Advance! No, no, retreat!

I attended my first scientist retreat for work today, but instead of the inspirational, collegial experience I’ve heard about in the past, it was mostly a lot of grim fretting about the current funding climate.

Afterwards: eating tater tots on J’s balcony in the dark, while D. wrote vocabulary sentences about “sarcasm” and “nonchalance.” Then we played some Secret of Mana, with lots of teasing of me by D, amused that I’d said I liked fireballing the cloud monsters because they “look so cute when they burn.”