Momma is my new favorite...
thanks to
this....
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the rest of you who have asked for updates too blah, blah, blah. I should have a post with actual content within the next 24 hours. :)
Please advise
Just to give you all yet another opportunity to use your excellent senses of humor and abilities to mock me, I offer a current thought.
For whatever reason (not the important part), I have been remembering my dreams a lot lately. They all seem to have something in common. Of course, it isn't something obviously symbolic or excessively common (because I'm not nearly normal enough for either of those options.) Instead, it is something odd.
All of the dreams that I remember lately take place in T stations. (Last night was Porter Square.) Sometimes, I am having important conversations there. Sometimes I am chasing someone. Sometimes I am running from something. Sometimes I just need to take the T. In any case, all of the salient action takes place in T stations. This is particularly odd since I ride the T about twice a week. So, what do you think? Do I have some sort of deep psychological connection to public transportation, or do I just need to get out more?
Good morning sunshine
First, for those of you wondering about the radioactivity:
Obviously, I did not die. I also did not turn into a radioactive, mutant zombie, though that is a closer bet. :) My thyroid scan was elevated, but not so much as to cause any damage, so it's all good. In even better news, the experiment went perfectly, meaning that Evan is now officially trained to do iodinations and I never have to do one again.
Most of last week was rather blah. As most of you know, it was rainy, cold, and grey for most of the past two weeks, which led to my being less than entirely enthusiastic. Fortunately for me, I had a fantastic Friday night where I went out dancing at a club with a bunch of co-workers (for those of you who didn't make it, you missed quite the pole dancing!). We pretended that it wasn't pouring out and got all dressed up-full hair, makeup and all and had a generally fabulous time. Saturday was spent partially bonding with the roommates and hiding from the weather and partially visiting K. and B. (just back from their honeymoon) and their new kitten. I was trying to incite fights between the new kitten and the other cat. It was really quite amusing. Sunday was more hanging out with roommates and K. and B., this time at our place. All in all, it was a really good weekend, largely because I got to spend some time with cool work people that I haven't bonded enough with previously and because I got to spend time bonding with the new roommate, who is turning out to be quite fun. I'm glad that we have been able to introduce her to so many other fun people in the area. I am supposed to take her shopping sometime soon.
Everything is seeming much better lately: the sun is out and some of the other issues that were contributing to my general malaise have either subsided on their own or been dealt with. So yeah, things are good. Now if only I could get a win in Fantasy Football...
Radioactive emergency!
(or, why I really hate certain other people). I hope this makes sense to you non-science types because it was really quite traumatic. :(
Today was quite the day in the lab. It was the day of the first part of Evan's and my radioactive experiment, i.e. the day where we use the very bad and volatile radioactivity to label a peptide in a process that includes a step that makes an extra bad radioactive intermediate. (Look at the post two posts down and the links therein to get caught up.) I am teaching Evan the procedure, so mostly the plan for today was to watch him do the experiment.
We went upstairs to the hot room and started off by pre-scanning all of our equipment...lead aprons, lead bricks and other things to keep us safe. They were all contaminated and had been sitting around our lab as such for who knows how long. So...looks like somebody(ies) has been spilling radioactivity all over and not checking/cleaning up properly after themselves, and inadvertently subjecting a lot of people to a little radiation. As I'm sure you can imagine, we were more than slightly annoyed.
We next decided to pre-scan our work area. The experiment has to be done in a special area, in a special charcoal-filtered glove-box hood that is inside a regular chemical fume hood, to be extra protective against the volatility of the isotope. Our meter indicated that the inside of the inner glove-box hood was extremely contaminated as well, although then Evan made the astute observation that there was a bag of trash next to the glove-box hood but still in the outer fume hood. The bag of trash was lightly shielded and had a piece of tape on it that said a name, a date and the words 2mCi, which indicates a large amount of radioactive material. To tell you the truth, I thought it said ZnCl and didn't realize it was 2mCi until Evan said so. It didn't say 2mCi of what type of radioactivity, though we later deduced that it was likely 125I, the bad stuff that we also were working with. Anyway, after much scanning we determined that this particular bag of trash was SO HOT that it was making the entire hood read off the charts and that we were unable to get a background reading anywhere in the vicinity, even if we tried to block it with all of our lead bricks. Now let's remember...this is a basically unlabelled bag sitting outside of the inner hood (but in the outer hood) with almost no shielding and both hoods OFF.
Since we didn't know what was in the bag, we didn't really want to touch it, so we called Radioactive Man. I wasn't in the room when he got there, but when I saw him, he was quite angry and surprised at the amount of mystery radioactivity emanating from the bag. He disposed of everything and went off to yell at the person who left it (not a member of our lab, seeing as how they PUT THEIR NAME on the mystery bag) and left Evan and I to do our work. We continued to do the experiment (which came out perfectly, good job Evan) and then proceeded to clean up. We realized that the hot room was actually so hot (thanks to having vast amounts of overfilled, unshielded and uncloseable radioactive waste containers) that it was extremely difficult to get background readings anywhere and that our readings changed drastically when we were facing towards or away from the waste area. We did our best, but it was not a good situation and we wrote some nasty notes to the radiation safety office. Total time in the confines of this excessively radioactive room? 2.5 hours.
