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today marked the end of my current bout of temporary insanity: i officially have well over 100 tissue samples ready to assay or stain for the current line of investigation. now that the last of them are safely tucked away at -80 degrees, they can sit until i’m damn good and ready to process them.
i figured i’d knock out the relatively small N for my staining project, except that we had a total failure of a crucial piece of equipment the day i was going to use it. the thing has been down since, and i’m stuck without it. the waiting list for equipment in other labs makes this impossible for me to finish in the desired timeframe.
the estimate to repair is unbelievable. we’ve done some tinkering on it ourselves in hopes of finding a way to work around it. so far we have had no success. fortunately, i happen to know a biomedical equipment tech in training who can help us diagnose the problem. i think we might be able to get away with a cost far lower than the estimate, but the out of service time sucks. i could have finished off that project in 3 days and been done before i left town.
this is probably for the best, because i’ve been working myself to death lately. my coworkers have used words such as “epic”, “unbelievable”, and “temporary insanity” to describe the last month of my experimental life. i should slow down, but i’m stuck in WOT mode. (for you non-car enthusiasts, that’s wide-open throttle.) the end of grad school is so near and i really don’t have the heart to think about the things i need to deal with at home right now. so i work myself to exhaustion.
i’m off to take care of things at home, i’ll be back in a week or so. i come back to a new project- this one about 6 weeks- but the daily amount of work will be self-limited. this is a good thing.
here i am again with a brief update…
i haven’t had a day off in quite some time now, but the worst of the madness is almost over. i have just over a week left before i can take some time to help deal with the things life is throwing at my family. fortunately, my boss is supportive. i think it’s also apparent that i need a little time away.
this is the closest i have come to biting off more than i can chew, i think. i could handle it far better if i could sleep. having an appetite would also be a plus, but i haven’t had that luxury either.
i did take a morning yesterday to care for my car. the car itself is great, but my tires have an… issue. the guy at the alignment place wasn’t expecting to get schooled by a girl when he fed me some lines of bs. i know more about cars than most people.
i’m skipping lunch and heading off to inject my horde of rats now. count down with me… 11 days left.
ughhh!
i have three weeks left in this this experiment before i reach a stopping point so i can GO HOME TO MY FAMILY WHO REALLY NEEDS ME RIGHT NOW. i have failed them. i am trapped by my work, and that scares me.
in the meantime, i think of little else… it’s hard to concentrate, and with the big recent changes in my life and with the full-steam-ahead plans i made and set into motion prior to 4 separate instances of really bad news hitting me in the head like falling bricks… i haven’t slept more than 2-3 hours at a time since the news hit.
this is why i can’t stand being half a country away from home.
bear with me, i’ll be back when i can. until then, i’m in the vivarium or trying (failing) to sleep.
we have multiple family issues going on… one family member has a week left to live due to a terminal brain tumor… another was just diagnosed with a rare and serious disease… there are some non-health issues that need to be addressed… i have been and am going to continue to be neglectful of the blog and communications in general for a while.
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