Friday, June 26, 2009

bad mojo

After a llloooonnnnngg hiatus, I decided to come back and write some more. Actually, it was more due to the fact that the new laptop finally arrived (seriously Dell- an order on May 5th translates to shipment on June 20? Really?) and I don't really like blogging in lab (too many busy bodies mulling around). Did I mention I now am a proud owner of a pink, yes pink, laptop. And not by choice, mind you. I am not exactly a pink type of girl- the hard-rock, tattoos, nose piercing, jeans-and-tennis-shoes personality I exude does not exactly scream "Ohhhh, pink how cute! and bunnies! and flowers! awwww...." But I do have to admit, its metallic pink and somewhat cool looking and Dell did donate 5$ (a whole five dollars!) to the Susan G. Komen fund so its bearable. And fast. And shiny. OK, enough about the laptop.

The last month in the lab has sucked the life out of me. For the past three weeks we have been dealing with two evacuations due to suspected gas leaks (no, they still don't know where its coming from), a three hour power outage (thank god the -80 came back up OK), the IR-MS going down (but is back up again), a lab flood, no air conditioning for a week (mind you- it was 95 degrees outside and 82 degrees in the lab-lord have mercy it was hot), a -20 going down, and for some reasons, three preps of my favorite protein crapped out over night (flocky, fluffy protein== bad bad thing and angry Dr. Zeek).

I finally ran some experiments today and they seemed to work (YAY), the -20 is still chugging along, the IR-MS is now giving reproducible results, the laptop came in and it seems that the humidity has finally moved on from here. Maybe today will be the turning point and I can just chalk May and June up to bad chemistry mojo.