Monday, January 10, 2011

Good riddance 2010

Although 2010 brought great enjoyment to my life; the birth of my first child in April and submitting a successful post-doctoral fellowship application, Thanksgiving to Christmas sucked some serious ass. First of all mini-xx got sick and then my husband and I got mildly sick. Not that big of a deal. Just sore throats and snot. He chose to stay home for a few days, while I stayed home for one day. By the end of the week his mild sickness was gone and I was sicker than ever. I ended up staying home another three days with a horrible cough that didn't fully clear up until around Christmas. During that cold medicine-induced haze, I made and totally fucked up a reagent that is essential for an assay I am performing. Of course, I didn't realize at the time I messed it up. Oh no, that realization didn't come until the end of December after multiple assay failures. On the one hand - it was an easy fix. On the other hand - it was a stupid mistake and I feel like an idiot.
So far 2011 is going well. I am NOT coughing my ass off and my assay is working again! As a result, I should actually generate data again by the end of the week.
Although meager, the statement above is enough to make me pretty happy, but Magnum, PI recently informed me of something fanFUCKINGtastic. He is going to get me an anaerobic chamber. This is huge, because I need this piece of equipment to get my project for my own lab moving. No more band-aid solutions!!

I hope that everyone else is going strong on day 10 of 2011.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm so jealous of the anaerobic chamber - can I come borrow? :)

Glad to hear 2011 is going better - stay well!

Unknown said...

Great new year present :-) Our group got some new MS instruments to play with too- yey! Happy Science 2011

chall said...

Sounds like a good beginning of 2011 indeed. Anaerobic chambers FTW :)

tideliar said...

Yay for whatever that chamber thing is! Yay for science!

ScientistMother said...

I have no idea what the big deal is about the chamber, being a non-MB but we all get are science kicks somehow :) Happy New years to you and your family.

Thomas Joseph said...

Congrats on the piece of new equipment!

microbiologist xx said...

Micro Dr. O - you can totally borrow my chamber.

Bori - MS...cool and even more nerdy. :)

chall - Hells yeah!

tideliar and SM -
Alright non-microbiologists. An anaerobic chamber is a piece of equipment that creates an anaerobic environment for growing microbes that do not tolerate oxygen. You can create whatever mixture of gases you like within the chamber. Sometimes they are referred to as a glove box.
It's way cool!!

TJ - Thanks! Usually I have to live vicariously through your new equipment. :)