The Odd Duck Creeper

As promised, Part Two of my sexual harassment blog on “Creepers”

*Names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

Last July, as a present to myself for my 40^th birthday, I decided to splurge and get my manuscript, Torched, professionally edited. It was a great learning experience and a lot of fun working a professional editor. But I thought I would relate a humorous conversation she and I had about my manuscript.

***Summarized this conversation for brevity, but you’ll get the point.

Editor: I really like your antagonist, Dennis. He’s a really great character. You have your romance going on in the foreground with creepy little Dennis in the background watching and plotting. How did you come up with him?

ME: Well, it’s funny you should ask that. There’s this one guy I used to work with, and he was kind of socially awkward. When I was working on my masters, I would stay in my office after hours late at night and work on my homework. He would come into my office and stare at me until I would notice him.

Editor: Wait—WHAT? Your serial killer is based on a real person? He would come into your office and stare at you?

ME: Uh—yeah. Really, it’s not as bad as it sounds. He was just a little awkward. He would just stare at you silently until you noticed him, then he would talk. Usually I just told him I was busy and he would go away.

Editor: OMG! That’s creepy.

ME: He just wanted to talk to someone. He would even bring me presents.

Editor: Presents? What?

And the more I talked and tried to convince her this wasn’t weird, the weirder it sounded.

Working in any field I think you encounter what I like to call, the ODD DUCK. If you have ever seen office space, he’s the Milton Waddams. Quiet, unkempt, usually not very popular. You won’t find him as the life of the office party. He’s usually hanging out in the corner by himself, just watching.

This particular co-worker of mine was an absolutely brilliant engineer and highly educated when you started talking to him. He and I often worked on jobs together so I got the chance to get to know him a little better than most. I also got to know more of his darker side. While brilliant, he had a definite chip on his shoulder when it came to women. Highly misogynistic, he would make terrible comments about women, but quickly follow them up with, “I’m just being honest.” And, of course, “I don’t mean you Daniella.”

He knew that I was an avid reader and a writer. I enjoy reading all genres, both fiction and non-fiction. Though when he found out that I wrote romance, this didn’t set well at all (even though I told him I wrote horror as well).

“Daniella you need to lay off that romance crap and read more war and killing stuff.”

He started bringing me presents. Which believe it or not were highly educational. One of his hobbies was history. He was really into history related to war. So he would bring me books, and being the person that I am, I’ll never turn down a free book. Usually he’d bring me non-fiction books or movies about war and killings. He did give me a fictional movie about the Templars, saying as he brought it into my office late one night after staring quietly at me for a while, “This is full of that romance crap you like. I’m sorry I bought it.”

Now before you think I was the only target of his affections, I wasn’t terribly worried because he did this to others. He would come into the office and stare at my alternate (who was a guy) and try to strike up conversations. From my interactions with him, I got the impression he had some sort of broad-spectrum autism. He often had difficulty just talking to people and would often wind up saying something incredibly in appropriate or offensive. To be honest, even though he could be quite insulting at times (and a little creepy the staring thing did get to you after a bit). I really felt that he was just kind of lonely. Having been somewhat of an outsider myself most of my life, I can relate.

So that was OD1. Let me relate the story of OD2…

*OD2 is reviewing a drawing package with me in my office. Not an unusual event as part of both our jobs. OD2 is also a little on the older and heavy-set side and has just come in from outside, so I presume that’s why he’s breathing like Darth Vader. He always does this, so I just shrug it off. He continually mumbles to himself while we go over the electrical portion of the work to be done on the project. He’s one of my odd customers that I deal with on a frequent basis here in Prudhoe and while I don’t mind his mumbling and heavy breathing, the smell of his greasy hair and his unwashed FR clothing does get to me after a while.

