction between friend and lover didn’t matter anymore to Clara. She knew that it was all love. They held each other for a moment, afraid of what they knew they had to do.

“Ready?” Clara said.

Chris nodded.

They began to turn the wheel together, and Clara realized that she couldn’t have thought of a better way to go—she was free of the land and free of the confines of the URI, giving herself over to the sea she loved with her best friend by her side.

I hope you enjoyed my story and aren't made too sad by the ending.
Comment if you wish :)