Planning. FAIL.

I have some cells I need to harvest today so I thought that I might go in early, when it's nice and quiet and no one's using the equipments except for me, get it done, and get on with my day.

FAIL.

The access card for the building, despite of being just fine yesterday, refused to let me into the lab. I went around and tried every single door that can potentially give me access and it failed each time, with the little security light by the door blinking green and red at me, balefully. In a fit of pique, I tried the card on the door downstairs. It opened. Now I have access to the tissue culture room, except it was the wrong tissue culture room. I have access to my previous lab. It appeared that somehow my card had defaulted back to its previous value. (The other two cards worked just fine for access to the other buildings though, I tried.) (Yes each floor has a different access code for the card, don't ask me why.)

Not helpful.

The downstairs and the upstairs are not connected by internal stairs. (Yes Kate, this is the really weird building I was complaining to you about, a while back.) You have to exit the doors, climb the staircase outside of the building, and then re-enter. Hence, access to the downstairs lab did me no good at all. To be sure I looked around for people, with the vague hope that some of the people from my current lab, who work downstairs, might have upstairs access. Failed. Then I tried to find a PI, hoping PIs get building-wide access. Given that it was 9 to 9:30 on a Saturday morning, there was no one there.

Further more, due to the fact that the PI of my current lab will be gone until next week, the chances that someone from my current lab will come in over the weekend is much, much lower than normal.

After flailing around in frustration for a few minutes (didn't solve anything, of course it didn't solve anything), I went grocery shopping. And got myself more chocolate. I'm going in later today again to see if anyone's there (unlike my previous lab, I don't have the phone number of anyone in the lab either, and I only have the email of one postdoc who will not be in until Monday). If not, I'm leaving the entire thing until Monday. If the cells start dying or the protein expression changes -- well, I'm a rotation student and I've darn well tried my best.

Oh my God. Fail. I don't think flailing adequately expresses my frustration anymore. I mean, how often do student want to go in on weekends and can't?