How much of a nerd am I?
You probably thought I was just being coy referring to myself as the Nerdy Scientist. However, to prove my nerdiness, let me tell you what happened last night.
Lady Scientist J's intern is leaving after a year with us to attend graduate school, so we took her out to a nice pizza place (where we've eaten before. Fancier than most pizza parlors, but still a friendly atmosphere; it's across the street from the university). J had bought her a going away present. Intern L opened it up, gasped, and started blubbering "Thank you! Thank you!" and held it up for the rest of us (6 other lady scientists) to see. We all gasped and started clapping. Everyone in the pizza parlor turned to see what was going on. Then they looked at us like we were crazy. J had given L her very own set of---calipers!!
They probably didn't know what calipers were, or why anyone would get so excited about one. But L will use them as as intrinsic part of her basic analysis, so it was a way of patting her on the back while also stating J's confidence in L's future. And she's starting to build her own tool set, which every scientist should have.
We carefully passed the calipers around, each admiring them. Lady Scientist (the other) J was eying them a little too covetously, as they were 16-inch calipers, and she doesn't have any this large (she has 12-inch). Original J told us that our general support person has made Lab 8 their own set of improvised giant calipers using yard sticks with metric notations on them (the accuracy has been tested, and they are remarkably accurate). There was much sighing of envy and mental notations to ask him to make one for other labs going on while munching of delicious salad and pizza began.
And that, Gentle Readers, is how nerdy we are.
ETA: Original typographic mistake labeled this one "In Which I Answer the Buring Question," which is way too close to 'boring,' as appropriate as that might have been! Okay, Nerdy Scientists like science and bad puns and stupid jokes.
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