Look At Me Still Talking When There’s Science To Do
In Grand Rapids… thinking about Barrow (among other things)Archive for lab
Well, she used the big printer, I’ll give her that.
I hate waiting. Rob and I are in the computer lab patiently watching the big printer spit out our posters inch by inch.
Earlier today, so long ago and yet not so long, we waited patiently at the copy machine as it turned fourteen pages into fourteen times fourteen pages, and we ended up with a neat stack of 210 to run, literally, to the post office by 4:59 for guaranteed overnight shipping to New York*.
We’re going to a conference tomorrow and I haven’t slept since Wednesday night! Not entirely true, but close enough to declare it on the internet.
My conference isn’t nearly so exciting as those of the the jet-setters I know who travel across countries and oceans in the name of patting each other on the back for doing science. My conference, according to Google Maps (the best?) is fifteen minutes from my house. Though I will be forced to leave before proper Saturday breakfast time, I will be home ’round brillig**.
Home ’round brillig, that is, unless Tundra Riot rides again and sets forth on an overdue reunion tour into the great beyond. All four original members of Tundra Riot will be the presenting authors of posters tomorrow. The one with the most and largest pictures best one is entitled “High Arctic and Low Arctic Vegetation Response to Climate Change,” by yours truly***, and no, I unfortunately couldn’t have told you that without peeking. I blame it on the fatigue.
I blame it on the fatigue and the anxiety. The big printer is naturally located two flights of stairs and three computer labs away from the cozy home lab where we’ve been postering all day, so naturally Our Heroes**** did not choose to schelp all their things with them when they went to print. Also naturally, they, after carefully pocketing both sets of lab keys, shut the automatically locking door behind them to protect things like their laptops… and all the contents, minus keys, of Jenny’s purse, if she had one, which she doesn’t, so the things were in the pink backpack*****.
The obvious punchline here is that Our Heroes get locked out of the lab, but how could they when they had both sets of lab keys? If you think a thrilling twist is coming and keeping Our Heroes out of the lab, you’d be wrong, right, because, NATURALLY, the lab keys stop working after 10 pm, when no respectable person is anywhere near a biology lab!
Oh and Jean and Jeremy printed their posters ages ago, around 6 or 7 pm, so they’ve nothing to worry about! Their nice posters are safe and sound in…. the cardboard traveling tube…. in… the…. l-l-l-a-a-a-a-a-bbbbbbb. Oh.
For the record, I did NOT know when I began writing this post that I was locked out of the lab… rats.
*I’ll explain later, for goodness sake!
**Four o’clock in the afternoon: the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.
***Co-authored by Bob and Papasaurus!
****Jenny and Jobby, naturally!
*****From Miss Cindy at Teddy Bear Junction.
Let’s tidy up the nursery.
Slowly we are getting more organized in th field and in the lab. In the field this requires things like replacing the strings on the control plots and building the experimental plots. The control plots are a meter square, just four posts and string, and the experimental plots have chambers made of zipties and six trapezoid shaped pieces of fiber glass. They are hexagons when viewed from above, but they cover the same area as the square control plots.
In the lab this requires sorting out things to take to Atqasuk and arbitrarily putting the rest of the things in the twenty-one drawers and cupboards our lab contains. It looks a mess right now, but I’m SURE that once we ship our professor back to Michigan (in one week) we can get everything all ship-shape.
On the internet this requires fixing my links in the right column. Now my friend Robert’s blog is easily accessible to all interested parties. He did this last year, so those posts are available there, too. Besides this, I changed the header picture and added a description, also available in the right-hand column. I hope to switch out pictures every so often and eventually post a more complete taste of what is going on, though I hesitate to strain the capacities of the internet.
In my room organizing requires packing up my things in case we are unceremoniously evicted from our quarters while we spend the next few days in Atqasuk. I also, of course, have to pack my bag to take with me tomorrow morning. We leave the lab at 6:30, so I’d better get crackin’. Good thing I am a quick and efficient packer- and a great folder, to boot!
