Tuesday, January 10

Next Time I'm Calling In Sick

Yesterday was something. Ever have one of those days where you wished you'd rolled over and stayed in bed instead of getting up. I was feeling out of sorts from the get-go. I should have left work at 3pm.

At 330pm, I was loading sample on this instrument for purification and then it got stuck. As I was trying to remove the injection syringe, it splattered crap everywhere. I don't think it got on my skin but it was all over my lab glasses, lab coat and gloves. Ewww. So I got cleaned up. My face felt fine and my eyes weren't burning. All good signs. Today, I found out from our "safety dept" that I have to fill out an incident report. Just great. Pain in the neck-I have to describe the incident on this silly form, then have my supervisors sign off on it then send it to them. But I guess it can't hurt, they just want it on record just in case I have any problems later.

Then after that, I set up a reaction with some really clean material that I'd made earlier. It took about 30min to do b/c I had to cool it first then add another chemical to it slowly. Anyhoo, after all that, I realized that I had used the wrong solvent. Not much else I could do then so I left it to go overnight and hoped for the best.

Today, I checked my reaction and it worked pretty well inspite of the wrong solvent. Might even get a better yield than before. So at least that wasn't the disaster I thought it'd be.

Also, I forgot one of the instruments on overnight. The last person to use it has to shut it down and I forgot. What with the spill and the wrong solvent, it just slipped my mind. Luckily, there was enough solvent so that the instrument wasn't ruined. Could have been a very costly mistake (this instrument cost ~$20k). If it had run out of solvent the pumps would have burnt out and would have to be replaced, not to mention the column. Best not to think about it.

Today was better though. The next time I feel like I did yesterday, I'm calling in sick.

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