Enjablog

Woo!

And for those of you who don’t camp out my blog all the time, my blog was down for like a day. I only noticed because I couldn’t update yesterday, so I don’t actually know how long it was down. Anyway, the hosting people fixed it, but didn’t tell me what was wrong with it. Whatever.

Tuesday — Went to a training workshop thingy in MD. Had to drive over the Bay Bridge. So scary. Mostly because I’m scared of driving over bridges. But that’s another story. Educational workshop. Not exactly what I was expecting, but I still learned from it. And made some good contacts. They all told me that even though I was asking about another one of the programs they sell (and not the one the workshop was specifically geared toward), I could email them with questions and they’d try to help me out. :)

Also ran into a former classmate there. He just happened to be walking past the corridor when I went out to get a donut. He was a couple years ahead of me at VT, so I just knew him in passing. He had some cool info for me about continuing education stuff in the area though. And keeps in contact with the same prof I email with every now and then. Small industry, I guess.

After the training thing, I headed home for a lengthy tour of the DC-metro area. I started by missing the exit for 295, then driving through DC looking for signs for either 395 or 495. Then, taking the 3rd street tunnel toward 395 and getting caught in the wrong lane in traffic and going to 295 instead. Ok, I can handle that. I’ll just take that until it hits 495. Except that when I got to 495, I didn’t know which side of the beltway I was on. I knew I wanted the inner loop, but the signs only had north and south. So, I picked the wrong north. Fortunately, I didn’t end up driving around the entire beltway, which there have been times I may as well have (New Year’s Eve 2003, anyone?). I got home eventually.

Wednesday — Got lunch with Ian at Chipotle! This is the first time we’ve gotten lunch together since we’ve started our new jobs within half a mile of each other (and of Chipotle). So much fun. I tried a barbacoa burrito for the first time. I can’t believe it took me this long. It was fantastic!

Thursday — Went to a Carnegie lecture with Sonny tonight. It was on olfactory senses, presented by a Nobel prize winner. It started out a little technical (a bit over my head), but he threw in some unexpected jokes and anecdotes to mix things up a little. I can see that the technical part was necessary to understand the rest of his lecture though. He worked on identifying the receptors associated with various scents and how the brain interprets them. Using drosophila (fruit flies), they were able to simplify the problem and found that a given scent was consistently mapped to the same areas of the brain. Sort of like a unique signature for every smell. Pretty cool stuff.

So, at work today, I filed my first complaint through HR. It was a pretty benign process. I sent an email to the HR director, she called me back and said I could come by her office any time. I had a meeting scheduled, so I said I’d stop by afterward. My meeting ran a little long, so I had a voicemail waiting for me when I got back: “I just wanted to let you know that I’m in my office, so whenever you get out of your meeting I am available to discuss… what we need to discuss.”

Anyway, stopped by for a chat. I gave her some examples of inappropriate behavior (asking if I’m a communist, telling me that my name is strange to Americans, asking if I’m affiliated with Maggie Moo’s [because my name starts with Moo], using the armrest on my chair instead of his own) and the tipping point: today’s incident. He came into my office for some work-related reason. Complimented my shirt, then asked me what it was made out of. I didn’t know, so I said that and guessed polyester or something. He reaches over to feel the texture of my shirt and then starts pushing my hair aside to check my tag.

I’m disappointed in myself because I missed my grand opportunity to kick him in the box. HR director took notes and said this would get passed to one of the higher ups (VP of Engineering or Director of Program something or others. You know, one of those important titled people.) to talk with him directly. I think after they have words with him, he’ll probably get a clue. I can only hope.