Bored on a Friday
Hi. It's nearly Thankgiving weekend and I am bored in the lab. Poking through science things on the internet has led me to a Facebook group called "you know you've worked too long in a lab when..." which has a very amusing list that I now feel compelled to turn into a meme even though the percentage of my flist that will appreciate this is very low. I'll have to make an FB note of it for my science bitches.
Here is this longass list of dorky, dorky things. I'm going to bold the ones that are particularly true of me. Which is most of them. And maybe explain a bit. For lo, my splainy hat is shiny.
You know you've worked too long in a lab when...
1. You wonder what absolute alcohol tastes like with orange juice (I also wonder if you can get drunk by sticking your arm in DMSO and ethanol. What?)
2. You can tell what cheap and expensive white coats look like
3. You can't watch CSI without cursing at least one scientific inaccuracy (Just ask Nos. Last night's offender was Bones, though.)
4. You use acronyms for everything and never stop to elaborate (I think that's a fandom side-effect, too.)
5. Liquid nitrogen is only about a 1/3 as dangerous as you thought (Not even. We spill that stuff around like it's water. Good times.)
6. You always seem to use the microscope after the person with the impossible close together eyes
7. Accident reports are a badge of honor
8. You've wondered why you can't drink distilled water in the lab - It should be clean?
9. You give the lab equipment motivational pep talks "Work for me today or i'll reprogram you with a fire axe" is my favorite
10. You've worked out that a trained chimp could probably do 90% of your job
11. When a non-scientist asks you what you do for a living you roll your eyes and talk science at them until they've loss the will to live (mainly for fun)
12. You have to check the web to find out what the weather is outside
13. You realize that almost anything can be classed as background reading
14. People wearing shorts under a lab coat disturb you slightly as they look as though they might be naked underneath
15. Although all cooking is a glorified chemistry experiment you just still can't seem to get it right
16. Safety equipment is optional unless it makes you look cool
17. Warning labels invoke curiosity rather than caution
18. The Christmas night out reveals scientists can't dance, although a formula for the movement of hands and feet combined with beats per min is found scrawled on a napkin by a waiter the next day
19. You know which part of the lab you can chill out undisturbed on friday afternoon
20. You decide the courses and conference you want to go on by the quality of the food served (Any fool know that free food is the true currency of academia.)
21. You are strangely proud of the collection of junk you've stolen from vendors at trade shows (Eppendorf pens, yes!)
22. You've used dry ice to cool beer down
23. No matter what the timings in the experiment protocol there is always time for lunch in the middle
24. You can no longer spell normal words but have no trouble with spelling things like immunohistochemistry or deoxyribonucleic acid. (Or phthaldialdehyde.)
25. Burning eyes, nose and throat indicate that you haven't actually turned on the fumehood/downdraft bench
26. Your slightly too fond of the smell of (pick one or many) Xylene/Agar/Ethanol/Undergraduates/Alcoholic handwash
27. You've left the lab wearing a piece of PPE (personal protective equipment) because you forgot you had it on (Goddamn goggles.)
28. You bitch about not being able to pipette by mouth any more
29. Security come round at 2 am wondering why the lights are still on only to find you with your arms up to your elbows in a glovebox
30. You have made some kind of puppet out of a nitrile glove and kept it as a pet (I know this isn't just me!) (Putting dry ice in makes for a rapidly expanding if short lived pet - DS)
31. When at a Fall Out Boy gig you wonder why everyone is going round with Faecal Occult Blood (FOB) written on their head
32. You have an irresistible urge to rip your shirt off superman stylie cos it has press stud fasteners just like your lab coat.....Most often occurring as you walk through a door just like exiting the lab.... (The worlds of strippers and lab workers collide, not pretty- DS)
33. You still get amusement out of "freezing" things in liquid nitrogen! (Um, who doesn't!?)
34. Blinking real fast has saved your eyesight on more than one occasion.
35. You've removed your gloves to find a small hole which has left you with either - wrinkly old person hands, a brightly coloured finger (histologists especially) or a burning sensation and dermatitis at some point. (This just in: Fisher latex sucks.)
