Thus Far…

June 25th, 2006 · 6:43 pm → Blog

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been back at Harvard for about a week already. Uneventful flight … well, except for me ordering “spicy tomato juice” as opposed to just normal tomato juice and finding out subsequently that margarita mix actually packs a kick. It wasn’t that it was too spicy, it was just — there was a kick, is the only way I can describe it (not a pleasant one I might add) . . .

On the first day I come back, I see my postdoc (Benjamin tenOever.. so Ben, since I know you search Google for your name CONSTANTLY… here’s another “sighting”) and he cand I exchange a few pleasantries before he fills me in on what’s been going on while I’ve been gone.

New vendor for our primers? Ok
Haven’t been able to sequence that protein? Cool
You think we should clean out our refrigerator boxes? You’re still a neat-freak I see, but that’s fine.
You’re thinking about putting me onto a project where I do your experiments on human cell lines to see if I can back up your mouse cell line data? Sounds tricky, but I’m up for it.
…
[topics continue for a while]
…
[topics finally finish]

So, I”m about to get to work, and then he throws in casually at the end:

“Oh, and by the way, I’m getting married.”

=-O

I ask him for the story and he “casually” talks about how he didn’t do anything too special and just while they were talking about what they wanted to get for dinner she asked, “So… what do you want?”

And Ben, the sly sly devil he is, responds: “How about we… get married?”

And busts out the ring (which is pretty nice.. as he is only a postdoc, I’m positive he must have laundered money somewhere to pay for it) and to which his fiancee starts running around screaming and being happy (and I’m sure Ben just wanted her to get it over with so he could ACTUALLY get on with dinner).

So I nod…

Of course, then Sze (who is the grad student who works closest with Ben and who works in the room that I use most often) chimes in to tell the real story. And I find out that Ben, who pretends to not be a sap but actually is, went up to Vermont or something like that to buy a ring, and calls up his soon-to-be-father-in-law to ask for permission to marry her and apparently was too excited after buying the ring to plan anything and so he just popped the question.

Awwwwww