Terrible Gel Day

Some people have bad hair days... not me. I barely have any hair to work with, so it would be pretty difficult. What I do get, however, are horrible gel days. Have you ever been making a gel to run a western, lower gel complete, making the upper gel, and then the lab phone rings? Normally this isn't a problem, but for some reason yesterday, when I returned to the gel, I had completely forgotten what I had and had not already put in. My lower is still solidifying so I make another upper gel. I put everything in except for the TEMED and go to do other work while my lowers finish up. Being the super-intelligent person that I am, after my lowers finished up and I had poured off the water and pipette the upper before realizing that I had totally forgotten the TEMED. Take 3 everything went alright, but I'm not just talking about this awful gel day, I'm going to rant about ALL awful gel days. So if you're a leaky, cob-webbed, awfully formed gel with an upper too small for the combs, and a lower too low to look normal, I hate you.

<-Gel from Hell. Also not mine. (I promise I'll start taking my own pics soon)

Since I'm complaining, I might as well tell my nose how much  I hate it when it decides to get itchy while I'm working in the bio-safety cabinet. It's like "Bro, I know you're working, but can you scratch me?" and it only happens when I'm otherwise occupied doing other things such as working with things that I'd rather not get on my face. Kind of like my jerk immune system that decided to take a break during the weekend where I had the most work to do, like my nose, they see me being busy as an opportunity to go rogue.

In the spirit of what I was taught, it's time to appreciate the little things in life that make your day... like when you have just enough reagent to complete an experiment or just enough loading dye or media so you don't have to make anymore today. Here's to the little things that don't go wrong, the gels that aren't from the pit of hell, the cells that accept the plasmids you transfect, and things that don't explode unless you're around to see it. Also, doing my first legit experiments. It's exciting. Yay science!