36. You've bent down to pick something up off the floor only to scatter the contents of your top pocket under the largest machine in the lab
37.When you rejoice when grabbing a handfull of eppendorfs/bijous/anything and it turns outs to be the exact number you needed (Or weighting out precisely the amount you wanted on the balance. Occasions like this may cause me to declare myself a lab god.)
38.You can`t wait for lab clean-up because you get to do random pointless "experiments" to figure out whats in all the dodgy unlabeled bottles (That beakerful of old acrylamide that I polymerised became, like, the lab mascot.)
39. You hate having to change your lab coat to a new one because 'it just won't fit right' and because the wrist bits are way too tight
40. You know you have worked in a lab too long when you actually threaten your cells whilst waving a bottle of virkon
41.Your nose invariably itches when you're doing mucky stuff with your hands so you develop the habit of scratching it on your upper arm. Unfortunately you sometimes carry this habit over to real life, where it looks like you're sniffing your armpits (Trying to find a clean bit of lab coat can be fun as well)
42. When as the senior of morphology you threaten each new registrar on their first day that oil and x10 dry objectives do not mix and will result in violence (I haven't TA'd anything, micro or otherwise, but if I ever do I WILL DO THIS. No oil on my lenses, bitches!)
43. When you say goodnight to your microscope on a friday night and tearfully hug it goodbye as you won't see it all weekend
44. When you start making patterns in your pipette tip box as you take the tips out.
45. When you wonder how much it will hurt if I pour just a smidge of this phenol:chloroform/trichloroacetic acid/any random chemical on myself
46. You've seen how far away you can hit a target with a squirty water bottle or seeing how far away from the bin I can fire pipette tips. (Pinging gloves is also fun.)
47. The fire alarm ceases to bug you. You only evacuate when you see the fire. (Hand on the floor to check for heat is a good indicator)
48. You know when you've been in a lab too long when you make 6 litres of medium, but wonder why no one makes "high" or "low". (Oh, that's just silly.)
49. When you organise your kitchen cupboard contents the way you would your chemicals..all labeled in alphabetical order
50. When you've got that callus on the side of your thumb from opening PCR tubes
51. You open the toothpaste with one hand. (Hee!)
52.You wash your hands before and after using to the washroom.
53.When you hear tween, you think of the surfactant not the age group.
54.For you, media is something which increases your culture.
55.You can identify organs on road kills.
56.You have a callus on your thumb. (Didn't we cover this one? Should replace it with something about pipette thumb. :P)
57.You use the word "aliquot" in regular sentences.
58.Sometimes you momentarily vanish from social activities because of a time point.
59.You've never worn a clean lab coat. (Not in years, man. Hee.)
60.You don't fear rodents, rodents fear you.
61.You say "orders of magnitude" in regular sentences.
62.You flinch when you hear the word "significant".
63.Showing up at 10AM and having a coffee is a productive day.
64.You can't stand god-like physicians, while secretly wishing you had their job.
65.You're very good at diluting things.
66.You're also very good at transferring small amounts of liquid between containers.
67.You are fed up of people saying alcohol, when they mean ethanol.
68.You say “conjugation” instead of “sex”, and "pili" sounds dirty.
69.SOB is not an insult; it's what you grow your bugs in.
70.You say "mills" and "megs". (ALWAYS. What kind of weirdo DOESN'T?)
71.No-one in your family has any idea what you do.
72.You can make a short film in power point.
73.You consider a green laser pointer to be science bling.
74.When your fruits go bad and you get fruit flies, you can't help but check their eye colour
75.You own invitrogen t-shirts and actually wear them. (No, but I have a Roche mug!)
76.You refer to your children as the F1.
77.You've suffered carpal tunnel from the pipetman.
78.You've used Kimwipes as Kleenex.
79.A timer clipped to the hip is not only practical, but dead sexy.
80.You've played Battleship using tip boxes.
81.The front page of Science is your light reading. (I was reading Nature earlier for the good times.)
82.You think the following is a quality insult: "I've seen cells more competent than you!".
83.The scent of latex reminds you of work, not play.
