For the past FOUR (FRIGGIN YEARS???) I've been mostly M.I.A. on here - and I'd like to think I have some half-way decent reasons including working (one of my dream jobs) as a Biologist. Certainly a lot else has changed but that's neither here nor there for all intents and purposes I'll spare you the details for this proof.

I was hired on in March 2011 to a multi-national engineering firm's Oakland team of resident biologists and ecologists - an incredible group of people who make a lot of very important projects in California happen. Most engineering firms employ at most 5 biologists (or less, if any at all) for this kind of work but here in my office there are at least 30. Our job is to assess ours and other companies' projects from a biological resources standpoint and check for the presence of special-status species, conduct habitat assessments, etc. (as well as write up the reports afterward, but that part's a little less exciting).

It's awesome working here because it's the kind of place where people forget their snake gaiters on the copy machine, [here would be a photo of the copier w/gaiters atop it but i hear the uploader is broken]
have bowling parties with a Big Lebowski theme, accidentally release crickets that they had intended to feed to the tree frogs they keep in a terrarium in their cubicle, serve fake (but terrifyingly convincing) subpoenas to other coworkers as pranks during the holiday party no less, and make up fake business cards based on inside jokes. 

In general, I feel very humbled and grateful to work amongst such entertaining and talented folks - but as it exists we are still very much the minority within even the Oakland office (making up about only 10% of the total number of people within this office). That being said, we do occupy the majority of one floor of our building, creating a cohesive and highly peculiar work environment. One needs only to visit the other floors to get a reminder of the fact that you work for a multi-national corporation and that the majority of your coworkers outside of your group are of the collared shirt & khakis variety.

So, to represent the shenanigan-spirit of my floor within my company I posted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in our shared lunchroom.

Given my company works in over 40 countries worldwide, in addition to a copy in English I've also provided a copy in Esperanto. Just to cover all the bases.


Declaration posted: June 14, 2011
Last confirmed presence: Oct 18, 2011
Definitely no longer in lunchroom: Feb 22, 2012 - gee, can you tell I've been sitting on this praxis for a while? hello again everyone...