Sixth Post

Now, I promise, the novelty hasn't worn off. It's just that I started actually working on Monday and I've been so exhausted this past week that I don't have the energy or the brainpower when I come home to do much of anything but lie around and watch TV (whether actually via a television or via the internet is of little concern).

So today I'm sitting in the lab, and I would never be so flippant as to actually blog when I was supposed to be doing work. No, believe it or not, I am doing work as I type. It's akin to making ice, really, this "running samples on the GC" business. Basically I inject the sample and then wait half an hour. Since I haven't got much else to actually DO today, I'm running samples on the GC. And also blogging. What a deal.

FX came in to talk to me a minute ago. I love when he does that, hahaha... he just comes and sits down and launches into some sort of talk or other and I just kind of keep up. Sometimes I hang on for dear life, but I was okay just now. Although now I have to run the pheromone that I ran yesterday again, because the NMR looked so good. The GC did not. So... I guess here we go, amirite?! If everything goes off sort of without a hitch, I'm hoping that I can leave by a little after 4:00 or at least quarter to 5:00, because I'm going with Mom and Laura to pick up Jon from camp. And we need all three cars tonight (not including my reverse commute home).

I guess today did end up going kind of fast. Funny how that happens... even on slow days, the day goes fast. Part of that is stress, because this job is worlds apart from last summer's job. Last summer I was doing a job that was not difficult, and in general, I had an awful lot of supervision and "here's how you do this". Here, I'm expected to have a fairly good working knowledge of an awful lot of things. It's almost like if I've been told once, I shouldn't have to be told again. So I'm doing pretty well, I think, but you know...

Anyway, the very exciting discovery of today (besides that I didn't break the GC) is that I can get SciFinder on my laptop as long as I'm on campus!! This means that I don't have to make it to the library before closing time (which, on Fridays, is noon). I just have to jockey for a license with everyone else in the building. But hey, I'd be doing that whether I was at Moon or sitting right here. Speaking of sitting right here, it's freezing in here. Justine was saying the other day that she didn't think they were using the air conditioning.

Well, let me just tell YOU, the airconditioning is undebatably on today. I had to go down to my car to grab my hoodie, that's how cold it is. And it's not even cold outside at all. It's very warm. It's very nice. It's even sunny! So hey, how about that. I can't wait to go walk outside in the sun and drive home even though I left my mp3 player in its charging base / speakers this morning so I can't have Mika. And I really want Mika. Boo. I guess Journey will have to suffice. Or I could do the Bon Jovi thing again.

So here's hoping that I just have to do two more samples (two more including the one that I injected five minutes or so ago). Then I could definitely leave on time... but I should probably get all of the papers that I had printed today kind of in order, so I'm not insane later when I'm trying to figure out what the heck is going on. But, uck, I just checked the tetradecane sample that I put on the column and it came out basically at the same place as the decane, which doesn't seem right at all. It should have come out a lot later.

Well, whatever, I guess. I can always run them again on Monday if he wants me to. He might not even remember about them. I mean, they're just for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not the GC is actually working. I want to run this moth pheromone already! And then I'm all done for today. I feel sort of accomplished, because I finished the week and didn't drop dead from sheer exhaustion.