But yeah, I had a cool interaction with a friend. This is a guy I worked with a couple years ago, and we've stayed in touch mostly through music. I think we played music together maybe a month ago? Something like that. But he sent me a short recording of a song he made, and it was good, and he just asked me for some feedback. I don't -- I forget exactly what he asked. I think he just generically asked me if I liked it and if I had any thoughts on it. I don't think he had anything specific on it.  But he did this really cool thing where the synth was matching the vocals. Like, playing the melody while the vocals were going, and I thought that was really cool. But I got to the chorus and I just thought it was a little bit busy, so I suggested, “What if you had -- what if you dropped, what if you dropped the synth from the chorus and then had it follow in an instrumental section where it played, and then the synth could shine, you know.” And I gave him a song reference, Avicii, "Waiting for Love," which is a song from, like, ten plus years ago. Actually, close to fifteen years ago, I think. And he said, “Yeah, cool, I'll check it out.” So that sounded good. And he got back to me this evening, and said he listened to the song and my suggestion made sense and he's going to try it out. And it was just really cool. It was a cool interaction.

Last year, a patron picked up some seeds from this huge pumpkin, and planted them over the winter. They started to grow in the summer, and she thought she had too many for the space that she had, so she brought them to my colleague and I, one for each of us, in, in a pot. Or in a bucket kind of thing. And I don't really have -- I, I didn't have a good space here, and I knew that I would kill it if I left it here, so I took it to my parents’ house and gave it to my mom. And she has, some years, had success in growing pumpkins or gourds out in this brush pile that they have in the backyard. Well, past the backyard. Like, beyond the backyard. So I gave it to her, but before I gave it to her -- so my, the patron left it outside of the library, right by the door, thinking that that was -- I thought, too -- that it was a good spot where I'd see it when I left. Well, I totally did not see it. So it got left there overnight, and the sprinklers came on that night, and completely filled it with water. Like, literally saturated the entire bucket. And it was, you know, basically overflowing, like, to the top with water when I found it the next morning. And I thought “Oh, great.” It was probably, at that point, like six inches tall, maybe. Maybe eight inches tall. So there, there was a plant growing out of it, at that point. So, there was again, six or eight inches above where the water was that was still above the seed level there, but I thought, “Oh, I've done it now.” Like, “I've already killed it. I didn't even, I didn't even give it a chance, and I already killed it.”  Well, I dumped the water. Like, just kept dumping, dumping, dumping, and t- -- you know, kept the soil in, but dumped the water out. And took it to my mom. And she planted it, and it grew. Like, it grew. The plant itself grew really well. Lots and lots of vines, lots and lots of flowers. She ended up getting two pumpkins that actually turned into pumpkins.  One of them was eaten when it was very small, and the other…

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio I just had a very magical evening last night. I had a girl over at my house! And, like, there are -- I know there's, like, so many other things that I have to do, but like, I had a girl over at my house! So it's like, I don't know. Everything, all the, the negative stuff kind of, like, doesn't feel as bad, and it was, it was just, it was so -- Oh my God. I don't even have the English words for it ‘cause it was just so, so --  Okay, so basically I, so I have this [name]. She’s really cute. Um, and we were, we’re in choir class together. And she recently came out as a girl, and so she doesn't have, like, a whole lot of feminine clothing. And so one thing I notice is, like, we're about, like, the same size. Physically. Like, as  people. And so I was like, “Huh. I wonder if you would fit into some of my old clothes when I dressed more fem- when I dressed more femininely.” And she was like, “Sure, why not? You know, I'll take any free clothes.” And so I went ho- -- so like, the last two weeks, I went home, and I rounded up all of my feminine clothes that have been sitting in, like, the bottom of closets. Not been worn for months, if not years. And I rounded them all up, and it was like, I got, like, a bi- -- like, a whole, it was like, a diaper box ‘cause it, you know. It's my parents that put it together, so that's the boxes that they had. Um, and like one, a big bag. And rounded them all up, took them back to my house up here. And so I was like, “Okay I got, like, a bunch of clothes for you, so you can come to my house and, like, try them on. We can have, like, a -- it’ll, it’ll be fun.” And so she, she came over last night, and I was really nervous at first ‘cause, like, “Oh my God, I'm gonna have a girl over at my house!”  It’s like, I mean, I've had friends over at my house who are girls, but it's like, it's like…

