I’m just killing time in the lab with my hunky dorky plants and bacteria, while waiting for a gel to run it’s course.

It’s late. The possums are out, they look like these huge fuzzy cats or really fat racoons without the stripes. They also sound like bats from hell.

There’s a new PhD student coming to the lab sometime this year (?). From Thailand. Has the coolest name ever…“Beer”.

Also, intermittently listening to TheSixtyOne.

I caught a couple of monkeywrenches in my projects, (i.e. getting the one in the million mutation in a pcr product from a high fidelity enzyme, plants that are supposed to stain blue, but don’t…). I figure Murphy’s law is a given in the lab, or at least, for the unfortunate grad students. (what can go wrong, will go wrong. har har).

While at my casual/PT job at the “vitamin store”, which is really a corporate monstrosity I will not name for fear of libel one of my co-workers mentions that he got a customer who had lots of piercings, including one thru the septum of his nose (resembling a bull…). ironically the customer works at a slaughterhouse for cattle, and had been working there 2 years but is now desperately looking for another job. he was so affected by his job that he’s now completely turned off meat and animal products. He came into the store looking for any vegan vitamins, soy protein powder etc. I re-told the story at lunch in the BaMBi tea room to other grads. It lead into a discussion of how we don’t really compute how cows get processed into beef (and other dimensions, like lab “pets” and medical research). And the whole idea of how ignorance is bliss.