I Bet You Never Guessed....

I was tagged (a few weeks ago, I’ll admit) by the fabulously, amazingly witty Ellie over at The Lucky Nest in the “6 Random Things About Me” meme. On account of having to wait for the appropriate sized path-length cells to arrive for all the upcoming circular dichroism I will be doing, and the upcoming Jewish holidays (meaning I will be spending a few days out of the lab, so there’s no point in purifying the proteins that immediately begin to degrade roughly 0.2 seconds after coming off the column, if I won’t be in the lab every single day next week to use them), I’ve shockingly found myself with a few extra minutes to actually sit at my desk. Meme time!

The Rules:

1) I am allergic to mosquito bites. Seriously, seriously allergic. As in, each mosquito bite turns into a giant, rock hard, fiery hot welt that itches non-stop for the first day, and then becomes extraordinarily painful and swells to giant proportions and hurts like a bitch. I also attract mosquitoes better than anyone I know, which is apparently because I am extremely efficient at processing cholesterol, and the cholesterol by-product residues remain on my skin and attract said mosquitoes. It’s a lose-lose situation. Case in point, last Saturday, as in 10 days ago, I was outside on a deck with some friends enjoying a live band at a bar. My ankles are still so swollen from the mosquito bites I am still having difficulty walking and it is still painful, but at least after 6 days my resulting fever from the allergy went down.

2) I hate flip flips. Hate hate hate hate with a passion. Flip flips are appropriate attire at a beach or a pool, and nowhere else. I am well aware that 98% of the American population disagrees with me on this one, but there are so many footwear options that are far less hideous, and do not make the cringe-worthy thwack-thwack sound of flip flops. Loathe them.

3) I don’t drive. I mean, I can – I’m a legal licensed driver – I just very, very rarely do. When I was in high school, I drove on daily basis. But then I graduated from high school, and moved to D.C. for undergrad, and left behind my car. And at my undergraduate institution, next to nobody had a car, because a) you didn’t need one, and b) parking fees were astronomical. I think in all four years there, I knew precisely two people who had cars. And then I stayed in D.C. for graduate school, and continued my car-free existence. My husband has a car, but he is very distinct that it is HIS car, not OUR car. A big part of why I don’t drive is because I get carsick, even while driving, and I dread the day when my husband makes me pack up and move out of the city and into the suburbs where I’ll have to drive. I plan on retaliating by frequently vomiting in his nice new luxury car he will purchase for himself following the completion of his residency.

4) My favorite food in the whole wide world is eggplant. That’s pretty random, right? I mean, when you can pick from all sorts of delicious things like ice cream and goat cheese, who picks eggplant?

5) I am superbly tidy/organized. Our lab once tried to do a weekly “neatest bench” competition to try to encourage everyone to keep their personal bench space organized, but our PI gave up after a few weeks, because everyone realized that I would just win every single week, and I wasn’t even trying. It’s just how I am. Everything has a place, and that’s where it belongs. I secretly dread having children someday, because they are not going to keep everything where it belongs, and I don’t think I will be able to function.

6) I have foul fingers, but rarely a foul mouth. When I’m typing, generally because I am pissed about something and am venting to my best friend on GChat, I swear like a sailor. But in real life? Only when I have asked my husband three times to move the suitcase he left in the middle of the bedroom floor, and three times in a row I painfully stubbed my toe on the suitcase in the middle of the night (and the swearing was not so much at my husband, but the natural reaction to kicking the suitcase with my swollen, infected, mosquito-bitten toe).

Now, we get to learn 6 random facts about the following:

1) Amanda, over at A Lady Scientist, a fellow slave of the laboratory.

2) The Science Girl, at She Blinded Me with Science, kicking off the science aspect of her training.

3) Julie (with the Greatest Name Ever), at One Day At A Time, owner of the adorable Smartest Cat Ever! (and Meanest Boyfriend Ever, who is makes Smartest Cat Ever stay off the counters, couch, and all the exact places where a cat belongs!)

