Stone Monkey

... that funky monkey.
And while the rest of today's Bubonic Plague Luncheonette entry has nothing to do with the title, I was in somewhat of a whimsical mood, and as such decided to type a random letter and use whatever my web browser auto-completed the title field with (some of you may guess that it refers to a database entry I once made regarding my poor D&D gnome, Pippa, and her lawn-gnoming escapades).
But once again, I digress.
Today's entry will be somewhat unfulfilling, as my bucket of usual drivel seems to be showing up rather dry at the moment. The commute this morning was somewhat uneventful, other than marking the offical renaming of the High Street exit on highway 80 to "The Puke Stop." I fortunately did not make use of the quick-draw double-bagged in-case-of-emergency-hurl-here setup, and arrived to work relatively on time for orientation. Actually, one noteworthy observation my mother made was the fact that last week I actually puked right on the city limit line between the city of Oakland and the city of Alameda. At this time I invite all my poor readers to feel thankful for the fact that I haven't yet made a slide show of "landmarks where I've blown lunch" and shown it, much like the way families often make horrid vacation slide shows. Nevertheless, despite the pleasant car ride conversation, the rest of today proved somewhat uneventful.
After wasting a good amount of time attempting to decipher the user interfaces for all three pieces of lab equipment (none of them analog... damn those digital scopes!), I ended up finishing my testing ahead of schedule, and was thus left with a chunk of free time while my boss was in a 3-hour long meeting. I was actually kind of amused by the fact that I got to explain to another new intern (whose boss didn't give her anything to do on her first day) all the research and experiments I was doing, and taught her a few oscilloscope/circuit/powersupply/signal generator debugging tricks - damn but that's an ego booster. Nothing like being able to pretend like you know what you're doing and actually have other people believe you!
Actually, the intern - Theresa's her name, I think - was fairly amusing too. She's apparently got her entire life already planned out: age to get married, who to get married to, how many Children McNuggets she'll be having, career, role in the PTA, everything. Makes me feel immature for my age when people younger than me seem to be getting the jump on growing up and I'm still enjoying making jokes about loose bowels whilst pretending to be "drunk" on soda with a bunch of roleplayers. I guess the only upside to this is that while she's already angsting about choosing to be a stay-at-home mother over her future career when the time for Children McNuggets comes, I'm still enjoying jokes that end with the punchline "Honey Bunches of Dead Babies." Maybe that makes me a bad person. Bad bad bad. But at least I know that Gugu appreciates that joke (right?!).
Speaking of bad jokes, I've decided that the next Tor Aquillonian who makes the mistake of letting me name him will be named Jacques Eitch. Perhaps I shouldn't be thinking about this too much, lest a Jacques Eitch visit dreams induced by my before-bedtime snack.
Coincidentally, Max drew my attention to the Legends messageboard earlier this evening, where, it seems, he's posted another strange dream induced by a before-bedtime snack and also involving Steve. Therefore, Max has suggested to ask readers to help us formulate some sort of theory linking these events. Fabulous front-row tickets to the Alchemist's Iditarod will go to the author of the best explanation. I hear the race is going to be close this year - be sure to ask the Great Arabundi or myself before calling your bookie, we've got the insider tips.
I fear for the day that Max and I decide that wish to become NPCs - we've already decided if one goes, the other does too, and woe be the day they let us get our hands dirty with plot writing ("Next, on All My Gem Monks..."). Here's to you, Max.

Further bulletins as events warrant.