Tell us about a time you witnessed an illness spread to the point where people were quote-unquote “dropping like flies.” Well, that time when I took my fifth grade class to Chicago on a field trip. It's actually the entire fifth grade. So me and maybe five or six other teachers in this particular job. So a lot of fifth graders. And the plan was we would take a bus to I think South Bend or Michigan City, and then we took a train, I think, from Michigan City. We took a train from there into Chicago, to the Museum of Science and Industry. Great trip. It's wonderful, and so many kids hadn't even been out of the county, let alone been on a train or been in Chicago. It was a win all the way around.  Now our plan was, on the way back from Chicago, take a train back to Michigan City, get on the bus, and the bus stopped for dinner. At – I think it was Golden Corral. Is that the buffet? Whichever one is the buffet, we stopped there. And frankly, I did not organize this trip. I can't recall if we had this set up with Golden Corral or not. I tend to remember there being a lot of – it seemed like we were descending upon it. You know, people were out for, you know, their evening dinner and then here comes one hundred fifth graders. I imagine it was set up ahead of time. But regardless, what a frightening prospect regardless, if you're eating at Golden Corral that night, if you see us all coming,  And you're probably wondering where the dropping like flies part comes in. And I'll tell you. They had all-you-could-eat cotton candy, as well as everything else. And I remember, it was like a battlefield at some point. I remember the first kid coming over, you know, as us teachers were sitting and eating ourselves, and saying like, “Oh gosh, I just, I just threw up. I ate too much cotton candy.” And at first you're like, “Oh,” you know, “that's not good. We're in a restaurant, and a child has vomited, but you know, we'll take care of this.” And then a few moments later a second child threw up from eating too much cotton candy. And you know, we tried in vain to have them stop…

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. Okay, so, in Grand Ledge, there's a big quarry. And to get to the quarry, I think you have to go through Lincoln Brick Park. Now Lincoln Brick Park is basically just, from what I remember, is just a park that has a bunch of ruins in it. Like old brick buildings that have been knocked down, and all that's left is some, a couple walls of brick. And there used – ‘cause there used to be some old timey stuff going on there. And then there's this big quarry, the further you get in. And what we would do is, we would park on the side of the road and then we'd walk into Lincoln Brick Park in the dark. Pitch black dark. And then we'd walk through the park and get to the quarry. And there was a tree there that had a rope swing. And you could swing on the rope and land in the quarry. And we would do that at night, we would do it in, at like midnight and so we'd be swimming and in the dark underneath the moonlight, and it was really fun. And we'd bring a whole group of people, like ten people. And we'd all go swimming in the dark and jumping off those rope swings. But anyways, one time we were there, and we were dumb, ‘cause we parked right on the side of the road, to the – where the entrance of the park is. Like, why, why did we do that? I don't know. It was so obvious that we were there, we were parked there to go into the park. And so, the police came and found us. And as we were walking – we had already done our swimming, and we were walking back to our cars, and all of a sudden there's like, a police walking with us. And we didn't notice it because there was like ten of us and we're all in the dark and there's like another person walking with us that we didn't notice. And he just kind of joins in on the conversation. And then somebody's finally like, "What? Wait, who's that?" And then everyone stops like, "Who is that? What, what's going on?" And somebody goes "It's a park ranger!" And he…

I'm going to tell you the story of something that keeps coming back. It's definitely bigger than a black butterfly, probably about the size of a chicken, and is a 100% reminder of my father, who passed about 10 years ago.  When my father passed, he lost a lot of body functions. The ability to walk, and other things that go with aging. So when he passed, it probably -- certainly was for the better. So after we had my father's funeral and got done writing all the little thank you cards. We decided to go to the restaurant where we ate the last time with him. We all got in the car and lo and behold, what runs across the road in a spot where this particular bird is never, because there's so much traffic and there's definitely not open fields. It was a pheasant! We all said the same thing at the same time, we were so excited because that pheasant ran across the road. And, we knew that was my dad saying, “Hey! I'm okay! Look at me, I can run now,” because my dad was always associated with pheasants. And years ago, he used to hunt pheasants with his buddies and there's pictures of him and his buddies hunting pheasants. And he had them mounted on the wall and everything. Really enjoyed the pheasant. You don't see them around very much anymore.  So, my son gets married and that was not the best thing in the world because we had to watch him get married across the country via computer because of covid. His thoughtful wife wanted to make sure that my dad was part of it. So in her wedding bouquet, which was around -- on Halloween, she made sure that there were pheasant feathers in her bouquet.

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.