I’m sitting in my chair and he’s talking me through the scope of the electrical work as he leans over the one-line drawing, pointing out the changes he makes a strange snort. A glob of green-brown goop spatters across the white paper. It’s all I can do to not recoil from the snot rocket he’s just blown across the package. Without missing a beat, he wipes it away with his hand and keeps talking, mumbling and of course, heavy breathing. With as much stealth as I can muster, I pull a yellow post-it note from my desk and attach it to the page. I want to let our documentation tech know to re-print that one.

We finish the review, and he leaves. Admittedly, I’m laughing a little to myself over the yet another awkward OD2 encounter. I go down to the mechanical piping office to talk to my co-worker who has to deal with him on a fairly regular basis as well. As I relate the story, while both she and the other male engineer sharing her office start to laugh, they insist I close the door so they can tell me what he did while he was in her office (reviewing the mechanical portion of the same package).

“So what did he do?”

“Well we were reviewing the package,” O—- said, eyes wide. “And he’s looking at me and talking about the pressures on the line, then all of a sudden he turns his head aside and says, ‘But you’re so hot,’ then turns back and keeps talking to me like nothing happened. He did it more than once.”

I look at C— the young EIT sharing her office and mentoring under her. “Yeah, I heard it too, it was so weird, like an aside in a cartoon or a movie.” They were both laughing, albeit, a little nervously.

“What a creep,” I replied. Then it hit me. The constant mumbling when he’s in my office. As some of you who follow me know, I don’t really hear that well. Due to a head injury, I sometimes have trouble processing speech. He was doing it to me too. I just couldn’t hear him/understand him. Of course, now we start talking to all of the other female engineers we know. Aaaaaaand as expected, Every single one of them has a weird/creepy OD2 story.

Now we wanted to write it off at first as maybe these guys are just socially awkward/clueless that their behavior is totally inappropriate. They have issues, so they just don’t understand. We had a lively debate with some of our male co-workers that really gave us pause. They felt that these guys knew exactly what they were doing, they were just using their awkwardness as an excuse to get away with inappropriate behavior.

What do you guys think after reading my descriptions of the ODD DUCKS? Are they truly clueless and just don’t know any better? Or are they taking advantage of the fact that they won’t be called on their behavior due to their awkwardness?

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned. We’re prepping for our first Chicken Run of the year, so my next blog post will be a humous story about the time I harassed the ptarmigan–shame on me!

February 25, 2019February 25, 2019

Creepy McCreeperton

Part 1 of my series on Sexual Harassment in the WorkPlace

I hear the door to my office creak open behind me. It’s late in the evening and I am in my office alone, trying to polish up a few things before I head back to camp for the evening. Before I can even turn around, he’s already barging in, moving closer to my desk.

“Hey Daniella, I heard that you have a cabin in the interior of Alaska.”

“Uhm…yeah. Do you have something electrical to talk to me about?” I ask, keeping a straight face. I know the answer to this question before he even opens his mouth. He’s a mechanical piping guy. He knows nothing and has nothing to do with what I do for work.

“Well, no.” He stammers.

“I don’t have time for chit-chat,” I reply bluntly. “I have deadlines and I am working. Please leave my office now. Thank you.”

His jaw drops. He glowers and stiffens a little, but he stomps out down the hall, slamming my door as he goes.

Now for some of you reading this exchange, this may seem a little harsh. We “girls” have been trained to be “nice,” “polite,” accommodating even. If I have learned one thing from my male co-workers, it’s that I am here to work. It is perfectly acceptable to draw distinct boundaries in the work place. Particularly around those who make me uncomfortable.

Now to give a little context around this particular exchange, there are many types of sexual harassers out there. The ones that we see in the news are the more overt kinds. You know, the ass-grabbers, the ones who make lewd comments and jokes, the ones who try to get girls drunk and assault them. I could go on and on, but I am going to focus on a subtler kind. There’s a kind of guy who flies under the radar, but quite frankly is possibly the biggest workplace predator, because he often escalates to these other behaviors, but he carefully selects his victim, grooming her to make it feel as if it is her fault when he makes his move. I call this guy, the Creepy McCreeperton, or how about just Creeper for short.

