When the adviser's away...

...the grad students will work the same hours anyways.

In undergrad, when I went in on Sunday, there would maybe be one other person in there. Today when I went in (I usually work M-Sat as compared to Sun-Fri), 80% of my lab was in.

The boss-man is out all week, so looking forward to a less tense week that is *not* filled with grant writing. My project is still stuck on mol bio related stuff (ick---perhaps the most frustrating stuff to be stuck on as a chemist), but hopefully will move into the more exciting stages of growing/characterizing mutants within the next week. I am itching to no longer follow my grad student mentor around, but due to inherent trickiness in my protein, not a possibility. Sigh.

Though I must not be driving her nutso yet. We're going to a free yoga class together later this week with one of her friends from another lab.

Also, I seem to have collected a fan group out of some of my ochem wombats. A lot of them wish me good weekends in their emails/when they leave lab, a few found out about my half and ask me questions about that, and one of them hangs around until after lab and then she'll follow me back to my lab building asking for ochem advice/questions about my research and whatnot. It's all very cute. Though if they're hoping for points, my wombats have been severely disappointed. And with that, I'll leave you with one of my favorite wombat quotes from a lab report graded earlier this week, in which a major point of the lab was to learn about bumping and boiling chips:

Q: Why do we use boiling chips?
A: To make liquid boil.

It's true, wombat. That's why when making spaghetti I always include a boiling chip.

I'm not dead!

Guess what guys? I'm only *slightly* dead!

Just kidding. Sorta.

These past few weeks have been...ridiculous. Here's the lowdown:
1. The prof I'm TAing ochem lab for is a total jerk who is very good at wasting my time.
2. I got super sick with a major cold for the first week of school.
3. I'm working 6 days a week in lab, with a 7:30 am start time. My classes are at night so I don't leave campus until 8 or 9 pm. This is rather brutal.
4. I am in a love/hate relationship with TAing.
5. I have not read a research paper for weeks and I'm falling farther behind.
6. Ran my first half marathon with a time of 2:10!
7. My PI is submitting a grant on my project that is due at the end of this week. Since the other grad student on this project has been fulfilling all of his figure and rewrite related requests, I've been doing her labwork and mine. I am very glad for this week to end soon.
8. My first midterm of my x-ray crystallography class is tomorrow.

Unsurprisingly, I feel as if I'm doing a shitty job at all 4 categories of my life: lab, school, TAing, and running.

Even though I am stressed out, I still am vaguely enjoying all of this. For some reason.

Happy 2011!

Things that are mindboggling to me:
1. I have now joined a group. Whaaaaaaaaaaaa
2. Classes start tomorrow.
3. I'm TAing again for the first time since my two year stint of TAing in undergrad.
4. I already have too many things to do tomorrow.
5. My half is in 21 days!
6. How is it that people always want to meet at the exact same time as things that I have scheduled?
7. Visiting/interviewing potential grad students start up in a month and a half. Whoa.