the secret of my name revealed!
2005-08-02

This all started as a guestbook reply to G., re: her encounter with scary Nazi reference guy.

Once at my old job I was talking to a German guy on the phone because that was the sort of thing you DID. Anyway he thought my ancestors came from Bavaria because of my last name and I was like "Huh, huh, maybe." The thing is, my last name IS a German name. My long-ago paternal ancestor didn't like his name, so he just picked something German when he had to sign the book at Ellis Island. At least that's the way I heard it. Nobody can spell my name anyway so I think he picked WRONG.

The German guy was really nice, though, which was rare enough. Plus many famous people are from Bavaria:

- Werner Herzog
- Hitler, of course

Of course, none of those people were alive at the same time as my ancestor (well, maybe Hitler, but he was probably still trying to make a go at painting).

I'm two days now into employment. It's all very odd as it's a small company. So small that there are no individual cubicles, but instead these sort of four-person groupings, so I have a person to my right and two behind me. At my OLD JOB I had my OWN OFFICE but obviously it didn't do me much good. Hopefully my mad label-making skills will count for something in this new environment.

Ah, best headline ever: "Astronaut to employ ingenuity in repair."

Actually it makes sense, better than "Astronauts' lives depend on hacksaw" or "Astronauts atomized due to faulty blanket."