Spring Snowman

{In which we discover how useful orange microcentrifuge tubes can be}

In case you didn't know, I work in a lab. We keep stuff like proteins and DNA and buffers cool by placing them on ice, which we get by putting ice cubes through a shaved ice machine. It's not a huge leap to imagine the hill of icy goodness with all sorts of delicious toppings — mochi, ripe mango chunks, condensed milk — but since the ice is made of tap water, I'm never tempted to dig in even though it's been getting hotter and hotter (besides, all the toppings would be imaginary anyway).

During spring cleaning we got a lot more ice, thanks to the -20C refrigerator; basically moisture freezes out of the air inside the refrigerator and attaches itself to whatever surface is available. That ends up being a lot of ice.

The ice got dumped into the sink by the bucketfuls so it could slowly melt away over the weekend. But it was Friday afternoon before a long weekend, and all that ice proved to be too tempting. So one of my brilliant coworkers (I forget who) decided there was only one thing to do. 

How I Got My Job (Part II)

{In which I give a virtual tour of my workplace}

This is Part II of the post. To read Part I, see How I Got My Job (Part I).

I woke up the morning after the interview feeling much better, and applied to a few more jobs, vowing to take any future interviews more seriously.  Then my phone rang again. It was the HR manager calling to ask when I could start working at the earliest, because she was processing my offer letter! I was in a cloud of disbelief. That was when I realized that I maybe should have taken better notes during the interview.

Fun with Microcentrifuge Tubes

This is what I do at work in between labeling rows and rows of tubes, pipetting various amounts of clear, colorless liquids into them, and then waiting as said liquids react mysteriously over a period of time:



Yes, I take pictures of stuff. Thankfully there is (some) variety to my work and I don't work with tons of tubes every day. And it's nice to have rainbow-colored tubes because that breaks up the monotony: