Whenever UC Davis’ surplus-property shop, the Bargain Barn, started running out of room, sales coordinator Pilar Rivera sent out a lively e-mail newsletter to customers about the latest campus cast-offs for sale.

“Good day, Bargain Barn maniacs,” started one recent newsletter, written in a variety of type colors and sizes. “Indeed, we are mad—not quite stark raving, but definitely raving. We have less room to move around this Barn than a rabbit’s den after mating season.”

In other installments, Rivera hailed the Bargain Barn as “home of the $5 monitor.” Other items she pitched included study carrels, lab benches, a dental chair, a fat extractor and a rock-climbing wall. She usually signed off by encouraging readers to “be well and shop often.”

But like so many Bargain Barn treasures, Rivera recently moved to another campus department herself. In her final newsletter, she gave her Top 10 reasons for leaving. Among them:

• “I recently joined a gym and find I no longer need to move quantities of furniture around.
• “So I can walk into other campus departments without thinking ‘I can sell that!’
• “So I don’t have to holler ‘15 minutes to closing’ every weekday. They tell me I don’t actually have to do that, but now it’s a habit. I’m sure my new co-workers will find it refreshing.
• “To outlive the name ‘Barn Girl.’
• “So I can shop here, too!”

TALKING GAME

Is your conversation style like a bowling match or more like a basketball game? How about rugby?

How you answer can reflect your culture, according to Susan Steinbach of the UC Davis Extension’s Intensive English Program. She uses sports analogies to help international students understand different ways of talking.

Steinbach, in a recent interview on Voice of America’s Wordmaster program, said Americans, Canadians, British and Australians tend to converse basketball style—stealing the ball, dribbling or hesitating before making a point and expecting the other person to steal it back.

Bowling style—taking turns and deferring on the basis of age or status—is more common in Japan, Korea and northern China, she said.

Rugby style—interrupting and expecting to be interrupted, with quick changes in topic and overlapping speakers—predominates in Russian, Greek, southern European, African and Latino cultures.

Steinbach said the analogies help students from around the world get along better. “They start to make jokes with each other and say, ‘Oh, you’re just playing rugby today.’”

MIGHTY MITE

Behold the champion! She is Sierra; she is fast—and so tiny.

For the first time in memory, a miniature dachshund was crowned Picnic Day’s Doxie Derby champion. In a true underdog upset, little Sierra outraced Scooter, the winner of the standard dachshund division, in the finals. Her come-from-behind finish—Webcast at www.news.ucdavis.edu/multimedia—looks even more impressive in the slow-motion replay.

REALITY CHECK

You know you’re getting older when:

• Some of the clothes in your closet are older than most undergraduates—and they’re back in style.
• The students working in the office next door are playing your music—but now it’s called classic rock.
• Seeing students chatting on cell phones gets you reminiscing about rotary dial phones.
• A student tells you how passé his pager was in high school and you still use one.
• You realize that today’s undergraduates, who grew up using computers with delete and insert keys, will never experience the anguish of retyping a term paper after forgetting a footnote.
• You remember the smell of mimeographed paper.

VOTE EARLY

Junior Brian McInnis thought more students would vote if he brought a polling place to campus and kept it open five days through the Nov. 2 election.

Apparently, he was right. Nearly 70 percent of registered 18–26-year-old voters in Davis cast ballots in last fall’s presidential election—up from 11 percent in the March 2002 election and 33 percent in November 2002.

Yolo County election officials are so impressed they are considering opening early polling sites in West Sacramento and in rural Yolo County for future elections.

McInnis received a $10,000 grant from the Donald A. Strauss Public Service Scholarship Foundation and an honorable mention in USA Today’s All-USA College Academic Team program for his efforts.