4) Southern Grad Girl, at The Grad Life, who should really think about weaning herself off caffeine!

5) physics*chick, at Mad Scientist, who I am convinced really must not do any work during the day, because I am amazed with the number of completed knitting projects she has on her Ravelry page!

6) You!

The Protein Nazi

Remember way back to May, when I had to drag my tired, though amazingly not hungover (but extremely exhausted) self out of bed at pre-dawn hours to be in the lab by 5am the morning after my bachelorette party to start an experiment? It sucked. After not getting home until after 3am, I knew how absolutely crucial this experiment was (as in, without the data from this experiment there was no point in applying for the grant), so I willed myself into the lab to set up the experiment. Since there is a long incubation time in the middle, I went back home where I found all my friend still asleep, crawled back in bed for a short nap, had brunch with my friends, and returned to the lab and was there until after midnight scrambling to finish all the data.

The data turned out to be gorgeous, and I emailed it off to my PI by 1am that night. He happened to still be up, working on grant for which the data was intended, and was so excited that he sent an email off with my data included to all the collaborators entitled “Amazing Grad Student Produces Novel Data!” and singing my praises in the body of the email. My PI expects very hard work, but he does pay compliments when they are due, and I did appreciate his recognition of the long hours I had just logged and the giant kink they had put in the weekend I was supposed to spend enjoying my bachelorette party with friends who had traveled in to D.C. specifically to spend the weekend with me.

Fast-forward several months, and my PI finds out that the grant was indeed funded. As such, he decided to take the lab out for a celebratory lunch. And so, right now, everyone from my lab is taking off part of the afternoon to enjoy a delightful sushi lunch in celebration of a collaborative grant with a lab at another institution. Note, however, that I am currently typing a blog post... indicating that I, sadly, would not be at the celebratory lunch. Because we’ve had a bit of turnover, and we’re a joint lab, over half the people at said lunch have had nothing whatsoever to do with acquiring the grant, while the person who dragged her tired, sorry ass into the lab and did the important experiment is still stuck in the damned lab purifying proteins which have to be done ASAP for an experiment for a paper which we are trying to push out rapidly. Yes indeed, my reward is that I get to babysit the purification system, pushing the #*%@&*! button every time the "electrical error! call for service!" message pops up.

Seriously, this happens all. the. time. around here. ALL THE TIME. On a whim, something will come up – a lab picnic, a trip to go berry picking, one of the PIs will decide to have everyone over to watch Turkey play soccer in the EuroCup tournament, and everyone else drops their experiments and runs, and all I hear is “Oh, Julie can’t go, she’s purifying her proteins.” WHY AM I THE ONLY RESPONSIBLE PERSON AROUND HERE?!?!

All I’m saying is that if my PI doesn’t bring me back some lunch, my freshly purified, crucial proteins are being held hostage. NO PROTEINS FOR YOU!

Time Is(n't) On My Side

Today, my PI introduced me to someone as a first year graduate student.

"Wait," I asked. "Do you mean to tell me that the past several years have actually all just been a horrendous nightmare?"

Oh, right. He re-introduced me as a third year graduate student.

"Try again." When he still looked confused, I pointed out that since July, I have been a fourth year. (I'm in one of those evil programs that starts in July, thereby sucking away the last possible summer of freedom you have until retirement.)

He buried his face in his hands, amazed at how quickly time flies and astounded that he could possibly be so old. I obviously know the feeling, as I haven't been able to bring myself to update my blog header to reflect my new fourth year status (that, and working 120+ hour weeks doesn't leave a lot of free time).

But between you and me, I was kind of hoping it was all one big nightmare -- because it sure would be easier to back out and find a new career path if I was only a few months into this program, rather than four years!

