I hope to have photos to help illustrate some of these things, but in the meantime I will just try to describe them. So…what am I talking about you ask ? This is going to be a list of the Twilight Zone items here at ORNL.

  • Innocent signs for things like ‘High Flux Isotope Reactor’ and ‘Spalation Neutron Source’. I get that creepy feeling like when I think about standing buck-nekkid with my ’special parts’ in front of the microwave. Are my kids now going to have 14 fingers and 3 heads ? Just think of the troubles clothing those little mutants. I guess I better find a wife with some serious knitting skills, otherwise I’m gonna have to do it (I can, thank you Mom for that bit of manly instruction when I was a kid).
  • Girls. They are about as scarce on the lab as a virgin in a biker bar. I can honestly say that I don’t think I have seen a single girl at the lab that I would risk asking out. Besides they are all smarter than me.
  • Y-12. This is the first Uranium separation plant. Ever. I drive past it twice a day to the lab. I keep thinking there is a Homer Simpson somewhere in there.
  • People fish in “Mecury Creek“. As they say here: that ’splains’ a few things.
  • Cell phones. They almost work here, some buildings are great, others absolutely no signal. I have a hunch that someone is listening too, which gets dangerous when your friends are criminals like mine. “I was never convicted of that…”
  • There will be no pictures of this, but for a week there was a helicoptor flying around with some sort of torpedo looking thing hanging from a cable. Oddness.

I think that is all for now, more later as I explore the place.