An afternoon at the lab

Okay, so I'm well past the 24 hour mark of living in my contact lenses. Most of the time, I don't notice I have them, but my eyes feel a bit dry. I'll add eye drops to my list of things to pick up tonight.

So I have to harvest tissue for an experiment to be setup either tomorrow or Friday. First I have some trash to autoclave. I check the autoclave room. The small one's in use, so I get to work harvesting tissue for cultures. I had completely forgotten that I was quite used to the fact that my glasses would sit on the stereo scope lenses. Which was not fesible when you're not wearing glasses.

(So that's why geeky scientists have glasses?)

During a time I could take a break, I check the autoclave again. Still in use, so I investigate further. Some idiot set the cycle for no exhaust time along with an absurd length of time of exposure. The problem with no exhaust cycle is that when exposure time is done, it's still too hot to access items. If you don't force a timetable for the exhaust to cool things off, it takes it own sweet time.

So I go back and finish setting up tissue for cultures. Trying to get used to the stereo microscope without glasses took a while, but think I started to get the hang of it.

Go back to the autoclave room. Still trying to cool off. Checked the sign-in sheet. If the time was correct, it took 2.5 hours for a 40 minute exposure. If you set the damn machine for 20 minutes exposure and exhaust, it's done in an hour. I'm going to try and find out why she set the machine the way she did. I find that most people set things that seem screwy to others because "that's the way I was told" but can't tell you why to save their life.