Safety Hazard Hell

In this morning’s edition of “My Life in the Laboratory is a Total Shitshow”, I have been chased out my side of our laboratory because a malfunctioning transfer box sparked, ignited, caught on fire, and melted the plastic transfer tank to the stir plate in the cold box. This was realized after smoke started seeping out the bottom vents of our “beer cooler” style refrigerator, emitting the foul smell of melting plastic, requiring a brave soul to slide open one of the doors, dive into the giant cloud of smoke, unplug the transfer tank, fill the entire lab with the the noxious odors, and cause the owner of said transfer to come running over hysterical concerned not with the safety of those of us who work on that side of the lab and had been breathing in the fumes, but only with the status of her membrane. Once all was said and done and the casualties had been tallied (transfer tank: melted; membrane: fine), Health & Safety came to inspect the damage and herded us into the other half of the lab, deeming my half of the lab a safety hazard, thereby preventing me from doing any of my experiments for the day and have thus threatened to take away my weekend off for Labor Day, leaving me dangerously on the verge of mental breakdown.

I am no stranger to long hours in the lab. I average between 12 – 14 hours/day in the laboratory, plus extra time I spend at home reading papers, analyzing data, etc. I generally work at least 6 days a week, typically 7, generally putting in even longer hours on the weekends than during the week because I have uninhibited access to the equipment that I need without having to wait for other people, without having to schedule time, and it just makes the most sense for me to just use it. Mind you, I do not by any stretch of the imagination enjoy working these hours – I just do what I feel I have to do, and I generally do it without complaining (too much).

But these past few weeks have just been totally out of control, and I have been on the verge of losing it for days now. Last week, during a normal seven day, Sunday-to-Sunday work week, I worked a total of 132 hours. That averages to 18.85 hours/day, or roughly 5 hours/day in which I am not in the lab. This of course does not include the time spent at home doing lab related work (analyzing data, writing up experiments, editing protocols). On the days which I actually made it back home, an hour was spent walking to/from the lab, and of course at some point I had to shower, eat (though rarely – I’ve lost almost 10 pounds this month alone because I just haven’t had time to eat since I’ve been so busy), maintain my normal housewife duties of laundry and packing lunches and running basic errands for my husband, and you can see why I’ve been more than a bit cranky and exhausted lately.

Now, if all these hours were contributing to some kick-ass data, that would be one thing. But they’re not. All these hours are because people are morons, and I keep getting held up for reasons over which I seem to have little control. Once in a while, fine. But back-to-back-to-back? I can’t even begin to get into all the shit that has gone done over the past month because it so overwhelming, but it has resulted in things like equipment malfunctions that suddenly require me to press a button every time 0.5mL of buffer has passed through the protein purification system – meaning every 30 seconds to 1 minute depending on flow rate – for an entire 5+ hour run. PUSHING A BUTTON EVERY 30 SECONDS TO ONE MINUTE FOR OVER FIVE HOURS. For three days. And this all could have been prevented had someone not changed tubing without telling me. And of course, because I wasn’t planning on this happening, I already had my typical 14 hours of work that had to be done, in addition to 5 hours of sitting on the floor tethered to the machine pushing the button to make the proteins to do the circular dichroism. And then I show up with my samples good to go to run the CD, and the person wit whom I scheduled the CD says “Ooops, sorry, I forgot, can you come back next week?” Except that these are horrid proteins and they don’t last a week and they cannot be frozen, and waiting a week would mean that I would have to go through the entire purification process again, so my PI ranted and raved and was able to convince them to let me use the machine on the weekend. Except oops, I ran out of nitrogen, and then the person who mis-scheduled me said “Sorry, I forgot, I thought I had some, I miscalculated.” For $16, I would have bought some stupid tanks out of my own pocket, and of course, for each step I had already incubated our protein with the small molecule and had to throw them away afterwards and required more protein, with more purification and more dialysis, etc etc etc.

