I'm back in my experimental lab, and it's been a rough landing. I cut my hair before I left for my simulation rotation, and the new haircut has bangs. Bangs + microscopes = not seeing. Today I finally brought a hairclip. There is no way to tilt your head forward and look through a microscope without getting hair in your face!
I have three weeks to collect some much needed data for a grant, and while I had started some of this type of work before I left, I only did it for a few weeks. Now I'm trying to get set up again and it's HARD! Two nitrogen tanks had run out, someone let my cells (that they were supposed to be care-taking) get to passage 40 without thawing new ones, we didn't have the kind of glass capillaries I needed, the incubator water levels were low and I had to remake solutions. Needless to say, I did not get started on the actual work as fast as I wanted.
I'm trying to be patient about how long it's taking to ramp back up to my normal experimental output level, but given the grant deadline patience is hard to come by!
