Ramblings of an Overworked Grad Student

I was supposed to go into the lab on Saturday, but I got called into the police station to give a statement about the accident I was involved in on Tuesday. Then, I had to get groceries and go out with family on Sunday, so I didn't get into the lab until 9:30 last night. I also had to throw a presentation together for lab meeting this morning, and since some of the material I needed was still in the lab, I didn't get it finished until last night. I was working on it until 12am...

Cue lab meeting at 9:00 am this morning. Presentation went well. Lots of good suggestions for further experiments. Then lab work. Except that one of the power packs doesn't work properly, so my lab mate switched it to another for me while I was on lunch. Except that she had it running at 60 V, instead of 60 mA... Usually if we're doing constant voltage we would be running at 400 V... So, it took forever for the gel to run. So I'm still here at 7:30, and I won't be out until 8 at the earliest...

Next, I couldn't lyse my cells today, because whoever used the last of the protease inhibitor didn't think aliquot more, and didn't let anyone know that we were completely out of it. We're also out of the DNA that I needed to transfect my cells with, so I can't do that, either. No big deal, because I won't be able to lyse any cells until we get more protease inhibitor in...

Also, no one bothers to sign up for equipment. I checked first thing in the morning to see if anyone was running a gel, and no one was signed up. Put my name down, started setting up, and then saw two other people starting to set up as well... We don't have the equipment for everyone.

I really hate my lab sometimes. I'm tempted to send out a really bitchy e-mail about it. I actually know exactly who's responsible for it, too... There are only five of us using the reagents. One of them is me, one's anal, one is responsible for the ordering, and knows how much of things we have left, and two of them have the habit of taking other people's solutions without asking.

I feel like I'm in kindergarten again.

AND I still need to put together tutorial for tomorrow afternoon.

AND! They've turned on the heat in my building for the winter. Even with the AC on, it's still overheating. I hope they're looking forward to astronomical hydro bills, because I plan on leaving the windows open all winter. I've even got two fans now to draw in the cold air from outside.

Is the week over yet? I want Castiel and Thanksgiving dinner now.

Also, I signed up for apocabigbang I think I'm going to combine it and NaNoWriMo

I think I deserve a reward >.>

I was so very pleased with myself on Wednesday when I'd gotten myself to the 15000 word mark for the Big Bang, and I thought meeting the deadline would be easy.

Except that when I mentioned a while ago that my supervisor had a grant up for review, I may have not put the correct emphasis on the urgency of her grants.

Turns out that it's EPIC GRANT WRITING SEASON OF DOOM!!!!1! for all of the primary investigators in my research group, and it comes around every five years. On Wednesday, J sat us all down to discuss the first grant up for review, and put the fear of god into half of the lab. E, the Polish lab tech is swamped because she has to make stable cell lines for one of our protein constructs, she's the only one with access to the mice we use, and she's the resident expert on confocal microscopy in our lab. D, the Chinese lab tech is busy doing activity assays and protein work, and K, the Canadian lab tech is on vacation. Then there's S, the mother of twins who just finished her PhD, who believes she is solely responsible for competing all of the needed experiments o.O

V and I kind of laugh, because V is finished next week, and she's taking a month off to look for housing and a vehicle in Washington (DC), while I'm of the mentality that I'll do the work I have to do, and if it coincides with some fo the stuff J wants, I'll do that too. I'm not going to kill myself trying to get things done, because I've learned from experience that you end up making mistakes and falling behind.

I've got three experiments planned for before my holidays, and I can use them to look at additional proteins, so I'm not going to worry much about it.

On the Big Bang front, I submitted my draft at 11:59 pm (which is funny, even though we had until uh... today at 1pm to get it in). Word count is sitting at ~21,000, plus headers and the outline of the scenes I still need to write.

This weekend I'm going to go back to my parents place, abuse their laundry machines, go shopping at stores I actually like, then go party it up with fleshlycherry, themega5, and ghostj with a night of drinks, dancing, and general good times.

Then I'm going to go back into the lab on Sunday to get ready for a week of manic lab mates and experiments.

On the plus side, B12 supplements and getting back to boot camp seem to be helping. I'm feeling much more awake and functional. I had four productive, if long days in the lab this week. :)