And so, you can see why I was so thrilled at escaping the lab this weekend and going to the shore. Not exactly for a quite and relaxing weekend – a weekend with my husband’s “adopted family” (meaning 5 children under the age of 9 and 4 dog under the same roof – so honestly, being in the lab all weekend is probably more relaxing and peaceful) – but a science-free weekend, none-the-less (or at least experiment-free, since I am sure a stack of papers to read would make the journey). But now that I am stuck on the far side of the lab, and my experiments are on the near-side of the lab, I am stuck with a difficult decision. Do I say screw it, be totally irresponsible, and just go away this weekend anyway, ignore all the experiments in progress that I have, not finish them (and let them go to waste, as I have things which would need to be completed today), and face the potential wrath of my PI on Monday? Or do I suck it up and be responsible and send my husband away for the weekend without me, and come in this weekend, like every other weekend, and slave away like normal?

Like I said, my life in the laboratory is a total shitshow… and 99% of the time, it’s not even my fault.

Principal's Office

Seeing as how my projects had reached a (very temporary, apparently) lull, I decided to use this morning to take care of some necessary banking. After much discussing, Husband and I decided to throw all caution to the wind and just merge all our finances together – none of this keeping our own separate side accounts. I know there are proponents for each side (combining all finances vs. having one joint account and maintaining separate side accounts vs. maintaining only individual accounts) but what the hell, we just figured if we can’t live under the same roof starting in June, at least our money can all cohabitate under the same bank account number.
Since I was expecting my experiments to be on the lighter side (a rarity), and I confirmed that my direct deposit for July kicked over into my new account, I figured it was the perfect morning to swing by the bank when it opened at 9 and close out my old checking account. No problem.
I took my time getting ready this morning and was enjoying a relaxed pace when an email pops up from my PI. No body to the email aside from his normal signature, and a subject line merely stating “PLEASE COME TO MY OFFICE WHEN YOU GET IN.”
Uh-oh. Panic. What does this mean?! No further explanation. Regardless, this does not sound like a good situation. First, we have the all capital letters. Second, absolutely no indication of what we need to discuss. Third, an email asking me to come in (often, my PI just leaves post-it notes on my desk asking me to drop by if I’m in the hood or elsewhere in the building). I keep going back and forth – do I go to the bank because this is the ONLY day I can likely go and close my account (and because my account is now at under $5,000, I will get fined $100 if I don’t close it out by the end of the week) as planned, or do I rush into the lab to face whatever evil punishment is waiting behind my PI’s door? I panic. Seriously, I felt like a kid being called down to the principal’s office (well, in theory… I wouldn’t know in actuality, I was a goody-two-shoes).
Suddenly, Husband’s voice pops into my head (seriously, how does it get in there, and how do I get rid of it?) yelling at me that I let my PI control my life too much and if I’m averaging 12+ hours/day and I need to go to the bank one day at 9am, I am allowed to go into the lab late. Finally, I suck it up, and make the decision to go to the bank, and email my PI and let him know that I will be in a bit late, as I have to stop at the bank at 9 to take care of some business.
He promptly e-mails me back and says “Great. Please bring your laptop so we can discuss [small molecule] results.”
@#$*@#%*!@!!! 15 minutes of my panicking over what sort of trouble I’m in (have I not been working hard enough? am I not spending enough time helping the summer students? am I not distributing my time properly on projects? did I forget to lock the lab last night and our $300,000 BIAcore was stolen? am I going to be beaten with a birch switch??) I’m in, all because he couldn’t take the 6 seconds to extend the email to include “so we can discuss your small molecule results.”

Thanks a lot, PI, for ruining my one morning of relaxation. Apparently, a girl can’t get a break around here.

Also, provided I have time to get around to it this week, because the meeting involved significantly more than just discussing data, and ended with roughly 3 months worth of work which I have to complete in 2 weeks, of course, a preview of posts to come….

1) Julie is a Smart-Ass… or, the post in which you get to see Julie’s home-made wedding “video”
2) 99% of Humans are Morons…. or, Julie’s uterus is closed for business

Stay tuned!