Early Morning Sunrise

Sometimes I wake up on the wrong side of the bed. (Very easily actually, I'm not a morning person.) I stumble through the house half asleep grumbling along the way, forgetting things I wanted to take with me. But some mornings I get to follow the sunrise in and it makes all the difference.

Dead Body Juices

My boyfriend works in a hospital lab.
 Yes, we're both lab rats <3.
He comes home with stories that make me cringe.  He's seen all sorts of tissues, body parts, organs, and fluids.
  We've both worked in microbiology, but my work brings in samples such as municipality boil orders, whereas his sends down pieces of a toe or lung to the lab.

We have very different levels of tolerance.

 Kudos to those of you that can work in hospitals!
 My stomach turns at the thought of going in one.  Sometimes we're fortunate enough to carpool together, and just pulling in a parking space at a hospital makes me so glad I'm not going in.

My job has its own ups, downs, and dangers.  Our lab is full of hazardous chemicals and carcinogens, but every now and then we get biohazardous samples.
My least favorite of any sample we receive is the annual test from the local hospitals. They are required to test for formaldehyde levels.

Formaldehyde among many other things is used in the embalming process.
Right after I started in SPE I received these formaldehyde samples, and my boss joked, "oh the dead body juices are in."
Ever since then I have been super disturbed by these "dead body juices" samples.

During the process of testing for formaldehyde we make and use a reagent called DNPH. It turns the samples yellow and leaves stains on our countertops.
When we're done we soak our glassware that is stained yellow.

 After formaldehyde samples the dishwater smells like rotting corpses...or maybe that's just my imagination.

The last hospital sample we received even looked like dead body juices, and colored the tip of our syringe crimson.
I probably should have felt relief in the big biohazard label, but in actuality I was disgusted.

The only good thing about formaldehyde samples is we get to use our favorite piece of equipment, the wrist action shaker.

I challenge someone to find an equipment name spawning better lewd jokes than wrist action shaker!

http://legismex.mty.itesm.mx/secc_inter/SW-846/8315.pdf

~~~~This is a link to a website that shows the kind of recipe we work with.  This isn't from my work, and it's pretty old, but it gives you an idea of the methods we read.  The method on the website is also for determining if formaldehyde is in a sample.

http://www.ewg.org/research/exposing-cosmetics-cover/formaldehyde-releasers#.WZtBhJBOm2c

The Fallen Tears of O.E.P.

We jokingly made this vial of our tears and put it on our manager's desk when he left for lunch. 

 He's gonna miss us when he's gone. :)

This is what turned into our Valentine's decorations. 

We really went all out this year. Our boss left a note on the board while we were out so we decided to include him too. He got a broken heart with his name in it. 

While the scene is long gone, I'm glad I have the picture because it is even more appropriate now!

My Boss Just Quit The Job

"Everything that keeps me together is falling apart

I've got this thing that I consider my only art of fucking people over.

My boss just quit the job

Says he's going out to find blind spots and he'll do it."

I played this song Friday night after a long day at work and an aggressive workout leading into what was supposed to be a zen yoga experience. Shower done and rum drink in hand I prepared for listening to music and writing and cleaning my Friday away.

 This song, Third Planet, is often my go to for hanging around the house so I was caught off guard when these lyrics hit me like a rock and the tears started streaming down.


In fact my boss had just quit the job. After 26 years he was done, and he gave the news during a meeting in the morning. 

It was a shock to everybody, especially those that had worked with him for decades. 

 He's been at the lab for almost my whole lifespan, an amount of time I really can't even fathom. He was mellow and laid back and the kind of boss that you could complain to and feel better when you left. 

 Because our work got done for the most part with few mistakes, our manager let us do our own thing, and we mostly just came to him with questions or problems, working in our room without supervision. 

 The shock of his news was so strong it was several minutes before someone around the conference table congratulated him. We all did really wish him the best too! Selfishly we were all just worried about his replacement. 

 A good manager can make or break a job as quick as anything.

I would be lying if I said my tears fell mostly for my boss leaving, if at all, truth be told. While he was a great boss and knowledgeable and honest, really he was just someone I worked with. My sorrows came from the wanderlust I currently felt and the pangs of jealousy at the one who was flying away. 

There's nothing I want more right now than to do just that! I have been trying to move away for a year now, but sometimes these things aren't so easy. I haven't had a reason to leave other than the this compelling need to though, and my family my everything is here. 

Other than the few places I've traveled to, and the national geographic articles I read that held views of places in the world I could only imagine, I really know nothing of living anywhere else. 

I thought it would be great if I found an amazing job that would hire me. The decision would be easy then. But when the world is open to you and the wild calls to you, where do you choose to go? 

 If I had the means I would have been long gone anyway. It's not the bonds of family or the mechanics of routine and normalcy, but the constraints of a living wage that tie me down.

 I am grateful for the opportunity to use my degree and learn about environmental science and law at my current job, but I am nowhere close to living out my true dreams. 

 Now, in this moment in time, I work between four windowless walls where the dull and unfriendly concrete floor meets the equally cold and unfeeling mauve walls. The need for change is overwhelming and the call of the wild beats loudly in my heart.

The indecision of what I wanted to do with my life never existed for me, just the how to get it. I went into the science field because that is really what I care about. I picked a biology degree with the hopes of working outdoors or with animals. 

 When I was young I thought I would grow up and just save things. I would ride my bike around the neighborhood with my friends pretending we were flying planes all over the world rescuing imaginary animals in our bike baskets. 

 I saw myself like Indiana Jones traveling the world traversing jungles and deserts to stop evil. I thought I would have a pet tiger like Jasmine in Aladdin and that I would start an animal sanctuary and hang out with gorillas like in Mighty Joe Young. No animal would suffer or be alone at my sanctuary that was always open and full of happiness. 

 In the sanctuary the animal's natural wild lands would always be available for them to live out their days in pristine environments. This is who I've always been and no matter how far fetched it seems this is where my dreaming lies. 

 While my days are filled with instruments and chemicals and dirty dishwater, my mind is always travelling to the animals and the lands that I love. 

 One day I'll live in the wild and spend all of my days in the wild, and if I go inside it won't be cold chemistry walls that I see, it'll be walls that I built with my own hands and sweat. A house that lives with the environment not off of it. Until then I will continue to live as I always have speaking for the animals and the trees to whoever will listen.


Just as the Lorax.

.

OOH that smell...the smell of death surrounds you...in a chemistry lab.

I got this cute little magnet for the ladies and couldn't help but buy one for myself so here it is on my fridge.  

Most days we laugh about it,  however on those bad days when the world's against you and you have to drag your feet kicking and stomping to make it into work, the smell of death in the lab is the last thing you need.

Our room's strong ventilation/circulation system brings us smells from all parts of the lab building. We get delicious lunch smells for hours every day, and all of the not so delicious meals waft into our room also, the burnt popcorn, the seafood, the stinky frozen dinners.

 We get a wide array of samples to test also, so day to day we never know what to expect.  These samples have included insects, fish parts, frog parts, chicken legs, honey with honey comb, human waste water, oils, and every foul industrial sludge smell known to man.  Often times it smells like sulfur or an industrial tar like aroma.

Sometimes the room smells just because of the chemicals we have to use.  Our room specifically works with a lot of ether, methylene chloride, methanol, and hexane, along with a host of acids and neat materials.

The absolute worst smell is when the raw meat samples come in.  Being a longtime vegetarian I don't prefer the look of meat, let alone the smell of rotting meat, and even the staunch hunters in the building turn around and head for the other end of the lab when the meat arrives.


I found this fun periodic table of smells to check out too!

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