Conformity approved

Remodeling of lab is done, except it isn't -- there are parts of our ventilation that are different from the blueprint the construction workers got (read: a result of the duct-tape and glue patch-ups that have happened over the past decade), which meant that the crew is still wandering around, causing massive panic when they get lost in our building and propose to seal off a lab when they, in fact, meant the lab one floor up.


As I was telling my labmate: "Our lives are stressful enough! We don't need any more stress!"

The vacation that I came back from has done wonders for my perspective. Being at the bench for 50+ hours a week makes it really hard to take the necessarily steps back for the bigger view. That's not to mention that no breaks means no breather means exhaustion, which takes a psychological toll. Anyway, that's my story for how I came back to lab on Monday feeling psyched about my project again (though I suppose it's possible that it's the magical mint tea at play) which either resulted in my increased productivity or coincided with the timing of my project somehow because I suddenly got a breakthrough! It was awesome. I was ecstatic. Now I just need for 10 of my 40+ plates of cells to survive for longer than a week and I would have solved another part of my mystery gene. My professor was psyched as well. And apparently had decided to switch from high-fives to fist-bumps which was, frankly, strange (but then he's kind of strange in general so on a scale of normal to strange as scored to him, this barely registered).

Kind of exhausting though -- that part hasn't changed, whether the work is good or bad. The 40+ plates of cells means imaging every day for at least a week and feeding every 3-4 days for a month, so I'm...not going anywhere anytime soon. But also means being somewhere cool and dark for at least two hours every day, which was oddly soothing. (And today, woke me up from the coma induced by French toast and the arrival of 2pm, which Lucy, from our shared experience in roadtrip, knows is my lagging hour where I Do Not Drive. French toast very good though: tried making it stuffed with cream cheese and peach. Fruit is tricky, because of the juice.)

(Though peach by itself, with honey, tastes oddly like the loquat syrup I use to take a lot as a kid -- to those not Chinese: it's a bit like the cultural equivalent of honey-lemonade / lemon tea when you get something with chronic coughing... and you can apparently get it at 99 Ranch. Peach is odd with salt. Watermelon and pineapple is okay with salt. Pineapple is good with syrup but I have yet to try watermelon with syrup. Seems like it'd be too sweet.)

Weather's running warmer here, making me suspect that after four years here I'm no longer accustomed to sweating. (It's really gross. How did I stand it?) It also meant there was massive amount of traffic on the highway as the hordes descend to the beaches and water-based parks that I'm located unfortunately close to. (Being stuck in traffic ten minutes away from where you live is always frustrating. ) Our remaining undergrad (whom I like) had taken up martial arts (amusing because she tried dancing and martial arts -- coincidentally -- or not -- Wendy did dancing and I'm doing martial arts while we were in this lab) and accidentally injured herself. Also, we had another incident where the container expired before the chemical, which was just as awkward as I remembered it because there it was -- the plastic bits of the container is falling to pieces, the chemical is perfectly good but it needs to be kept sealed and dessicated so you need to find another container stat and nothing is the right volume.

I've completely lost track of what I was supposed to be talking about. Oh well, time to go and recap some multimedia.

Honeybush and vanilla tea is weird. I can't taste the vanilla, though it smells like the not vanilla part of vanilla extract (not alcohol, my ability to ID chemicals by smell is actually surprisingly good) (well maybe not so surprisingly). I am currently exceedingly proud of myself for identifying the correct botanical family of honeybush (Fabaceae) by the drawing on the tea package, though I'll have to admit my initial response is to squint at it suspiciously and ask "Is this some kind of lupine?" (Lupine's also in Fabaceae but it's toxic.)