two defeats and a victory
Oct. 4th, 2004 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trocheeSo this evening has been a real mixed bag.
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trochee blows a meeting
I got distracted at the end of the day (reading phonetics) and forgot to go get on the bus for a committee meeting for the TV studio. Whoops. I feel bad; it's a volunteer operation and I should really show up for meetings. I wrote an email to the Exec Dir apologizing about 15 minutes before the meeting started. I hope she got it.
trochee fails to stop the thieves
So with guilt and heavy heart, I caught the bus home. Halfway there, two young teenage boys get on the bus and rush back to the back corral, where I'm sitting, reading "Principles of Semitic Word-Structure" (see my previous post). They put a backpack on their lap, and proceed to discuss where the best place to get "sick" headphones are (at "Bose", pronounced /'bozi/, heh), and rifle through the contents of the backpack, pulling out bit after bit and holding it up and admiring it. And these items clearly did not belong to these boys: one item was a woman's silver bracelet that incorporates a watch, which one said "oo, I want that, I'll wear it just for the time." The other snaps it around his own wrist and admires the look, and he actually said "dayum, bling bling". I finally couldn't hold it any longer.
"Hey, that backpack can't possibly belong to you guys."
"What! how would you know?" one said belligerently, confirming my suspicions.
"Um. that bracelet really suits you, you know. It looks like it's just your style. The first thing I thought when you got on, you know -- 'that guy, he looks like the kind of guy who always wears women's jewelry." The boy looks at me sideways (is this guy serious?). The other looks at me sullenly, and puts the things back in the backpack. "Where did you get it?" I ask. The first boy joins the second in staring at me darkly, but there are advantages to having more rings in my tree-trunk than the two of them combined, and I continue to look at them openly and directly. But nothing happens. They sit. I finally relent, and point out to the boys that the bus we're on isn't going where they want to go anyway: the bus behind goes downtown, but this one stops on the Hill.
"oh s**t, man, really?" Suddenly, they can both speak. "Oh man, let's go -- ring that bell -- we'll get off here." These guys move fast. After they get off, I walk up to the front of the bus to talk to the driver.
"They didn't steal it on the bus," says the driver, after I explain. "Not much I can do." Feeling a little defeated, I go back and ride the rest of the way home. I'm not much of a hero.
trochee is accepted to a conference
When I got home, I got the news that my abstract was accepted to the Linguistics Society of America conference in San Francisco in January. I'll be presenting in the Computational Linguistics session. (There are keynotes by Ladefoged, Bybee, and Lakoff!) Nice to be recognized in this area. The downside here is that now I have to prepare the talk, not just the abstract. I was prepared to be rejected because I figured they wouldn't know how to use what I'm doing.
trochee blows a meetingI got distracted at the end of the day (reading phonetics) and forgot to go get on the bus for a committee meeting for the TV studio. Whoops. I feel bad; it's a volunteer operation and I should really show up for meetings. I wrote an email to the Exec Dir apologizing about 15 minutes before the meeting started. I hope she got it.
trochee fails to stop the thievesSo with guilt and heavy heart, I caught the bus home. Halfway there, two young teenage boys get on the bus and rush back to the back corral, where I'm sitting, reading "Principles of Semitic Word-Structure" (see my previous post). They put a backpack on their lap, and proceed to discuss where the best place to get "sick" headphones are (at "Bose", pronounced /'bozi/, heh), and rifle through the contents of the backpack, pulling out bit after bit and holding it up and admiring it. And these items clearly did not belong to these boys: one item was a woman's silver bracelet that incorporates a watch, which one said "oo, I want that, I'll wear it just for the time." The other snaps it around his own wrist and admires the look, and he actually said "dayum, bling bling". I finally couldn't hold it any longer.
"Hey, that backpack can't possibly belong to you guys."
"What! how would you know?" one said belligerently, confirming my suspicions.
"Um. that bracelet really suits you, you know. It looks like it's just your style. The first thing I thought when you got on, you know -- 'that guy, he looks like the kind of guy who always wears women's jewelry." The boy looks at me sideways (is this guy serious?). The other looks at me sullenly, and puts the things back in the backpack. "Where did you get it?" I ask. The first boy joins the second in staring at me darkly, but there are advantages to having more rings in my tree-trunk than the two of them combined, and I continue to look at them openly and directly. But nothing happens. They sit. I finally relent, and point out to the boys that the bus we're on isn't going where they want to go anyway: the bus behind goes downtown, but this one stops on the Hill.
"oh s**t, man, really?" Suddenly, they can both speak. "Oh man, let's go -- ring that bell -- we'll get off here." These guys move fast. After they get off, I walk up to the front of the bus to talk to the driver.
"They didn't steal it on the bus," says the driver, after I explain. "Not much I can do." Feeling a little defeated, I go back and ride the rest of the way home. I'm not much of a hero.
trochee is accepted to a conferenceWhen I got home, I got the news that my abstract was accepted to the Linguistics Society of America conference in San Francisco in January. I'll be presenting in the Computational Linguistics session. (There are keynotes by Ladefoged, Bybee, and Lakoff!) Nice to be recognized in this area. The downside here is that now I have to prepare the talk, not just the abstract. I was prepared to be rejected because I figured they wouldn't know how to use what I'm doing.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-05 03:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2004-10-05 03:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2004-10-05 04:06 am (UTC)Sweet! I look forward to seeing your thoughts on and experiences with the conference.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-05 04:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-05 07:18 am (UTC)Look forward to seeing you and of COURSE you're more than welcome to stay w/ us :)
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2004-10-05 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-05 06:05 pm (UTC)As for the boys on the bus. Oh dear. I'm not sure just what alternatives you have in this kind of situation, though. They didn't steal it on the bus, as the driver said.
And a BIG congrats on getting accepted for the LSA confernece! That's great! Is this work that you've already done or will you have to be doing it as well as writing it up for presentation?
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2004-10-05 07:49 pm (UTC)Congrats on the conference !!! And you get to go somewhere else for a bit !
I want to hear details about what your talk is about ( hopefully it will make some sort of sense to me... )
About the thieves, it's a good story but bummer for the people it was stolen from.. Good for you for trying to do something about it though. The bus is always crazy. I always see people being mean to their kids on the bus and it's so hard not to say anything to them. It always makes me so sad to see people completely inept at raising children.
(no subject)
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From:no subject
Date: 2004-10-06 01:07 am (UTC)have i mentioned that my