Now, throughout my career as a technician and engineer, I have had many male colleagues as mentors and friends. But there have always been clear boundaries established from the get go. The Creeper immediately starts trying to bend or push these boundaries.

Creeper moves in on his prey subtly, coming in to talk about work, but then moving on to other subjects, usually his favorite, sex. He works hard to find out what her interests are so he has ammunition. Creepers can be married or single. He’ll often open up to her about his own relationship problems, gaining her sympathy by trying to get her advice on his own relationship woes. Then he’ll try to get her to talk about her problems, so she can see just how much they have in common. The irony is that over the course of my career, it is usually the other men I work with know who the Creepers are, and warn me about them early on. Sadly, they don’t feel very empowered to do much about them.

The Creeper I mentioned above was notorious for stalking the young female engineers I worked with. He preyed on the fact they were too nice to tell him to go away. He always managed to come to their offices when they were working late or alone. He would often bring legitimate “work” to talk about so he had a reason to be there, but then sway to the subject to personal matters (sexual).

When they would tell me about it, I would try to drive home to them that they didn’t have to put up with this behavior. Establishing boundaries for professional behavior is perfectly acceptable. Guys don’t worry about being nice. We shouldn’t either. We should worry about being professional We’re here to do a job, not be someone’s eye candy.

Now, to give a little more info on said Creeper above, he didn’t give up after the incident in my office. He would try to find ways to talk about “personal” stuff with me, even though I made it clear I had nothing to say. Usually by trying to stop me in the dining hall or corner me in the gym and comment on my workout attire (yes, he was a true gem). I finally had to let him know that I had spoken with my supervisor about his behavior, and if he did not desist bothering me or other females in my department, we would be taking further action (further action was taken, because I guess he didn’t think I knew about the other women he was bothering).

Yes, I will add a small caveat here. We’re all adults, and some people do date in the work place. And that’s fine, but no one should feel coerced or harassed. It is acceptable to tell someone that their behavior is inappropriate without fear of reprisal. In fact, when I let my male co-workers the depth and level of was going on, they were outraged and incensed. It’s guys like that that give men a bad name. Most of the men I have worked with wouldn’t dream of doing anything like that. They have daughters, sisters and other female friends. They knew the guy was a “creep” but they couldn’t believe the lengths to which the guy would go.

We’re all human and we make mistakes. Speaking for myself, I have somethings said things I should not. People have said things around me that they should not. I try to give people (at least for the first offense) the benefit of the doubt that they are not trying to offend me and that they are a decent person. My usual response is something along the lines of crossing my arms over my chest, giving them a grin while I raise an eyebrow and saying, “Really?” And that’s more than enough for most of my technicians to know they’ve gone too far. We’re in a new era. Women are entering into professions and places that have been dominated by men for millennia. The amount of change in the industry both in attitude and support towards women has been staggering. There’s still along way to go. But that change needs to come with an open mind on both sides. We have to look at each other as human beings and partners, not adversaries.

February 11, 2019February 11, 2019

Pulling a Pig

So I shared this article yesterday, but I realized that this really bothered me. And when I mean really bothered me, the event I am about to relate happened over 14 years ago. I should be over it right? It was just something someone said to me. It wasn’t the first time I have been bullied or picked on for not fitting society’s standard of how a woman should look or act, and it wouldn’t be the last. But this particular encounter left me shaken to my core, and haunts me to some level until this very day. When I read this article, written by Stephanie Yeboah about her own painful experience, I was sitting waiting for an appointment. I broke down crying. Memories of that night came flooding back. I knew I had to share her article. I have included a link below:

https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/pull-a-pig-dating-pranks

The incident from long ago played on repeat in my head, keeping me awake last night. It had been something I had had shoved to the recesses of my mind, along with all of the other insults and snubs about the way I do and do not look. But reading Ms. Yeaboah’s experience, and the kind words I have gotten from friends after sharing her article, I decided to go ahead and relate what I went through, and why it bothers me so much to this day.

