Whoa baby whaaa?

I found a lot of interesting things today and my mind was reeling to the point where I accidentally dumped a container of CDs on my head of all things, while in lab, before giving myself a paper cut that is currently making it hard for me to type. (Then again, it wouldn't be the first time I bled all over my keyboard. It's less damaging, at least, than getting coke all over the keyboard.)

On rare occasions I feel brilliant. Most of the days I still feel like an idiot.

I should start with the worry hovering over the entire lab all of last week: Wendy's fine! Actually she came in today and did two hours of mouse work in the vivarium. I spent some time explaining that most people in her condition would be home, resting. She pointed out that since her baby (boy, born late last Wednesday) has to stay in the hospital for a few months, she doesn't have to take her maternity leave until the baby comes home and so in the mean while she can try to get all her stuff down so she can graduate. I explained that people usually go from hospital rest to home rest before going to work. She pointed out that since the baby's early she recovered fairly quickly, that there's nothing she can do at home except sleep (which, isn't that the point of rest?), and that she has mouse embryos to dissect tomorrow, and genotyping to do. I...just.... Well, at least she seems fine, despite of the massive amount of bruising on her arm from the IV (she has small veins; I can sympathize). She showed me the tag they put on her. Apparently baby-stealing is a common enough problem that they tag the parent and tag the baby right after birth and if you take the baby outside of the door it'll beep -- the door, not the baby. Like an errant library book or, as Wendy pointed out, a shirt from the store.
I had an odd mental image of babies with barcodes stamped on them. (Why not? I've been tagged with something that DID have a barcode on it before.)

So right. Next up is something that I found out about the recruitment process of grad school! Our recruitment weekend ended Saturday evening, everyone flew out at different times Sunday (or really late Saturday night). Around late Sunday I got an email (which I didn't read until this morning) asking me to a) give some feedback on the weekend and what can be changed for the better, in terms of organization &c. and b) review / rate my recruit.

I felt very twitchy the entire time I was filling out the form, and not just because the name of my recruit happened to be "Anna". I was asked to rank the acceptance (from high priority to low priority to don't accept), as well as to describe the strength and weaknesses of the recruit (e.g. communication skills, interest in research &c.) along with anything exceptional (and I have no idea what's considered exceptional). Somehow I suspect all the PIs that had interviews are also asked to fill out these forms (which makes me wonder how they can fill it out, considering that most of them didn't give us the time to talk during interviews at all) ("quiet", "relatively quiet", "managed to squeeze in one question", "fell asleep"?). Right after this, we were asked to send a nice email to our recruits (after all, we are trying to "recruit" them) to conclude this entire thing. On one hand I'm pretty sure my classmates and I will not be putting anyone in the "don't accept" category (unless you really are psycho and talking to you has made us fear for our lives -- in that case we don't want you in SD, we want you as far away as possible). On the other hand, I do feel that since the job of the hosts are to take the recruits out, talk to them, and show them around in a nice, relaxed atmosphere, is it really fair to rate this interaction as one would an interview?

This bothers me.

Thirdly. The collaborator that I've just spent a month and a half waiting for and committing academic stalking via email for (yeah the one who never answers his email or if he does, never includes the information I need, such as his protocol index) gave me all the information I needed today, in under two minutes, because I got so fed up that I went and called him instead of sending him increasingly more frantic emails. He was very nice over the phone and even gave me his cell phone number (I called his lab, figuring that someone there must know where he is, and he picked up) in case I need to reach him again. And then the rest of the paperwork for animal transfer was submitted in under fifteen minutes, approved right after lunch, and ready to go by five pm.

I waited a month and a half for this.
People are truly complex and so very, very, annoying.
Though now this means I might have more behavioral data in a few months, finally, and that's kind of exciting.

I had "The War of 1812" by the Arrogant Worms stuck in my head today, for no apparently reason. It was a little disconcerting to keep catching myself singing the chorus part under my breath while I was cutting my cryostat sections (how is it that I use three different types of razors, two types of tweezers, and three types of surgical scissors regularly, and still manage to injure myself with a sheet of paper, by the way?). Considering the lyrics, I wonder if someone might mistake me for a terrorist at some point and try to report me. Well, if I suddenly disappear off of the face of the earth you guys will know what happened.