The theater - where art and my real life collide

Everyone remembers that I work with engineers, right? And everyone knows that engineers talk in Greek symbols (as do other scientists, such as, oh, nurses). One of the folks I support is retired Navy *and* an engineer, so he's especially given to talking in engineer, a few phrases of which I've integrated into my vocabulary. (I like to describe my conversation as having a pretty poor signal-to-noise ratio, f'rinstance.) "Clutter" doesn't just mean the junk scattered around my living room, it means - and I quote - "Unwanted signals, echoes, or images ... which interfere with observation of desired signals." "Delta" doesn't mean "a usually triangular alluvial deposit at the mouth of a river," it means "change" or "minor change." (No, not coins.) Jim will give me back stuff that he has reviewed and will tell me that "there are only a few deltas." And when he wishes to make what he calls "happy to glad" changes throughout a document, he could just as well write "Δ happy -- glad."

Sharon, Maura, Martha, and I all have costume plots - lists of which costumes we wear for which scenes - taped to the mirror in the dressing room and to the areas off-stage where we do quick changes. (All of my changes are done just off stage left because there isn't time to run to the dressing room and back.) As we were changing after the first run with costumes the other night, Sharon muttered that she would have to change bras between acts to avoid show-through, and, being a nurse and used to noting things in Greek and Latin, she grabbed a pen and noted on her costume plot "ΔBra."

I told Jim about it the next day and got to watch him struggle with the fact that he'd just heard the word "bra" in our office building.