8 AM: Drag myself out of bed. This is about an hour after my alarm went off, and about an hour before when I finally got up the past two days. I miss grad school, where such behavior is expected, but at least I'm not out in the real world where it would get me fired quickly instead of slowly.
9:30 AM: Arrive in lab following a short drive to the perimeter lot and a long walk into lab (no bus today - for the first time since I started this job, the weather is neither wet nor ridiculously cold). This is too late for journal club, but earlier than the arrival of my new grad student, which is good because on the agenda for today are:
1. Stage 1 of the next major protein purification. Time required: ~30% of the day.
2. Confirm successful cloning (it's not as exciting to you as it sounds, but it's exciting to me because it looks like it might have worked right the first time, which never happens). Time required: ~30% of the day.
3. Walk new grad student through first true biochemical experiment. This would take me ~70% of the day to do it myself; since he's reasonably good, teaching only requires ~50% of the day.
Total time required: 110%; occasional minutes of downtime due to imperfectly interleaving protocols leave me time to quickly check up on my favorite web sites when I probably should be reading journal abstracts, and even time for a quick lunch, but 110% is still 110%.
5 PM: Student gets to end of partially successful experiment, and needs liquid nitrogen. We're out, so we tote the multi-liter storage flask to the basement to get more. Unfortunately, the prox card reader to get back upstairs isn't working, so we get to haul a somewhat fragile vacuum-insulated flask filled with very, very cold liquid out the loading dock, up the outside stairs (closed for the winter), and back into the building through the cafeteria.
8 PM: Last experiment is finished (until Saturday, anyway). Foreseeing this sort of day, a flask of Speyburn Highland scotch had accompanied me this morning, a small portion of which proves very helpful.
9 PM: Home. DROD. Beer. Watch, let's see, looks like "
Midnight Meat Train"
is the favored choice from the rotating Netflix supply. Collapse, to repeat Saturday and Sunday (but at least I have my liquid nitrogen now).
Yes, this is my sick idea of fun.
But what did you do today?
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