I don't know if the theme this week is just, "Hey, let's make the whole office incompetent at doing our jobs," or what, but. I went in yesterday to pick up, like, a hotspot because I was doing data entry at one of our sites that was located in the city, so it was like a ten -- not even a ten minute drive from our office. And I was looking for a hotspot because the previous few weeks, there were some, there were some difficulties connecting to our VPN -- to the site's Wi-Fi. And so, of course, I was, like, freaking out. And come to find out. I was like, “Okay, can -- where --" So I FaceTimed somebody. I was like, "Where are the keys to our office supplies? Like, our additional office supplies." And they were like, "Oh, it's on this desk." I FaceTimed this person because I was like, “They're not there.” So I sent like a whole group text to everyone in the office, and I was like, "Hi, guys. Does anybody have a hotspot, and also, do you know where I can find keys in order to get into these sorts of things? And -- or these lockers or these cabinets, whatever it is." And our postdoc ended up texting and said, "Oh, yeah, I took the keys home,” that the PI didn't want them laying out in the open.  Okay, well why not lock the keys that the office needs somewhere on site where everyone in the office knows where they are because you're not the only one who goes in. So I was annoyed, and then she texted me. She's like, "Do you need me there? I can be there in 30 minutes." And I was like, "Yeah, sure. That's fine." It's not like two -- that these are keys that no one else in the office can replicate. The whole floor uses the same key, so I ended up finding one and checked, and by the time the -- our postdoc came, I had already looked through all of the cabinets, but I still looked to make it -- because -- yeah. I was just -- I just had it up to here, and she -- ‘cause she lives a walk away, but she's like, "Oh, it's gonna take me 30 minutes to get dressed, and everything." And then she…

A time I had to worm my way into a small space -- a couple of times. One time was to fix the -- to fix the plumbing under my sink because when we had built our house, my, my husband had done a lot of the finished plumbing. And we kinda used what, what we -- what was available, and you know, we’re always trying to kinda cut corners a little bit, and --  So the PVC didn't quite -- the PVC was just a tiny bit short on the kitchen drain, so it lasted the -- you know, for a long, long time. But eventually the -- it was kind of stretched to made it fit and then tighten it down, but then eventually that didn't, that didn't hold it anymore. So, I had put it together many times, and then eventually it would break apart at -- usually at the worst times, and then it would flood -- flood my whole under the counter, and, and sometimes I didn't realize that for a while. So it was a -- it was something that needed to be fixed.  So I decided I was just gonna -- PVC is not that hard to cut with the hacksaw. I was just gonna get the pieces I need, get all new connectors and the whole thing, and just redo it myself. So -- and that was the easy part, thinking about that, and planning it out, and cutting the pieces. But the hard part was actually -- because I have short arms, and I'm not that skinny, and I'm on the floor, which is already uncomfortable, trying to reach into this tiny little space with a body that's just a little bit too big to fit in there, but I got it done. It took me, it took me a lot of attempts and a lot of repositioning to get it done, but I got it done.  People were kind of impressed that I was able to do that all myself, but it's basically just PVC, and you just cut it, and you’re not going to ruin much if you don't cut it big enough. You go up -- have to go back to the hardware, and, and get another piece and, and start over. It’s not, not too expensive, it's not difficult, and it has not leaked since I finally…

When I was a little girl, probably, like, four or five years old -- um, I have a cassette tape of myself -- an audio cassette, and I'm singing, and I'm making up songs off the top of my head. And one of the songs that I made up was called "Lion Tang." T A N G. Lion Tang. And, I'm just singing like, "Oh, Lion Tang. Oh, Lion Tang." And I clearly remember what I was thinking. I was thinking it meant lions fighting. It’s a song about lions having a fight. They're having a tang, a lion tang.  And so I told my husband this many, many, many years later about Lion Tang. And in my mind, it wasn't just -- you couldn't -- you didn't just have to have a lion tang. I mean, it can be any animal having a fight. It's called a Tang. And so now, so now we’ll -- we look -- when we look out the window and we see, like, squirrels fighting, or, like, birds fighting, or cats fighting, we say, "Cat Tang. Squirrel Tang. Bird Tang." And that's our word for when we see two animals fighting. It's called a Tang, which is a word I made up when I was like five or six years old. Yup. I think it -- I think it, like, comes from, like, fang and tangle. I think that's what -- in my mind was, like -- I was thinking about a tangle with fangs was tang. Yeah. Like, I really do remember what I was thinking when I said that. So -- and that's what I meant.

Many, many, many, years ago when my son, who is now in his late 40s, was a baby, we had a dog, and back then, you -- they didn't have such good flea medications as they do now to keep their -- your animals from getting fleas and stuff, and we live in the country. And we got fleas in our house, and, and I don't know if you know anything about fleas, but they jump, and they jump on everything. Well, they seemed to like him in particular, you know, and I tried everything, trying to get rid of these darn fleas.  And my son had a doctor's appointment, he was just a baby, he had a doctor's appointment, and when I left to go to the doctor's appointment, I set off bombs in the house -- the bug bombs to get rid of the fleas. Anyway, took him to the doctor’s and we were talking about him, and I take his clothes off. I take his shirt off. He's got flea bites on him, and the doctor carefully ran her hand over the bites on his tummy, and she looked at me and she said, “Do we have a problem?" And I was so ashamed. Oh my gosh. I could have -- I wish there had been a hole in the floor that would have just opened up and swallowed me ‘cause I was so ashamed that my son had flea bites. So, for whatever reason, they really loved him.