I'd arranged to meet Merry for dinner downtown, at my favorite Spanish place. The street curved gently in towards the left, and I got lucky and parked right in the crook of the bend, in front of the restaurant. It started raining lightly, so I was waiting for a while inside the TCBY across the street when Merry called and said she was getting a little closer. That's when I noticed a crowd gathering on the street outside and I headed out for a look. There were base jumpers giving a show, climbing up on the rooftops and swooping down while wearing these harnesses attached to black parachute-wings.

I got another call, and it was from Rob, a technician in the lab. He was crying hyserically and asking me the number of another postdoc. I tried reading of the number to him, but every time I finished, the number would change and I would have to say the new one. The phone screen was an old-fashioned LED one, so when some of the bars would blink, the numbers would be unreadable. I tried tilting it this way and that to get a better look, but it eventually stopped even looking like numbers anymore. So instead I asked Rob what the problem was. He said there was a technique that he was doing that was way too hard, and he was stressing out about it. I reassured him that there was nothing so hard worth crying about, and that either he wasn't taught it properly or that it isn't the type of assay that he should be left to do alone at night. He felt a little better after that, but Merry called and I switched over abruptly. She said she was going to start looking for parking.

During the call with Rob, I saw my sister standing in the crowd. She waited around with me, watching the jumpers. There were also people dressed up as the power rangers, climbing to the roofs and jumping off at lower heights. The guy in pink jumped off, flipped, and bounced right off his head and stuck a perfect landing. I was shocked, but figured that his rather large helmet must have contained some kind of shock absorber. The base jumpers were in their 20s, and one of the quartet bounded off, glided down the street for a bit, and bounced up above our heads and off the wall. He gave us the thumbs up and headed back for another go. I started to feel a bit guilty that Merry had to drive all the way up from New York for just one night's dinner. I called her up again and started to chat when I woke up.

posted by Larry at 9:31 AM