Brand-new, adorable and clueless

I'm one of those things. The 2-day old baby I held for an hour this morning is the other two things.

A friend of mine had a beautiful baby girl with a beautiful old-fashioned-newly-revived name. One of the perks of working in/right next to the hospital is being able to sneak out of the lab to go visit new babies, and I couldn't get enough of the perfect little 6 pound bundle of adorableness. Mom and baby were doing well so the visit was all smiles and oooh's and aaah's and awww's. Plus, brand-new baby and I share a birthday, which makes her extra special.

Clueless is me. Until graduate school I was an excellent student, getting mostly A's. In graduate school my grades are still good, but I just feel like I know next to nothing! In college I almost always understood the lecture material and any reading I did. Now, on a good day, I understand about a third of what people say around me. They speak in acronyms and super secret science lingo and when everyone nods in agreement or makes appropriate gestures and facial expressions, the last thing I want to do is ask what they're talking about. I usually have a pad of paper on my desk with lists of words and questions that I google and look up in books. Most of the time this results in more words being added to my list and more google searches, which means more words on the list, and... you get the idea. However, ever so slowly, my command of the super secret science lingo is improving. I understand more words, terms, techniques and theories now than I did two months ago, and I like it. I no longer feel like the village idiot, but more like a clueless passerby who accidentally wandered in.

And now I'm going to wander out. The wonderful world of kitchen remodeling is waiting for me at Lowe's...