Wednesday, October 12, 2005

In the name of science

I got up at 5.05am this morning, somehow managed to make myself porridge (and eat it) and stagger out the door to my car just after 6. The coffee pot was empty, and making more was beyond my mental capacity that early.

Leaving the house without coffee was a mistake, I found myself fighting droopy eyelids at stoplights by the time I got to work. Now that I've done the 7am cell treatment that neccesitated my early morning, and I've got 2 1/2 mugs of coffee starting to work their magic on my system I'm finally starting to feel awake. Hooray for the mini coffee machine on my desk. Hooray for pilfering the little pods of milk from the cafeteria.

I still want a nap though.

5 comments:

K said...

I know EXACTLY how you feel - and I can't have coffee (or any drink) at my desk...

Was there a reason the cell treatment had to happen at 7? I hope it was a good one; getting up at 5 does not sound like fun.

Rosemary Riveter said...

It's a 12-hour treatment, so I came in early to treat, and one of the medical students (slaves) will stay late to harvest. We try to avoid 12-hour treatments since they're so inconvenient, but sometimes the data just need to include that time point.

Do you at least have a break room where you can make yourself tea or coffee? Most of our lab is a "no food" zone too of course, but I still catch students eating a sandwich with their bare elbows leaning on a lab bench. At least they don't eat sandwiches at the same time as handling biological samples.

K said...

Yes, there's a break room, and I'm supposed to take two fifteen-minute breaks a day, so there isn't that much to complain about. I suppose I got into bad habits at my old job, where having a cup of coffee (or indeed camomile tea) on the desk was standard.

I can, however, see that liquids and unique historical documents are not a good mix. On the other hand, there are days when chewing gum just isn't going to be enough.

Stray bits of sandwich in the biosamples don't sound like the best idea, either.

Rosemary Riveter said...

Or bits of biosample in the sandwich, which is what these people really should be thinking about.

The gloves we wear are to protect the samples from contamination, and to protect us from the samples and chemicals. A surprising number of people don't seem to notice that detail. But then I'm about to go work with CSF from HIV infected patients right now, so I'm VERY aware of protecting myself! We don't let the students work with stuff that dangerous. Partly because we can't trust them to not contaminate the entire workspace.

K said...

That too. My bro was a bit perturbed last year when he was doing a BSc to find that nobody but him could be bothered wearing lab goggles while working with E.coli samples. He didn't feel getting that in one's eye would be a great idea. Then again, he's a medic, so perhaps he had a more immediate idea of what the bugs might actually do...