Covering relation Puns

Trevor loved tractors. And I mean, really loved tractors. Forget any obsessions or high-level interests you may have, chances are they pale in the face of Trevor’s love for tractors.

Every day Trevor would get up, in his tractor-themed bedroom in his tractor-themed house, with its tractor-themed wallpaper and tractor-themed carpets, and he would make his bed with its tractor-themed duvet and tractor-themed sheets. He would go downstairs in his tractor-themed pajamas into his tractor-themed kitchen, with its tractor-themed tiles and cupboards, and he would eat his breakfast while perusing the latest tractor-themed magazine or annual.

Trevors’s degree in Agricultural Engineering hung on his living room wall, along with a copy of his thesis, which centred around (you guessed it) tractors. The living room was decorated with all sorts of tractor-related trinkets, including die-cast models, paintings and drawings.

The hedges in Trevor’s front garden were trimmed in the shape of tractors. His lawn was vividly decorated with tractor-driving garden gnomes, and his garden furniture was constructed from various parts from vintage tractor designs.

Trevor just had one thing missing from his otherwise tractor-centric life; he had never actually owned, nor driven, a real tractor.

Not for his lack of trying, of course. Trevor had been to many tractor shows over the years, and visited many farms with friends of his, but none of the tractors he had seen had ever been quite right. Trevor was so knowledgeable about tractors that every single one he had come across had possessed some hidden trait that he wasn’t keen on. His first experience of driving a real tractor had to be perfect.

One day, Trevor was flicking through one of his favourite publications, Powertrain Quarterly, when there was a knock at the door. Trevor answered, and it was his friend and fellow tractor enthusiast, Jeff.

Trevor welcomed Jeff in, and over tea and crumpets served on tractor-themed crockery, they discussed the merits of aluminium drawbars and front-end loaders. Eventually Trevor pressed Jeff to explain the reason for his visit.

“Well” said Jeff, “As I’m sure you know the convention comes to town later”.

The convention. Trevor had been thinking of little else the past three weeks. The neighbouring town annually threw a convention for farmers, particularly farmyard machinery. There would be combine harvesters, lawnmowers, and of course, tractors.

“Yes of course” replied Trevor

Back a few decades, I was working in a program with a local college in the Middle East.

The name of the program for ExPats has the clever acronym of "IDEA" (hey, I said it was clever); which stands for "Inter-Departmental Educational Adjunct". It's interdepartmental because my particular specialty not only covers field geology but also paleontology and a bit of archeology thrown in for good measure. Everyone hopes to have a good IDEA...

ahem...

Well, we saddle up and head for the Dune Sea out in the west of the country, where the Precambrian, Cambrian, Silurian, Cretaceous, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene crop out and access is relatively easy and non-injurious.

Well, we caravan out, some 30 Land Cruisers, Nissan patrol, and the odd Mitsubishi Galloper strong. We all get our maps, compasses and split up into 5 or 6 special interest groups ("SIG's"); where each IDEA has his own GPS and LIDAR laser ranging apparatus. Reason being, that there are very few benchmarks out in the desert, and even those are constantly at the mercy of the shifting and ever-blowing sands.

Since we're split into groups and at any one time, ranging up to and including some 50 km2, when a real find is located, a device called the "DIME" (Digital-Interface Monitor Encoder) is attached and programmed into the GPS for location later; it is a digital sort of low-frequency transponder, developed from technology used by offshore drillers and jacket setters where benchmarks are even more transitory.

The way it works is rather simple. When something is to be marked for later retrieval, a series of wooden posts are pounded in a triangular manner around the find and the DIME is set, programmed with the GPS and attached to one or more of the posts.

That's the theory, at least.

Everything works well, especially all the hardened electronics and computer gizmos, but attaching the DIME to the stakes is the real problem. It can't be nailed, screwed or fastened with any sort of metal contrivance as that farkles the magnetic field and causes all sorts of goofy spurious signals. Zip ties don't last long in the heat and duct tape is right out. Many sites have been lost to the shifting sands this way.

Velcro doesn't work too well, as the sand fills the hooks of the receiving piece of velcro and soon renders it useless. String or fishing line work, but that's temporary (they melt). Glue or mastic are out as these are supposed to be temporary. Even plastic sleeves don't work due to the heat out

So, my dad could be considered a regular jokester. He had his dad jokes, his dirty jokes, clean but provocative joke, setup jokes, everything. He never missed a chance to turn something into a joke for hinself, even, and perpahs especially, if it only amused himself. I found out at an young age that no situation is too serious for him.

I was around 9 years old and I was in the cub scouts, and it was box car derby season. I was in the dining room, carving away at my block of wood when the blade in my right hand skipped the wood and carved my left thumb. It fucking hurt and bled like a sonofabitch. I immediately starting screaming and my dad raced into the room and found me covered in blood, my left hand now with two thumbs. We get it wrapped and he drives me to the emergency room. By the time we got there the bleeding had stopped and I have stopped crying. As we pull up, my dad looks st me, shakes his head and says "We can't go in there like this, we'll end up waiting forever to see a doctor. You need to cry once we're in there and that'll help" I said ok, and he said as we were walking up, "I'll give you a signal to start crying." How will i know, i asked him snd he just said i'll know. We go inside and walk up to the admittance desk. I'm short, so at the time my head just cleared the desk. My dad tells the nurse that we have a cut, and need to see a doctor right away. The nurse pushes paperwork at him and he tells her again, this time that its a real bad cut. The nurse finally looks at me for the first time and she frowns, because im relatively normal looking, even though im hurting and nervous, waiting for my dads signal. My dad pulls me back a bit and her eyes widen really big when she sees all the dried blood caked on the lower left side of my body. She starts getting excited and says "Ohmygoshohmygosh" over and over and this point im starting to get scared when my Dad, in a serious voice says "Its even worse than it looks! You're going to have to take the whole hand!"

Then I start crying.

New Year's Day... The start of a fresh 365 sunrises that symbolize a turning point in lifestyle and spending the entire day recovering from a dreadful hangover. Like many other people in America, this relatively fake holiday is a time that I spend with my family. One of my family's many traditions (alongside annihilating plates of buffalo wings and watching college football until we pass out on the couch) is watching the Rose Parade. At the very beginning of the event, before all of the flower-covered floats and high school bands came marching down the street, there was an introductory ceremony complete with a B-2 stealth bomber flyover. As soon as they passed by, zooming out of the camera's frame, my dad leans in closer to me and says "Well I sure didn't see that coming!"

Today I lectured to medical students. I invited a fellow faculty member to the lecture, but did not see him. His name is Gene.

The lecture was on pain processing. Part of the lecture covers the role of CGRP, or calcitonin gene-related peptide.

The email I get after lecture:
"Nice job. I didn't even know that I was related to calcitonin peptide!"