Guess what I've been doing?

Go on, you'll never guess.

And it has nothing to do with the photo which is, as usual, pointless. Hey, this blog got its name for a reason.

So, did you guess?

Nope, you're so wrong.

I've been reading palaeontology papers.








I can tell that you're underwhelmed. But don't you want to know why I'd choose to be doing something like that? Too bad, because I'm going to tell you anyway. It's for work. I'm doing some research for a display (a palaeontological display, oddly enough), and when you're doing research for a palaeontological display it becomes necessary to read a few palaeontology papers.

It becomes necessary, yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it becomes fun.

They're in a different language, you see. Some sort of impenetrable jargonisticable pseudolatin nightmare that really starts melting the neurons after a while.

I feel like I have brain puddles coming out of my ears.

There was a time when I could have made a bit more sense of this palaeospeak, of course. It was twenty years ago and even then I would have been much more comfortable with pseudolatin biospeak, but if you gloss over the geology parts (which I have to anyway, since I don't know squat about any of that) biospeak and palaeospeak are definitely very closely related.

And neither of them are English.

And on a completely unrelated topic, is it wrong that I've been skipping over all of the Jackson Five songs that keep coming up on the internet oldies station I'm currently listening to while I try to make sense of the palaeopapers? Sorry, MJ, but I hit Jackson overload daaays ago.

Anyway.

Don't get me wrong about all of this science lingo. I know that it exists for a reason. Hell, I spent four years of my life immersed in -- and, frankly, sort of enjoying -- that kind of thing. My problem at the moment is that it's reminding me how far removed I've become from that time in my life when I would have understood all of the words (well, most of the words) without having to dust off the ancient lexicon stashed way back in the recesses of my brain library.

I can't speak fluent geek anymore, and I'm kind of bothered by that.

It's like the day a few years back I pulled one of my old dissection manuals off the shelf (yes, I've kept my old dissection manuals. They come in handy more often than you might expect) to look up something for a program, and was struck by all the handwritten notes inside. Well, not literally struck. That would be weird, my own handwriting striking me. Um, yeah. What (metaphorically) struck me was that there were pages of notes, all in my left-handed scrawl, obviously done on the fly (well, not a literal fly... yeah, I'll stop) in the lab... and that I didn't even know what half of the words mean now. I'm sure they mean the same things that they did then (no, really. I'll stop for sure this time), but the meanings themselves have fallen out of my brain.

Sad, that.

And kind of makes a person wonder how much else has fallen out of her brain.

It happens to all of us, I know, but it's just not a happy thing to be confronted with by a desk full of palaeontology papers.

Speaking of which, I suppose I should get back to them...





Yeah.

Later, then.