My apartment during college was in Seattle’s wonderful Capitol Hill Neighborhood. One of the things I enjoyed the most was the ability to walk from my apartment just a few blocks and go to any number of affordable restaurants, bars and shops. I had a favorite bar I would go to most nights since it was only a block and a half from my apartment. I would often bring a book or even my homework and get a beer and just enjoy the small, popular neighborhood pub.

One night, as I sat at a booth in the back, reading a book, a guy started to chat me up. Now this small dive had a group of definite regulars, but I had never seen this guy here before. This took me completely by surprise. If you follow me much or know me very well, I make mention often that guys don’t tend to notice me. I’d like to think that I’m not ugly per se, just incredibly average. But it was incredibly flattering to have someone (for once) notice me sitting alone and ask about what I was reading (It was my electromagnetics homework, exciting, literally. Do I know how to party or what?). He talked me up as if he was actually interested in me.

He sat down and offered to buy me a drink. I had already had a few, and I had class then next day. I declined. This seemed to irritate him. He kept pressing me to have another drink. I thanked him politely again but declined, growing more and more uneasy with his attention. Something seemed off. He became even more agitated. He continued to talk to me though. He finally invited me to leave the bar with him, stating that his place wasn’t far away. Feeling red flags popping up like daisies, I thanked him again but said I had class the next day, and I wasn’t interested.

Apparently, this was the wrong thing to say (in his mind). He stood over my table, balling up his fists, sputtering.

“Go home and study? You can’t be serious,” he said, slurring his words as he slurped his beer.

“No really. I have to get this done,” I said, tapping my pencil to my book.

“You can do that later, you should come home with me instead tonight, it’ll be a lot more fun than this crap.”

“No thank you,” I replied, putting up my hand. Inside, my heart was hammering. The bar was crowded. While he was making a commotion, no one was really paying attention, other than his group of friends standing near the pool tables watching and laughing. It dawned on me that they had put him up to this somehow. It was some sort of joke.

“What do you mean? You can’t turn me down,” he growled. The hair on the back of my neck stood up at his words.

“Thanks, but I’m really not interested. I have work to do.” I pointed to my book and notebook.

He flipped my book shut and leaned closer. “An ugly b—h like you should be grateful that a guy would even talk to you. Let alone take you home. I bet you go home and f–k your books.”

His words cut to the quick, but his body language and his demeanor made the bile rise in my throat. One part of me wanted to lash back, say something just as cruel and vicious. Many epic comebacks were whirling in my head. Fortunately, common sense prevailed. I refrained from saying anything, and managed to not cry while his d-bag friends dragged him out of the bar. He continued to slur obscenities about how ugly and unworthy I was as he stormed out with his buddies.

I sat at the table for a while, stunned. I waited long enough to be sure that they were gone before I shoved my books into my backpack and beelined it back to my building. I didn’t want to be caught alone on the street by him and his friends. Once home, I broke down and cried. I don’t consider myself a coward, but I was afraid to go back to my favorite dive bar for a long time.

As I mentioned before, this wasn’t the first time I had been bullied or snubbed for my looks or lack thereof, and it wouldn’t be my last. But this encounter left me shaken to my core.

I had never told my husband about it, and really, I tried not to think about it after that day. I just took it as a bad experience with a jerk and moved on. But after yesterday I told Ray about it and we had a long, interesting conversation. This scenario plays an integral part in encounters I have had, not just about my appearance, but my role as a woman in engineering and technical roles.

The man at the bar didn’t see me as a woman or even a person. He saw me as merely an object. Something to be used and discarded with no feeling. Something far inferior to himself. When I had the audacity to reject his advances, he couldn’t believe that this thing, this creature thought itself to be too good for a guy like him. It should be a given. I mean, in his mind and world, he’s entitled to far more beautiful women than I. Women’s bodies are at his disposal. I’m just a joke, a bet he’s out to win on a random weeknight with his friends. How dare such a lowly creature not only reject him, but humiliate him in front of his peers?