84.You've used, "I'd like to get into your genes" as a pickup line. (No, but I totally SHOULD. Also something about TATA boxes and turning people on... What.)
Haha, that was amusing. *dork*
Here is this longass list of dorky, dorky things. I'm going to bold the ones that are particularly true of me. Which is most of them. And maybe explain a bit. For lo, my splainy hat is shiny.
You know you've worked too long in a lab when...
1. You wonder what absolute alcohol tastes like with orange juice (I also wonder if you can get drunk by sticking your arm in DMSO and ethanol. What?)
2. You can tell what cheap and expensive white coats look like
3. You can't watch CSI without cursing at least one scientific inaccuracy (Just ask Nos. Last night's offender was Bones, though.)
4. You use acronyms for everything and never stop to elaborate (I think that's a fandom side-effect, too.)
5. Liquid nitrogen is only about a 1/3 as dangerous as you thought (Not even. We spill that stuff around like it's water. Good times.)
6. You always seem to use the microscope after the person with the impossible close together eyes
7. Accident reports are a badge of honor
8. You've wondered why you can't drink distilled water in the lab - It should be clean?
9. You give the lab equipment motivational pep talks "Work for me today or i'll reprogram you with a fire axe" is my favorite
10. You've worked out that a trained chimp could probably do 90% of your job
11. When a non-scientist asks you what you do for a living you roll your eyes and talk science at them until they've loss the will to live (mainly for fun)
12. You have to check the web to find out what the weather is outside
13. You realize that almost anything can be classed as background reading
14. People wearing shorts under a lab coat disturb you slightly as they look as though they might be naked underneath
15. Although all cooking is a glorified chemistry experiment you just still can't seem to get it right
16. Safety equipment is optional unless it makes you look cool
17. Warning labels invoke curiosity rather than caution
18. The Christmas night out reveals scientists can't dance, although a formula for the movement of hands and feet combined with beats per min is found scrawled on a napkin by a waiter the next day
19. You know which part of the lab you can chill out undisturbed on friday afternoon
20. You decide the courses and conference you want to go on by the quality of the food served (Any fool know that free food is the true currency of academia.)
21. You are strangely proud of the collection of junk you've stolen from vendors at trade shows (Eppendorf pens, yes!)
22. You've used dry ice to cool beer down
23. No matter what the timings in the experiment protocol there is always time for lunch in the middle
24. You can no longer spell normal words but have no trouble with spelling things like immunohistochemistry or deoxyribonucleic acid. (Or phthaldialdehyde.)
25. Burning eyes, nose and throat indicate that you haven't actually turned on the fumehood/downdraft bench
26. Your slightly too fond of the smell of (pick one or many) Xylene/Agar/Ethanol/Undergraduates/Alcoholic handwash
27. You've left the lab wearing a piece of PPE (personal protective equipment) because you forgot you had it on (Goddamn goggles.)
28. You bitch about not being able to pipette by mouth any more
29. Security come round at 2 am wondering why the lights are still on only to find you with your arms up to your elbows in a glovebox
30. You have made some kind of puppet out of a nitrile glove and kept it as a pet (I know this isn't just me!) (Putting dry ice in makes for a rapidly expanding if short lived pet - DS)
31. When at a Fall Out Boy gig you wonder why everyone is going round with Faecal Occult Blood (FOB) written on their head
32. You have an irresistible urge to rip your shirt off superman stylie cos it has press stud fasteners just like your lab coat.....Most often occurring as you walk through a door just like exiting the lab.... (The worlds of strippers and lab workers collide, not pretty- DS)
33. You still get amusement out of "freezing" things in liquid nitrogen! (Um, who doesn't!?)
34. Blinking real fast has saved your eyesight on more than one occasion.
35. You've removed your gloves to find a small hole which has left you with either - wrinkly old person hands, a brightly coloured finger (histologists especially) or a burning sensation and dermatitis at some point. (This just in: Fisher latex sucks.)
36. You've bent down to pick something up off the floor only to scatter the contents of your top pocket under the largest machine in the lab
37.When you rejoice when grabbing a handfull of eppendorfs/bijous/anything and it turns outs to be the exact number you needed (Or weighting out precisely the amount you wanted on the balance. Occasions like this may cause me to declare myself a lab god.)
