This one time I went to Greece

I think I was a bit delusional when we flew into Athens.  I thought every city in Greece was like a scene in Mama Mia with dancing in the street and a donkey ride up to a white washed village followed by a visit to a club called the Parthenon.  Okay that last part was a dig on Shaq, but I really didn’t know what to expect especially given the recent economic unrest of Greece.

My husband, mother-in-law and I stayed with my husband’s family in Athens that consisted of a seventy-two year old man named Apostolos who spoke better German than English, a middle-aged woman named Despina who reminded me of Blanche Devereaux from the Golden Girls and her quiet older sister named Corelia.  They lived on different floors of an apartment building near Agios Eleftherios metro stop.   

Every evening we would listen to the news on the small television set in the living room which was in Greek.  I asked my husband’s great uncle Apostolos, “what are they saying?”  He answered very matter of factly, “they are talking about the economic situation in Greece.”

Later I would understand that new amounts of aid were given to Greece to avoid default but with that came more austerity measures including higher taxes, cutting pensions, laying off workers which lead to more strikes.  Constant images of Greek’s Minister of Finance Evangelos Venizelos flashed across the tv screen and he reminded me of John Candy and a sexier version of Jabba the Hut.

Meanwhile we stuffed our faces full of stuffed grape leaves, moussaka, pastitsio, and played the tourist.  We spent an afternoon in the hot sun walking along the ruins of the Parthenon while hearing stories of Greek mythology.  We visited an ancient olive tree with roots twisted around itself, saw marble bust after marble bust of Athena, visited the new Acropolis museum and saw a glorious sunset in Oia. 

In other parts of the city, a white haired shop owner installed an alarm since his store was broken into, air traffic controllers went on strike leaving passengers stranded, an older woman looked in a trash can for her stolen purse and medical tests, and thousands of protestors burned tax bills on the parliament steps.

On our last day in Athens, Pete’s family took us out to their neighborhood café and crowded twelve chairs around three small tables.  As we poured cloudy glasses of Ouzo and shared jokes in English amid a soccer game playing in the background, for a moment it was as though there was no political and economic turmoil.  We simply reveled in each other’s company, sharing a drink from across the Mediterranean sea.

This one time I wrote a newsletter for work about lasers

I set forth to learn the mystery of lasers just like Conan venturing out in the world discovering the riddle of steel.  Instead of a thief by my side, my tour guide was Charles Hubert, a Senior Staff Engineer at CVI Melles Griot.  He swiped me in the building and I entered an industrial-looking, open space with fluorescent yellow lights hanging overhead.  It was a cross between the hallways of my elementary school and my grandfather’s garage.  The linoleum floors were polished to a shine and the walls were lined with various charts that looked like they tracked productivity or sales.  It was three in the afternoon which is considered after hours so I only saw a handful of employees on my tour.  In close proximity of lasers you had to wear safety glasses and Charlie handed me a pair and told me not to look directly at the lasers lest they bore holes through my eyes. 

As we passed tubes of pink neon, Charlie explained that laser is an acronym which stands for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.  To put simply, light goes through a tube of neon gases which bounces around, gains energy and comes out at the end as a laser. 

We bumped into his one of his colleagues wearing fancy-looking safety glasses who showed me their blue helium cadmium lasers.  I asked what those lasers in particular did and he said that they created 3D representations of things before they are made out of metal.  I thought the laser melted the plastic but it actually has the opposite effect, it turns liquid plastic into solid plastic.  He explained that green lasers are used for eye surgery.  Yellow lasers are used for chemistry.  Red lasers are used for scientific applications like DNA sequencing or blood analysis and even lumber cutting.  Their lasers are also used in concerts, television shows and sporting events. 

In order to see how they actually make a laser, I had to wear a head bouffant, a surgical mask, latex gloves, shoe coverings and a smock that looked like my great aunt’s pajamas.  Charlie laughed and said I looked like a lunch lady.  Once we were ridiculously dressed, he led me in the DPSS work station which stands for diode pumped solid state lasers.  The room was really loud since they pump filtered air since they are more OCD than the Nicastro brothers.  He explained that their lasers can’t have any type of microscopic contamination or else it can change and block the action of the laser.  We met another colleague named Mark who looked even more ridiculous than I did since he had to wear a beard covering instead of a surgical mask.  He pointed to a laser work station that had a black square box the size of a small car battery with a tiny blue light inside.  Midgets and children must work there since the size of their instruments are so small and the optics and crystals are even smaller.  I asked Mark if there have been any laser injuries and he said that you can have minor degree burns on your hands and that papers have had holes burned through them. 

I took a deep breath and asked them my last question.  When I die and Crom asks me, what is the riddle of lasers, what shall I tell him?  They looked at each other and said, tell him the riddle is stimulated emission converting energy into a monochromatic beam of photons.  A smile crept on my lips.  Thank you, I whispered, knowing that I shall live forever in Valhalla.