Tuesday, December 22, 2009

When we last left our esteemed heroine…

…things were going pretty well. I think that general trend has continued. The proofs for Ancient Manuscript are out the door. GlamourMag manuscript is still hanging over our heads. They apparently sent it to an additional reviewer because of all the mathemagical things Jabba the Engineer included in the rebuttal. Speaking of Jabba, we found out yesterday that he and one of his post docs and at least one of his former students will all be at the small meeting my lab is going to in a few months. I informed Crazy Man that there did not exist accommodations large enough that I would be willing to share with Jabba. He’s a real piece of work.

I’m really excited about going to this meeting. There are lots of people that I’m interested in doing a post doc with that will be there. I’m thinking now that Jabba being there may be an additional advantage for me since he knows people that Crazy Man doesn’t, since they travel in very different circles. Hm…I’ll have to think more on that.

I did manage to get some potentially exciting data for my abstract. I’ll have the data from the repeat in 15 minutes or so. I really really really really hope it looks good. If so, I’m going to be really excited! In other lab news, we still haven’t figured out what is going on with Duckling 2’s reagent. Crazy Man made her a whole new panel to screen and still nothing. It’s really starting to make us all a little crazy. Duckling 1 may also be having a similar problem now. Apparently nobody thought it was a good idea to test a new batch before using it for umpteen dozen experiments. Sigh.

We had a new rotation student start a few weeks ago. He’s actually in a program we don’t usually take students from. Nevertheless, Crazy Man thinks he’s brilliant and the greatest things since sliced bread because he’s interested in signaling. (What am I??? Chopped liver?) Crazy Man’s crush on this guy wouldn’t be so bad if he was actually as good as Crazy Man thinks he is. But he’s not. He is SO NOT. And he’s irritating on top of it. Rather than listening to what we think he should do, he does whatever strikes his fancy. For example, he was doing a western on lysates from a cell type he’s never used for a protein he’s never looked at with an antibody he’s never used. As you can imagine, it’s my favorite cell type, protein and antibody, which I’ve blotted with a lot. Like a LOT A LOT. Did he listen to me when I told him how long to do the exposure? Of course not. Was I right? Of course. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’m trying to be patient with him, but I made it very clear to Crazy Man when we talked about this guy rotating that I do not have the time or mental capacity to hold someone else’s hand right now. This kid needs a hand-holder whether he realizes it or not.