Later on while doing another part of the experiment (no longer in the hot room), we needed a different meter to help with the cleanup. I found multiple meters that had dead batteries and had to go through about half of the lab to find a working survey meter. More evidence that none of the other radioactivity users in our lab try to clean up after themselves....
I found the whole day rather upsetting. Why are so few people taking responsibility for working with dangerous stuff? They do realize that their carelessness means that everyone is getting exposures (and having two-headed babies) or that everyone will be barred from using radioactivity as a result, right? It is really frustrating, and also really annoying that these people also work with some dangerous viruses. I know that I'm still kind of generally cranky, but I still think this whole thing is ridiculous. For some reason I thought that there were more than two responsible people (me and Evan) in our lab. At least we got gold stars for turning in the mystery person today (although as we discussed, we both felt like tattle-tales about it).
Tomorrow afternoon we'll get to go in for thyroid scans to see whether we had large inhalational exposures (a theoretical possibility after all of the time with the mystery bag). I'm sure we'll be fine, but I think we're both a little apprehensive. And, of course, we'll turn in our radiation badges in a month or so to see if we had any other exposures. Woohoo. How exciting. (Especially since both measurements are after the fact, and really just mean "oops. you're screwed now.)
A key problem
Today was probably the best day I've had this week. I was certainly the least grumpy today. I was also very busy and productive (at least from 8-3), which was nice. Also, it turns out that the little fits I've had over lab space issues the past few days paid off. Today the offending parties moved out of my space and back to their own. I feel kind of bad, as if I am being crazy and arguing about my Swingline stapler, but not too bad since I won. :) Nothing particularly GREAT happened today, but it was fantastic in comparison to the previous three days.
And then I got home.
I got home around 5:30-5:40. I was looking forward to chilling at home and the thought of a nap had even crossed my mind. I set down my bag (including my laptop, cell phone, wallet etc.) on the bed and went out to get the mail. Our mailbox is in the lobby outside the apartment, but we keep our mailbox key in the kitchen (don't ask.) I went outside, got the two pieces of junk mail from the mailbox, unlocked the lobby door and went inside, and then tried to unlock my apartment door. The key stuck, so I wiggled it around a little, at which point it snapped in half. I was able to pry the broken piece out of the lock, but then I was out of luck. My cell phone, useful to call either one of my roommates or my landlord, was of course in the apartment. I don't even pay attention to phone numbers anymore, I just store them in my cell phone. As I thought about it, I realized that I knew three numbers: my own cell phone (unhelpful), my parents' house in New York (unhelpful), and that of my former roommate K. who is currently on her honeymoon in Costa Rica (unhelpful). The next closest thing I had was that I remembered that my friend John's number was (area code)-something something something-JOHN. I was pretty sure he would also be unhelpful, and I also doubted that someone nice enough to lend me their cell phone would have the patience to let me try all possible "something, something, something" combinations.
So I sat in the stairwell. First a realtor came by with someone looking at one of the empty units in our building. Then the undergrads who live above us came through. The realtor and her client then left. Next, a nice man who lives upstairs came by. He actually talked to me instead of ignoring me, asking what had happened. We joked a little about how I was having some time for peaceful meditation and how I was the new apartment watchwoman and then he left. Then, the woman who lives next door came by. Finally, the man who lives in the top-most unit in the building came through the door, becoming the representative of the last unit in the building and the eighth person to walk by and not offer assistance. I was saved a minute or two later (at 6:30) when one of my roomates came home. It was not fun, but at least I am in the apartment now and we've figured out a key replacement.
Why couldn't we at least have had more interesting mail today? Can someone please talk to Vogue and have them coordinate their magazine schedule with the days that I have to sit in the stairwell? That would be a much better scenario then my reading the sale circular for Linens and Things.
Return of Radioactive Man
Once upon a time (like
here and
here ), I told you about some experiments that I was teaching Evan how to do. These experiments involve using a rather icky radioisotope, 125I. As I mentioned then, it turned out that we needed some "official" training to do the experiment, so I needed to be officially re-trained before doing the experiment. Soon after we did that work, Evan started to be really busy with his qualifying exam and I was preoccupied with Denmark and a variety of other things. Now that all of that is behind us, we are re-starting the radioactivity experiments.
The whole thing started innocently enough: I sent an email to the guy from the radiation safety office who we've worked with before, to ask him whether our radioactive workspace was certified for use and what the requirements would be for me to train Evan (so that his documentation would be correct). His reply? "We need to meet in person to discuss this." I put Evan into the email loop and set up a meeting for this afternoon.