I have seen this same rage and frustration as I have advanced both in the Navy and as an engineer. While many men I have worked with have been fabulous peers, mentors and advocates, there are those who see my presence as a threat. There are some men who still see women as far inferior to themselves in every way. When a woman like me shows up in the workplace, they do everything they can to derail her career. It can be subtle, just minor disrespect on the jobsite. Or it can be blatant sabotage, cutting her off from information, spreading lies and rumors, trying to undermine her position.

It can be a tough pill to swallow sometimes. I have relied on my competence and my integrity to carry me through. There have been many times I have gone home and cried into my pillow, because, let’s face it crying at work is perceived as weakness (and I’m a total bawler).

I’m at a great point in my life. I have made a career out of not having to rely on how I look to succeed. I am considered a technical expert at what I do. When I walk into a facility or a jobsite at work, I’m greeted with comments of:

“So glad you’re here”

“We know the problem is going to get solved now”

“Daniella can fix anything”

Believe it or not, that feels infinitely better than being told I’m pretty. It’s something that no one can take away from me. It is not something I was born with, it’s something I earned. My biggest goal and mission in life with my writing, my engineering and my public speaking is to help others to achieve that same feeling, no matter who they are, where they came from, or what they look like.

January 28, 2019January 28, 2019

Get A Little Dirty

Sign in the arctic warning of polar bears, DMshepard

I’ve scraped the mud and gravel out of my steel-toed Keene’s the best that I can, and tug the plastic shoe condoms over the top to try to contain the mess. I know it’s an effort in futility. I’m just making a short stop back at camp to grab a cup of hot tea from the break room (spike rooms are what we call them), use the head, make some calls from my office, then head back out into the field. I’m coated, head to toe in mud. Not unusual this time of year. Most people assume that the dead of winter in the arctic is what I dread most. The time of year when we’re hitting temperatures of 20, 30, 40 and even 50 below. The coldest I ever worked in up at Prudhoe was ambient -65 with a windchill of -85. When it gets that cold, they suspend all outside work. Emergencies only. It’s because exposed skin can freeze in less than five minutes, and breathing air that cold can damage the lungs.

Me at work at one of our substations in late spring (June). Yes, that’s snow around the bottom of the substation

Nope. The time of year I dread are the shoulder seasons, late spring and early fall. The time of year when we’re in cyclic freeze and thaw. We can see temperatures at night in the minus teens, only to swing up to above freezing during the day. Meanwhile, the sun is shining almost 18 hours a day, 12 hours of it direct on the snow. This causes the top layers of snow and gravel to melt. The pads and roads turn into a quagmire of mud. Even though we are theoretically below freezing most of the day. This wreaks havoc on our equipment, particularly our electrical infrastructure. The winds blow the mud onto the powerlines, causing short circuits and outages. The permafrost heaves and jacks, causing buried cable to stress and snap. The crews then have to dig it up and repair it. I can count on being out in the field most of the day, answering trouble calls with the line crews in addition to my normal field engineering duties.

I make my way down the hallway of the old ATCO trailers that make up the office complexes. This bolted-together relic from the pipeline days, with wooden paneling lining the walls that was the height of decoration in the mid-70’s has seen better days, but there’s no where else I’d rather work.

The heat is cranked in the building and I unzip my muddy jacket as I carry my hardhat and ice grips down the hall, feet dragging with exhaustion after being out in the field all morning. Coming down the hallway I see her and she sees me. I’m suddenly self-conscious of my messy braid that I threw together 8 hours ago when I climbed out of bed in camp when my radio went off.

She flips her perfectly flat-ironed long blonde hair as she struts down the hall in painted on denim and 4-inch-high heels. I’m not sure which glitters more under the old florescent lights; her long, dangling earrings, her pink shellacked nails, or her glossed lips that are curled up in a smirk as she sees me.