38.You can`t wait for lab clean-up because you get to do random pointless "experiments" to figure out whats in all the dodgy unlabeled bottles (That beakerful of old acrylamide that I polymerised became, like, the lab mascot.)
39. You hate having to change your lab coat to a new one because 'it just won't fit right' and because the wrist bits are way too tight
40. You know you have worked in a lab too long when you actually threaten your cells whilst waving a bottle of virkon
41.Your nose invariably itches when you're doing mucky stuff with your hands so you develop the habit of scratching it on your upper arm. Unfortunately you sometimes carry this habit over to real life, where it looks like you're sniffing your armpits (Trying to find a clean bit of lab coat can be fun as well)
42. When as the senior of morphology you threaten each new registrar on their first day that oil and x10 dry objectives do not mix and will result in violence (I haven't TA'd anything, micro or otherwise, but if I ever do I WILL DO THIS. No oil on my lenses, bitches!)
43. When you say goodnight to your microscope on a friday night and tearfully hug it goodbye as you won't see it all weekend
44. When you start making patterns in your pipette tip box as you take the tips out.
45. When you wonder how much it will hurt if I pour just a smidge of this phenol:chloroform/trichloroacetic acid/any random chemical on myself
46. You've seen how far away you can hit a target with a squirty water bottle or seeing how far away from the bin I can fire pipette tips. (Pinging gloves is also fun.)
47. The fire alarm ceases to bug you. You only evacuate when you see the fire. (Hand on the floor to check for heat is a good indicator)
48. You know when you've been in a lab too long when you make 6 litres of medium, but wonder why no one makes "high" or "low". (Oh, that's just silly.)
49. When you organise your kitchen cupboard contents the way you would your chemicals..all labeled in alphabetical order
50. When you've got that callus on the side of your thumb from opening PCR tubes
51. You open the toothpaste with one hand. (Hee!)
52.You wash your hands before and after using to the washroom.
53.When you hear tween, you think of the surfactant not the age group.
54.For you, media is something which increases your culture.
55.You can identify organs on road kills.
56.You have a callus on your thumb. (Didn't we cover this one? Should replace it with something about pipette thumb. :P)
57.You use the word "aliquot" in regular sentences.
58.Sometimes you momentarily vanish from social activities because of a time point.
59.You've never worn a clean lab coat. (Not in years, man. Hee.)
60.You don't fear rodents, rodents fear you.
61.You say "orders of magnitude" in regular sentences.
62.You flinch when you hear the word "significant".
63.Showing up at 10AM and having a coffee is a productive day.
64.You can't stand god-like physicians, while secretly wishing you had their job.
65.You're very good at diluting things.
66.You're also very good at transferring small amounts of liquid between containers.
67.You are fed up of people saying alcohol, when they mean ethanol.
68.You say “conjugation” instead of “sex”, and "pili" sounds dirty.
69.SOB is not an insult; it's what you grow your bugs in.
70.You say "mills" and "megs". (ALWAYS. What kind of weirdo DOESN'T?)
71.No-one in your family has any idea what you do.
72.You can make a short film in power point.
73.You consider a green laser pointer to be science bling.
74.When your fruits go bad and you get fruit flies, you can't help but check their eye colour
75.You own invitrogen t-shirts and actually wear them. (No, but I have a Roche mug!)
76.You refer to your children as the F1.
77.You've suffered carpal tunnel from the pipetman.
78.You've used Kimwipes as Kleenex.
79.A timer clipped to the hip is not only practical, but dead sexy.
80.You've played Battleship using tip boxes.
81.The front page of Science is your light reading. (I was reading Nature earlier for the good times.)
82.You think the following is a quality insult: "I've seen cells more competent than you!".
83.The scent of latex reminds you of work, not play.
84.You've used, "I'd like to get into your genes" as a pickup line. (No, but I totally SHOULD. Also something about TATA boxes and turning people on... What.)
Haha, that was amusing. *dork*