Holiday rush

I'm wondering whether or not to bother coming into lab at all tomorrow, since I've got most of the stuff planned so that all experiments can be wrapped up by the end of today. Transit by bus to and from campus will take me two hours. I need to arrive to the airport early, also by bus, which will take me at least one hours and thirty minutes. If I have a flight at two-ish that means I should probably leave house at around noon, which means I need to leave lab at eleven, which means even if I got to lab by eight in the morning I'll have a grand total of three hours which...is enough to run PCR and maybe a gel. Purify RNA maybe if already have samples prep'ed (which I don't, since I finished a fresh batch yesterday). Do some cell culture (also finished yesterday). More likely, I'll be doing comp bio stuff, and now that the initial downloading and compiling portion part is over, I'm collecting sequences, which I can do at home just well as in lab. Which leads me to ask why the heck would I come to lab tomorrow?

Therefore, unless I forget something important (such as an incubation) I probably won't even be in lab tomorrow.

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I got the wheels changed on my car over the weekend, since they are pretty old and while a bit of dry-rot isn't too bad on the locals I didn't want to take the chances when Lucy and I drive long distance. I also had some time to make up my Christmas list for this year and spent some time staring at the calendar, trying to figure out when I need to mail what to whom so that it arrives on time, given that the speed of delivery by USPS seems to asymptotically approach zero the closer we get to Christmas. (Well no, it isn't that bad. I'm exaggerating by a lot. The point is the speed will be slower and the margin of error greater and if I were to plot it it would probably look a little like something from the half-life decay graph.) I have not yet heard from Malvina (does anyone have her current email address? Does anyone mind checking the emails I've sent out to make sure that I am using her current email address?) but I think we're good to go for everyone else.

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My mice had two litters last week. One of which got eaten over the weekend. Lab mice are very inbred and strange. (Read: disgusting.)

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I went out to dinner with some of my labmates (and whichever of their spouses that could make it) last night. It was fun. The atmosphere was a lot more relaxed since the PI (who is, when all's said and done, our "boss") wasn't there. Wendy and her husband were nice enough to give me a ride so I won't have to navigate the two highways that's between where I am and where the place is. There was a lot of ribbing involved for everyone regarding lab and life. Considering the fact that it was a Monday night, it was very relaxing.