Can’t avoid her, there’s no where else to go, so I smile back despite my weariness and I feel a flush rising to my cheeks as she looks me up and down and begins to laugh.

“OH—My—God, Daniella. What happened?” she says, putting her hands to her face.

I don’t have to look down at my mud-spattered FRC pants and shirt to know what she’s talking about. “I’ve been out in the field, working.” I reply, trying to extract myself from this awkward conversation.

She rolls her eyes. “You look terrible. Thank god I don’t have to go out in the field and get all—dirty.”

“Sure,” I reply. I hold my head high and I keep walking. I have a job to do.

I want to say a lot of things, but I bite my tongue. Why? Because I’ve been there before, and it would be like talking to a brick wall. I’ve had lunch with this woman (and talks with others like her). This is the same woman who complains that she doesn’t make enough money in her job and wishes she could make more. When I tell her or others like her they could become a technician or an operator with only a two-year degree and make more than I do, and have better job security, here are the excuses I hear:

Oh, but that’s so hard
I don’t have time for that
That’s a lot of physical labor
I don’t want to have to get dirty
I want to be able to dress pretty and feminine for work, I don’t want to have to dress so drab (like you)
That takes a lot of math, and math is hard
I don’t want to be out in the cold or bad weather

I get it. I really do. Everyone has certain choices and expectations in life. Many of those, unfortunately are culturally embedded. But I know this. The choices we make or don’t make define our careers, our lives and our financial situations.

Me in Prudhoe Bay after my dunking summer of 2018!

We see a lot nowadays about following our passions, pursuing our dreams. That chasing money is going to lead to a life of misery. At the same time, we don’t hear enough as women about choosing a career that can make us financially independent and stable. I was able to find that in my multiple iterations of careers in STEM. Some would argue that I was lucky somehow, I was born good at math and science. I would argue to the contrary. My luck was that I had educators early on that instilled in me a desire to learn despite the fact that it was difficult. That it didn’t matter whether I was a boy or a girl, that I just needed to apply myself. My other stroke of luck may have been my father. I had a father who was a power plant operator and a mechanic on the side. He would let me come into the plant with him on payday to pick up his check, and explain to me what the big generators and relays were doing. He would let me watch him work on cars (and even sometimes help). This instilled a curiosity about machinery and electricity that lives in me to this day.

This is me standing beside a rotor for a frame 5 turbine.

I’m only a good engineer because I started out as a good technician. I worked my way to where I am now because I wasn’t afraid to get dirty and do a physical job. As a result, I can actually afford those nice shoes and life I want when I am not in the field covered in mud. I don’t have to rely on a man to finance it for me. I was able to chose a man to be in my life because I wanted to be with him and he wanted to be with me.

Due to medical circumstances beyond my control, I eventually couldn’t do the hard, physical part of the job anymore, but the solid technical foundation I had laid carried forward into the rest of my career, and made me the competent, highly qualified engineer that I am today.

All of this because I wasn’t afraid to get dirty.

August 13, 2018February 28, 2019

The Thong Story

It’s funny, when I started my website and built my blog page, it showed me how I could build categories. At first, I kind of chuckled to myself. Categories? Why do I need categories for random thoughts? Now that I am a few blogs in, I can now see some categories starting to evolve even without my intention to create them. This blog kind of straddles the Navy category and my current job.

Sunrise and sunset during the arctic winter.

Summers in Prudhoe Bay can have the few random nice days, but for the most part they are cool and wet. This precipitation leads to soft, wash boarded roads and treacherous, slow driving conditions.

The morning I wrote this post, I read the roads and pads report and sighed. It rained yesterday and is projected to rain again. Roads are going to be a sloppy, slow slog of wash-boarded gravel. The speed limit on almost all the roads according to the report has been dropped to 15 MPH, and I needed to drive across the field. As I got ready for work, I thought to myself, Today I need to wear the good sports bra.

