I AM A WOMAN!! (hear me roar?)

Granted, you might have known that already. But today I graduated into REAL womanhood - I wore these new Steve Madden shoes, bought in Atlanta this past weekend, to work today with my normally-too long jeans, so that the hem of the jean just brushed the floor and the rounded toe of the shoe peaked out. Me, in moderately-heeled shoes. At my real life job. I'm so hip. Don't worry, I'm still the same person inside and will be back to my Birks and sneakers tomorrow.

Fluids always has been my favorite subset of ME (that's "potions" to the younger Shaw), and only partially because I wanted to adopt my professor as my third grandfather (oh Dr. S, you were so cool). Today I got to calculate head loss and flow rates galore, finding pipe length equivalents and Cv and oh my! It was neat to being doing something that was such a clear, direct application of something I learned in school (and to find that with a little prompting and thought, I even remembered the theory behind it, and not just the calculations to solve). As helpful as school was in doing the job I am now, the most valuable skill I seem to apply most often to get work done is my ability to use the internet. You can fix any oil problem with the help Google. Seriously -- at a group meeting this week, someone asked a question of the rest of the team if anyone had encountered that particular problem before or was familar with common solutions, and when no one spoke up, the group lead said "Google it." Yes. I love billion dollar company's solutions to problems their engineers don't know right away.

In other news, I HATE THE JEFFERSON PARISH WATER DEPARTMENT. 'Hate' is a very strong word. I realize this, and intend for the word to carry its full weight. HATE. Ugh, now I feel bad and overjudgemental because the woman I spoke to on the phone was really nice, so I'll go with mildly disdain. I MILDLY DISDAIN THE JEFFERSON PARISH WATER DEPARTMENT.

Local government billing departments (parish = county for you non-Louisianans) are understandably LOST after this whole hurricane mess. I understand. But you charged me $3.73 for the voluntary recycling program I signed up for, AND HAVEN'T EVEN MANAGED TO PICK UP MY REGULAR HOUSEHOLD TRASH. IT'S IN A HUGE PILE, ALONG WITH THE DRYWALL, BEER BOTTLES, AND ROTTING POO OF MY 5 OTHER CONDO NEIGHBORS. The parish website says that recycling services have been stopped until further notice, which is FINE -- there's too much dead body-mutilated house-rotting stench trash in this city to worry about rinsing my half gallon milk jug -- but don't nickel and dime me for it! Then again, the recycling debacle is nothing compared to my compulsory payment for Lafreniere park ($2.26), which I didn't even know EXISTED, not to mention that it's currently being used as a TRASH DUMP. I'M PAYING FOR A GREEN-SPACES TRASH DUMP -- that I'm not even using because YOU AREN'T PICKING UP MY TRASH.

It's the moral here, not the measly $6. I wanted answers and to have my frustrations heard (even if Betty Sue on the other end of my nicely-said tirade just told me, "I'm sorry ma'am, you're going to have to call these other two numbers to find out. We're just the collection agency"). So I waited 58 minutes on the phone, said my piece for 3, and haven't gotten around to calling the other two numbers she gave me. And my trash is slowly growing legs of mold that I'm hoping will walk the whole pile to stupid Lafreniere park.

I'm off to the gym to run while watching this season's premiere of the OC. I can't wait to be an average TV-watching American who has a weekly routine of watching one particular show. I've tried to play this game before, though, and I suck at remembering every week. And I thought I was so good at routine, too. Ugh.

Oh! One more thing - did you know that carrots were originally dark, dark, dark and the Dutch genetically got the random African orange strain to dominate as an homage to their royal family? Check it out: about ten lines down (I love Alton Brown :))