The devil is in the details

Life in isolation

Sometimes I wish that I lived in a little bubble. Not only do I recognize the utlity of a bubble from an immunological point of view, I also think it would be quite useful in avoiding other people. I'm not a misanthrope by any stretch of the imagination, however, I've been slightly frustrated this morning. I came in early because I have a long experiment going on today, and I was behind schedule (note to self: no matter how much you might want to think that step 1 of your protocol takes 45 minutes, it actually takes an hour and a half in real people time) . While I was working, someone (a non-native English speaking Post-Doc) came by my tissue culture hood and told (not asked) me that I needed to read her paper, and oh by the way, she needed it done today. I was feeling frazzled already, so I wasn't entirely sweet to her, but I told her I would get to it and asked her to put it on my desk. When I made it back to my desk a little while later, I found not only the paper but emails from two other people telling me about things that they desperatly needed me to to this morning. All three of these people are super lucky that my experiment has a one hour incubation followed almost immediately by a five hour incubation, so I have the time to do it. But why do they expect that I can just drop everything and do random crap for them RIGHT NOW? Can't they take some responsibility for themselves? Ah well, it's just going to end up eating up some of my goofing off time, so I'll be okay, it's not a big deal. Oh, and a side benefit to the bubble could be that I could more easily avoid other people's drama. I so wish that I could pick which co-workers I sat next to...

Doing other people's work is a nice distraction from other stuff that is going on, though. Going back to the theme from a previous day...I am still over-analyzing/stressing/thinking about/obsessing (pick the severity of your adjective) over stuff that I would rather ignore. Bleh. Any funny distractions are appreciated. Also appreciated would be a personal assistant as well as someone who can figure out how to get my ejournal email search account to stop fucking up. I think it has something to do with my Java settings, but I'm not sure. Grrrr.

Alright, I have to go read this paper....and feed people's cells....etc. etc. etc. (And avoid the boss, who I hear coming, further proving the point that he only comes by when I am slacking.)
Oh, and you may hear from me again this afternoon. I am currently at the beginning of a five hour incubation, so I may be back to kill more time.

posted by Immunegirl @ 11:03 AM