Trust me, driving 20 to 30 miles over wash boarded roads is no fun, especially when certain body parts jiggle more than one would like. I realized that most of my co-workers probably don’t worry about this. It is neither a good or bad thing, it is just a fact. Most of the people who work up here are men. We women are a slim minority. Most of the women who work in Prudhoe Bay are housekeepers or admins. The few female technicians, operators and engineers are a tiny fraction of the overall workforce.

It made me think of a time in the Navy where I was asked a question about women’s underwear.

It was back in 1998. I had been picked up as a staff instructor and I was the only female staff member on crew at the time. On this day, I was standing watch as electrical operator, watching the board and taking logs. The hum of the HVAC unit and the conversation between myself and the reactor operator was suddenly broken by the curtain for maneuvering drawing back and the Engineering Watch Supervisor poking his head in and shouting, “Request permission to enter and speak to the Electrical Operator.”

The watch office granted permission without looking up from his logs. I however, looked up to see the entire watch team outside the door, peering in eagerly, staring at me.

My first thought was, “What fresh hell is this?”

He squeezed into the small room and even before making it to my bench he shouted, “Nipper (that was my maiden name), can women wear thongs in the Navy?”

Taken aback, my first response was something along the lines of “Hell if I know?” Then, “Why are you asking me?”

He was more than happy to oblige. One of our female students had put on a lot of weight since she joined the Navy. Sometimes it happens, especially in the Nuke program where you are parked on your backside for hours on end studying. She had become so much over weight that her uniforms no longer fit. Now if you have never been in the military, your uniform is supposed to look a certain way. Her supervisor, sensitive to her feelings told her she needed to purchase new uniforms because her old ones were no longer suitable, but he did not exactly tell her why.

Well, as I know some women do when they purchase a prom dress or a special occasion dress, this young sailor decided to buy her uniforms a size smaller to motivate herself to lose weight. While I can understand her logic, it backfired, literally. Unfortunately, while performing her duties, the seams of her pants across her backside did not survive the activity. They split down her rather ample backside. When she went to her supervisor and showed him her predicament he told her to go home and change. For some reason, though she had permission to go home, she decided to ask the Watch Supervisor what she should do.

Being a rather seasoned sailor, he advised her, “Just put some duct tape over it, you’ll be fine now, No one will notice.”

“I can’t, I’m wearing a thong,” was her reply, to which he responded by ordering her to go home and change, then running to where I was on watch to ask his question.

Just so you know this really blew their minds/freaked them out. Women can wear sexy underwear under their uniforms? Oh My God!!!!!! Personally, I kept it pretty comfy. Dungarees are uncomfortable enough. Granny panties all the way, but I digress.

Being the only female staff on crew, I was considered to be the font of knowledge on all things female. We looked it up. At least in the regulations at the time, it did not call out what type of underwear you could wear, just that you wear them. Believe it or not, it did specify color: white or skin tone under white uniforms, and any color under other uniforms.

So yes, we determined it was perfectly acceptable for women to wear thongs in the Navy.

I have thought about this often over the years. How much effort emphasis we women put into dressing and looking a certain way, even down to choosing just the right underwear under a garment, because heaven forbid people see a panty or bra line and know, gulp: we’re wearing underwear! OMG!

While sure, men worry about looking neat, professional, and presentable, they do not obsess over it the way we do. The interesting thing I have learned, working around men for so many years, most of them do not notice our efforts at all. Sure, my husband notices when I dress nice, but we dress and look a certain way because the fashion industry says it is important, other women say it is important. But most of the guys I work with? I really don’t think they care.

Thanks for reading, and I hope your underwear is comfy and soft today.

July 23, 2018July 25, 2018

Taking the Plunge! My dip into Prudhoe Bay.

Arctic ocean in winter with Polar Bear warning sign

“Off of the tour bus and into the food chain.”

It’s a common joke in Alaska, and tonight, we decided to join other co-workers and take the Polar Plunge and jump into the Arctic Ocean. I’ve worked up here on and off for 11 years, and never done it, my co-worker Derek has worked 13. He told me about it over lunch and I decided after a rather rough week, why the heck not?

