Siliceous and Delicious

Bumbled in rather closer to lunchtime than the morning today, but found that my harvested culture had finally arrived from the CCMP. I set to work immediately and spent the remainder of the morning bustling around—finding somewhere to store the frozen samples (Dave’s lab has a new freezer in which they found a home), finding a way to dispose of the dry ice (Ann’s lab found a use for it), and so forth. In the afternoon, set out on a mission to start using the sonicator—a mission, like all grad school missions it seems, that was far more odyssean than I could have imagined. Not only did I clean out a nook in one of their back rooms to have a space to use the sonicator, then move the hulk of a machine from the lab to that space; not only did I subsequently move the machine back to the lab after a grad student complained that the thing would be too noisy in the room next to her office (understandably enough of course), but I also had to settle on Friday morning as the first available time to be trained to use it. So, it looks like this project’s on hold for the rest of the week.

Of course, I’d have to wait anyway, since (as I found out) there isn’t any of the particular detergent (“RBS-35”) mentioned in the Crawford paper whose methods I am trying to follow available around these parts. And since this means putting in a VWR order with Diane (which I promptly did, after searching around in the Knoll and Pearson labs), it may be weeks before I see the stuff.

I had to cut the day short to answer one call for departmental community service I couldn’t turn down—Tom had asked me to come to his quals practice talk, feedback which I recall appreciating tremendously, so I had to return the favor (karmically speaking).

So, I didn’t get to writing the comments for Dave’s manuscript—and I don’t hold out too much hope for it tonight either. It feels like crap not having done it, but on the other hand, I really, really don’t feel like doing it. I know it’s awful, but I just can’t seem to help myself!