Radioactive man and Evan showed up promptly at my desk at 2. It turned out that this meeting would serve as "training" for Evan and time to talk with me...or something. It was quite possibly the most useless meeting of my life. If you'll remember correctly (or learn from the links above), my "non-radioactive walkthrough"/re-training lasted for an hour and a half in the special radioactive room upstairs. Well...apparently Evan did not need as much training. First, radioactive man showed us how to find the radiation safety website on my computer. Then he talked with us a little about what we were supposed to do (asking only really easy questions.) And then he just kept talking.....
We learned about how much radioactivity one is exposed to when eating bananas (P32), yogurt (C14), we learned about radon, we learned about radioactivity when eating venison and when eating mushrooms. We learned how the amounts of radioactivity released from a nuclear reactor compared to that in food in general and that released from burning coal. We learned how much of an extra exposure a married person gets from sleeping next to someone every night (since everyone is a little radioactive...) Radioactive man just didn't want to leave. Finally Evan managed to get him out of the lab, and we both agreed that he is a little weird. Then E. and JP started laughing at me and trying to guess why Radioactive Man was trying to linger around. I'll admit that he DOES look at me funny, but I refuse to believe anything else they say, because radioactive man is just too creepy.
What a day (week)
It's been quite the crap-tastic week here. All in all, I have spent my time largely doing things that will not be contributing to my timely graduation whatsoever, like fighting (and losing) battles over space, coordinating the schedule of large group meetings, being thwarted in my attempts to use machines and computers that I needed to use (and then later finding out that people "forgot" to un-sign up for them) and doing things to help other people. The helping other people part I don't mind so much, because I generally like the people whom I am helping, but it certainly contributes to my feeling that I am getting little done and feeling slightly undervalued. Add to it the fact that I just had a meeting with the boss where we decided that the majority of the experiments that I HAVE been doing lately were crap, and that I should cut and run since the boss is feeling "a lack of forward progress." Ugggh. That's good news in a way since it means that I can theoretically do one more experiment and then write a paper, moving myself that closer to graduation (and onto a potentially more fruitful part of my project), but it involves an awful lot of "ifs"...if the next experiment works, if the paper gets published, etc. etc. Realistically, I know that everything will be okay and that this is just one of the short-term downs of graduate school, but I can't entirely shake the feeling that I'm turning into a former graduate student in the lab who sort of lingered here for eight years having various sorts of issues until she was sort of mercy-graduated.
Oh, and I'm annoyed at guys again, but that's all you're getting on that front.
All in all, I think I need to come up with an exciting plan for the weekend to take my mind of lab shit....well, that and that I need to have the weekend come really, really soon.
My serious side
As you may have noticed, I haven't been very bloggy lately. A lot has been going on (on various fronts) and has left me with little time to write, even though I have had much to say. (Be forewarned: much of it is quite reflective and perhaps on the wrong side of the touchy-feely line, also contributing to my reticence to write it.) My week in lab is relatively flexible: lots of experiments, but not much in the way of things that HAVE to be done at a certain time. No more of this ass-over-tea kettle-type day, which means that I may be here more. As far as your updates go: the wedding was wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. I'm not even sure that I can fully describe how perfect it was, but it really was just great.
Anyway...with all that is going on, I've been a little more into reading lately and less into writing. In addition to hitting all of the sites over there ------>, I've also been reading some of the bigger blogs as well. (Someday I'll make it through all of Sasha and Jo's links and feel well-read, which might perhaps lead to my making a more substantial link list of my own) Here are a few of favorites among the blogs I've recently read to distract you from the fact that today I've got nothing: (I'm only linking blogs with particular posts of note instead of whole blogs, because that would be a little annoying.)
Most everything at
Alas is great. If you're up for something thought-provoking, check out
this piece on the complexity of teen pregnancy and think about its relation to arguments surrounding abortion (which I think is important though I am iffy on the teen pregnancy as rational choice argument.)
In the "my thoughts exactly" category re: the Democratic party:
here again from Alas
here and
here from
Daily Kos In the absolutely infuriating category:
-While yes, I do know
those girls (and will refrain from pages of commentary on my own views on the issues),
this NYT article is heinous (I'm pissed by the article cited, not the post. The post gives a much better summary than I could). Maybe Louise Story and Larry Summers can get together and have a conversation about how I'm wasting my spot at Harvard.
-I dislike Condolezza. But....
this is one of the most disrespectful things I've ever heard. She's the Secretary of State, for goodness sake. You're interviewing her for the news (though yes, it is Faux News). There are SO many important issues to ask her about, yet you choose to spend camera time on this?????? They're obviously all about equality there, folks. I mean, they'd definitely have the same conversation with Colin Powell, right?
And finally,
the most infuriating of all (obviously the opposition, not the post is infuriating) from
The American Street (also just generally fabulous).... Excuse me? WHAT exactly is the problem with this
Seventeen article? You've GOT to be kidding me. I'm going to wake up and find out this was a joke tomorrow, right? I wonder what my mom is going to say when the package I send to my 14 year old sister includes copies of that issue of
Seventeen for her and her friends. I doubt it is being pulled in NY (or that my mom will keep the issue out of sis's hands when the her subscription copy shows up), but still. Grrrr.
Anyway, that's all I've got, but stay tuned.
