That's never happened before....

Those are now the 4 most hated words around for me. Right up there with "we don't have a button for that".

Last night at the end of the day I pulled some vials of cancer cells from our 30L storage liquid nitrogen tanks to grow them up for my MSc and when I went to put the rack back in, it wasn't quite secure...causing 5 racks of tubes to come loose and float in the tank...so it couldn't be closed and they couldn't go back in. The only way to fix it (because if you took out any of the other 5 racks to try and put the stuff out that won't go back in in THEM *they* wouldn't go back in either) is to dump out the tank remove the OK boxes in racks and shake out all the loose stuff, reassemble into boxes as it should be put it all back in the tank and then refill it. This is not a huge deal - more of an inconvenience. It happens the odd time. This particular tank holds a bank of cancer tumours cells and research cultures from many years of work (including my MSc) and was invaluable. If they all thawed out they would be ruined. I could be fired. Grants would be lost. Years of research (and months of my MSc) would be reduced to ash.

Fucksticks indeed.

So, yeah. Needless to say I had to fix it. The usual way to do this only only takes about 5 minutes, and then you refill the tank again from our 100L nitrogen tank in the loading dock. It's subzero so I can leave the boxes outside for the few moments they are in the air. The problem was....when I went to refill my tank from the big tank, it only had 8L in it. GAH! So the samples were only OK in the tank for a few hours.
At 5:30 on a friday I had to find a way to get 30 L of liquid nitrogen delivered to me. Heh. Yeah.
Of course the place we get it from was closed for the weekend and ALL of their after hours and emergency contacts didn't work. I call everyone I could think of from work who might know of where to get some here on campus...no luck. Finally I called, in desperation, the other company in the city who supplies the hospitals with gases and after a bit of wrangling with purchasing managed to convince them they could come help me. As my luck would have it, THEIR evening delivery truck was already out on a delivery. So (because they rock) they in the goodness of their hearts came to me with a pickup, took MY tank to their facility and filled it up and brought it back to me in an hour. Sure they're charging for late night delivery, but I don't care. I fixed it. I'd pay them myself if I had to. Averted utter disaster. I think. ~2.5 hours after it all began it was over.

Then when I tried to call J to pick me up (who was initially waiting in the car for me but went home) our home phone didn't work. We finally hooked up by email and by 9PM I was at home devouring a BLT sub and trying to unwind. But after all that...I couldn't really. I was mentally exhausted....done. After food we just chilled and went to sleep. NOT the nice evening together we had planned at all, but it was what it was.

I think I saved the day. Nothing thawed. I'm culturing up some cell lines monday just to check...but man. What an evening. I'm making up emergency protocols...because this situation has never happened before on campus. Lucky me. And it won't happen again to anyone else either. I will make it so. Because it was not fun...

And (joy) I am back in the lab today on a saturday scanning slides on the VM scanner for my MSc now that it has been repaired. I had problems with it at first as well, but finally I am getting things done. Being a good little scientist. Not really amused with it after last night, but it's getting done...

Thankfully Dad flies back from visiting my sister today so I'm going to meet him at the airport with my brother and spend the evening with him before he goes home. Poor J has to work all day so I'm just trying to get stuff done. Tomorrow hopefully we can hide from the world and have the date we planned for yesterday. The tightly coiled spring in my brain may have actually unwound by then.
Maybe. Here's hoping.

Good god. What a way to start off a weekend. :P

beep beep beep beep beep beep ....

They have been loading building materials off a truck and into the construction site right outside my lab all morning. If they are not done soon I am going to put on my ninja suit and go outside to disable that ridiculous backup beeper thing on the loader...

beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep ....

A few too many

I really prefer it when people overestimate things. It makes it more pleasant to do less than you thought, and you get finished early.
The alternative...my day. What was described as a "few" samples to sort, log and divide up was described as ~40. "OK, not too bad" I thought. When I arrived, it turned out to be only 38, BUT with 5 samples each from those 38, so ACTUALLY 190. And, oh, each has to be divided into 4. And labelled. And no rush, but they're needed tomorrow. And did I mention that one set of the 190 are in duplicate?
Sooooooo, in the end, only, oh, 950 odd tubes to label...no biggie. Certainly only a "few" wouldn't you say?
Yeah.
Good times.

I want a king hat so I can demand absurdities form people while not letting them know what they've agreed to until it is too late.
This is the same gob I wanted to tell off about a month ago.
A real charmer that one.
Off to tubetown for me...just had to vent a bit.

Another hard day at the paint mine

Guess what sucks more than painting the ceiling of a big room? Painting it TWICE.

Yes...Our ceilings are the same boring beige as the walls and it's taking 2 coats of paint to make them look white again. Thankfully I'm half way through the second coat...thanks to...Scaffolding! Tadaah!

"Hmmm...where to paint first?

Thankfully I could rent scaffolding for a week and it's sped things up considerably...much safer than leaning and teetering all over a ladder. My shins are already black and blue :)
In case you're curious, here are the colours for the room:

I'm starting on the yellow tomorrow. It's hard to tell how nice the colours are form my crappy photos, but trust me...they'll be nice. Yellow for the hall and the other 2 in the living room/dining room. It's finally coming together...it seemed to be taking for ever, but luckily yesterday and today have been much nicer days, so I've been able to get more done. I'm taking a wee break at the moment, but I should get back to it. We're currently buried in tarps and tape, but after the ceilings, I get to the fun part - the colours. It's a big space to paint which is why I've been tactfully ignoring it until now, but I'm beginning to see that it might get done soon.


Back to the land of tarps and paint...back later!

Gits

Coldplay just cancelled BOTH their Edmonton and Calgary concerts.

Bastards.