It's finally March. Checking in.
For the shortest month of the year, February sure sucked. I must apologize for my general absence. It turns out that I did not have the stomach flu. I had some sort of bacterial infection. After my brief flirtation with wellness, I took a turn for the worse. I'm pretty sure I was hallucinating for a day or two in the middle there. My roommate said that she almost carted me off to the emergency room because I was muttering about faeries. I dragged myself to the doctor, who was surprised that I managed to not have norovirus when everyone else does. She gave me the drugs they give to people going into the jungle. I made some lame joke about my oxen dying and catching dysentery, but she didn't think it was very funny. I am mostly recovered now, but am trying to make up for missing almost two weeks of work.
I got back to work to discover that the other grad student had rearranged some of the equipment in the lab. He put the shaker on the same benchtop as about $100,000 worth of sensitive analytical equipment and then maxed out the rpms. He was all, the Nanodrop isn't working. IT ISN'T WORKING BECAUSE THE VIBRATIONS FROM THE DAMN SHAKER ARE DISRUPTING THE COHESION OF THE LIQUID COLUMN. And then he left for the week, leaving me to try to get the 150 pound shaker back in its proper place. I haven't even tried to use the other equipment yet. If I have to reinstall the quadropoles in the GC/MS, I might start crying.
In other news, my Dad is turning 60 this week. Since the new year, I have been trying to figure out what the plans for celebrating are. My Dad is apparently in denial, however, and wanted to go the "Birthday, what birthday?" route. So my Mom told me not to fly down. She called me up last Friday and announced that my brothers are coming down, and they are going to be doing something, and couldn't I just fly down for a long weekend? *headdesk* Tickets are twice the price now, and I would have to miss two more days of work since most of the flights for Friday and Sunday are sold out (which I really can't afford right now). After explaining this, my Mom was all "But you'll be the only person not there!" Thanks for the guilt trip, Mom! I wasn't feeling bad enough.
I hope it's all sunshine and daisies for you, flist. It has to be for someone, right?
I got back to work to discover that the other grad student had rearranged some of the equipment in the lab. He put the shaker on the same benchtop as about $100,000 worth of sensitive analytical equipment and then maxed out the rpms. He was all, the Nanodrop isn't working. IT ISN'T WORKING BECAUSE THE VIBRATIONS FROM THE DAMN SHAKER ARE DISRUPTING THE COHESION OF THE LIQUID COLUMN. And then he left for the week, leaving me to try to get the 150 pound shaker back in its proper place. I haven't even tried to use the other equipment yet. If I have to reinstall the quadropoles in the GC/MS, I might start crying.
In other news, my Dad is turning 60 this week. Since the new year, I have been trying to figure out what the plans for celebrating are. My Dad is apparently in denial, however, and wanted to go the "Birthday, what birthday?" route. So my Mom told me not to fly down. She called me up last Friday and announced that my brothers are coming down, and they are going to be doing something, and couldn't I just fly down for a long weekend? *headdesk* Tickets are twice the price now, and I would have to miss two more days of work since most of the flights for Friday and Sunday are sold out (which I really can't afford right now). After explaining this, my Mom was all "But you'll be the only person not there!" Thanks for the guilt trip, Mom! I wasn't feeling bad enough.
I hope it's all sunshine and daisies for you, flist. It has to be for someone, right?