So, I got my five minutes with my co-author. I cornered him in the room and threatened to withhold important sequencing primers until he talked to me (OK, not really but I was completely willing to do this). So all is well on that front.
But....
A plague has hit the lab, and for once it is not our bacterial growths that are infected, it is the humans in the lab. The two research scientists have a cold (one "called" in on Friday- something he never ever has done since I have been there). Our building manager has been hacking up a lung for a week now, and yesterday I realized that no, the funny taste in my mouth after I coughed was not normal (nor was it from smoking). The grad students in our lab are staying as far away as possible.
I was sick right after Christmas- two days under a blanket on the couch, stuffy nose (I looked like Rudolph for weeks), and just feeling like crap. And now this, almost exactly one month later. Not so much the stuffy nose, but the coughing hack where I sound like I am trying to expel the deepest darkest part of my lungs out my mouth. All that coughing is not good for the head, dear children, nor the voice. No, no no. So now, I sit here, staring at data and a teaching statement that I promised I would look at this weekend, alternating between hot tea and cold orange juice, counting down the hours till I can take more cold medicine and smelling like I bathed with mentholated shampoo--trying to convince myself that if I pack it in early tonight, I will wake up tomorrow morning bright and early and get everything done.
The only bright spot of being sick...Monday is my official "quit smoking date." On a normal Saturday, I would have most likely smoked about a pack by now (give or take depending on the day). I have had 1 and 1/2 smokes today. That's it. And I don't even want one. Maybe being sick is a blessing...and I do have the last three episodes of "Battlestar Galactica" DVR'ed which I need to watch. But maybe not in a cold-medicine induced haze.
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