A little piece of me

I've mentioned previously that my bunsen burner is awesome. The flame is gigantic, and when it is on it sort of resembles a rocket burner. In fact, the flame of my burner is so large that when I ignite it, every other flame in the lab decreases in size. Yeah, I might be a little bit of a pyro.

On Monday, my glove and bunsen burner conspired against me, and I lost a hunk of my little finger as a result. I am not sure what happened. My flame was on, blazing as usual, and I was transferring media into a few culture tubes. At some point, an uncapped permanent marker went flying and I tried to grab it, or avoid it (I am not sure which), losing focus on my mammoth flame. Nanoseconds later I felt intense pain as my glove and skin became united. My first reaction was to rip the glove off, but when I did this, only a portion of the glove came off. The pinky-finger portion was still attached to my finger, so I tried again. This time I successfully removed the glove, only to find that a dime-sized piece of skin was missing, which I located in my glove.

Luckily there was no pain associated with ripping off the hunk of skin. However, as I said, I'm no stranger to burns, so I new that I was in store for some intense pain. All in all, I think it sucked pretty bad. It wasn't enough pain to make me cry, but it did make me shout a few curse words while jumping up and down. Thankfully, my coworker, who writes over at Nondiscovery blog, helped me bandage it up and apply some burn ointment. (Thanks again!!)

Now, I have gross meaty flesh on the side of my left hand.

Damn I hate Mondays.

My Love/Hate Relationship with my Bunsen Burner

I don't know many microbiologists that haven't used a Bunsen burner. We use them several times a day to sterilize loops, spreaders, pipettes, and other types of tools in the flame it produces. Sure, there are other methods for on the spot serilization, but many people still use the good old Bunsen burner.
Bunsen burners also provide good, lab-style entertainment. Who doesn't like to burn the occasional nitrocellulose membrane? I'm not a pyro or anything, but setting fire to things that turn cool colors is fun!
I prefer my flame adjusted so I get a nice "strong" flame with a well-defined blue cone in the center. I should also mention that my Bunsen burner kicks extra ass because it produces a very large flame. In fact, you can hear my burner from pretty far away. (Mine looks like the one pictured left.)

BUT. There is a dark side to my relationship with my Bunsen burner.

Whenever I leave the lab last, I am haunted by thoughts like: "Did I turn off my flame? Surely I did. Didn't I? What if it's on? What if I burn the lab down? or the building?" Once this starts there is no way of convincing myself that I did in fact, turn off my flame. So, I get in the car, drive to lab, and check the burner. It is always off. ALWAYS!

After going through this song and dance at 2:00am on a Wednesday morning, I decided it was time for action. I needed to incorporate some type of activity before I left the lab that would remind me that the Bunsen burner was off, since the act of turning it off left no impression what-so-ever.
These days, I wave my hand over the top of my Bunsen burner (where the flame shoots out) just before I exit. I can remember doing this activity, so I know the flame is off.
The hand-waving (no pun intended) is working well right now, but what if it eventually becomes so routine that I forget doing it? I'll suppose that I will end up creating some something new and eventually I will end up with some long, bizarre, lab-leaving ritual. Not to mention, I will leave the lab last everyday because I wouldn't want anyone to see that. Another possibility is that I will develop some new obsession. Like...did I turn on the shaker? I hope not.
For now, wondering about the state of my Bunsen burner flame is the only strange thing I obsess about. Furthermore, I have a lab mate that thinks it's real funny to tell me that I left my flame on the previous day.