Unfortunately, not knowing that this event was coming, I had to run to the gift shop in camp and buy a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and pray they wouldn’t be completely see through after my dunking.

People on the beach waiting to go for it.

We drove the long gravel road out to East Dock, both of us marveling at the fact we had never been out there in the summer. I’ve been out there countless times in winter, in the dark, helping with generators and other electrical equipment. I’ve been to other places on the arctic ocean in the summer and marveled at the sight of Prudhoe Bay without ice for the brief few weeks that it happens. But here we were going to jump in.

Okay, so jump is a relative term. Prudhoe bay is really shallow, for quite a long distance. We were warned in advance to wear shoes, since we were going to have to wade out until we got waist deep, then submerge over our heads, then slog back. The beach is rough gravel and sharp rocks. We signed in and began our slog our into the bay.

The water temperature, according to the little certificate I got was 32 degrees. The air temperature was 48. It didn’t feel so bad…at first. But the further out we got, the chillier we got.

As previously mentioned, the plan was to stop at waist deep, I should say I did. My friend tried to keep going. I think he forgot that I’m like a half a foot shorter than him. I’m not short by any means, but he’s pretty tall. Our conversation went about like this:

“How deep do we have to go?” I asked, puzzled that he kept walking seaward.

“Just waist-deep, then we dunk our heads under.”

“Where are you going?”

“I want to get deeper.”

“You go ahead, I’m dunking now.”

So we both dunked under, then trudged quickly back to shore, where a friend was trying to video said event. Unfortunately, the video didn’t record, but I got some pictures.

For those of you who have never been, I hope you liked my pictures of the arctic ocean. I feel privileged to have been able to work in such a unique place for so long.

My favorite picture of the Sag River where it meets the ocean during the few hours of light in winter

June 11, 2018

STEM Ambassador Talk

Me in Azerbaijan at the Temple of the Eternal Flame as part of a work trip in 2007

This week I am preparing to talk to a group of high school students at a summer camp about opportunities in engineering. The technical focus of my topic going to revolve around my work with drones, but after reading the headlines this week, I am actually going to talk about something even deeper.

The Number of Female Chief Executives is Falling

Claire Cain Miller, New York Times, May 23, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/upshot/why-the-number-of-female-chief-executives-is-falling.html

While I am on the engineering side of the fence, I agree with what she says in the article. I have seen it throughout my own career as a technician, operator and engineer. Yes, there are biases against women in the workplace, and many of them are not just because of their own choice, but because of perceptions on behalf of those in management above them. The article is well worth the read, but I would like to speak to another issue the article misses. Something more systemic that I see in society and new interns that I work with. And it was summed up well in an article from the Chicago Tribune.

Teenagers may be losing interest in STEM careers, but the know they need tech skills to land a job

Ally Marotti, Chicago Tribune, June 6, 2018

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-teen-girls-stem-career-ambitions-20180606-story.html

The crux of this article is that many young people use technology constantly, but they don’t see themselves as a part of it. They don’t see the exciting career opportunities that may be available to them. Let’s face it. How are engineers portrayed but the media? Boring, geeks in ties.

THIS IS WHY I AM A STEM AMBASSADOR

I think the answer is that more of us need to get out there and show these people the possibilities. The world it is changing. And while there is a lot of negativity out there, I believe it is changing for the better, if we can catch people and show them the limitless possibilities then we can energize them to want to struggle against the negative connotations associated with rising to the top. We need to show them that engineering is more than sitting behind a desk and crunching numbers. We need to show them that being a CEO is more than wearing a suit and saying, “You’re fired.” If people cannot see where they would fit in leading a company or being an engineer, why should they want to fight for it in the first place? Why should they put up with the sexual harassment, the discrimination, the lack of respect if they can’t see a positive side to it?

The more people with integrity, intelligence and vision that we can inspire to lead the world, the better the world will be.