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!

<https://jameskennedymonash.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/table-of-organic-compounds-and-their-smells-w.jpg>

Lunch with H.P. Lovecraft

For the most part we spend our breaks and lunches on our phones or reading books. 

Since I began work at the lab I've finished the Sherrilyn Kenyon dark-hunters series and then moved onto some Piers Anthony. I read all of the Incarnations of Immortality books at work and some of the Xanth series. 

Now I'm onto H.P. Lovecraft. I love imaginative and thought provoking stories that keep my interest, probably because I read a lot of news articles and too many sad and true stories that are our reality.

The dark-hunters books are full of mythology, mysteries, comedic moments, and heroics. Sherrilyn Kenyon also has a very special talent of creating these really absorbing tales in which every story has a seriously yummy guy character. We're talking all the things a girl could ask for in a guy. 

If you're not really into the guy of the book you're currently reading check out the next because she pretty much covers every personality type. These heroes are always ripped and handsome, but most importantly for me they are usually from ancient times, so they have the whole 

Spartacus/warrior/soldier/god/badass feel. If you haven't noticed yet hunky heroic men is something we discuss a lot at 4LadiesandaBeaker. :)

<http://www.sherrilynkenyon.com/>

I really couldn't say enough about the Incarnations of Immortality books. Basically these are stories told in the perspective of entities such as death, time, and fate. I thought they were amazing and always kept me wondering. 

These books are immensely creative and always interweaving into one another. Piers Anthony clearly has a fondness for nature which shows brilliantly especially with "In a Tangled Skein" and "Being a Green Mother." 

Each story attracted my attention in its own way, however "In a Tangled Skein" was by far my favorite, and I think it's precisely because it has the closest ties to the natural world and to conservation. 

I could see their little cottage in the woods, and feel myself in the wetlands with a deep love for the water oak and the hamadryad. Every time I would put my book away I would crave more, and would think the rest of the day on the choices or issues posed in these novels.

Recently I began this monstrosity of a book. Really it's an arm workout hauling this book from home and work. 

Normally I'm the kind of girl that carries a novel in her purse for awkward situations like doctor's office waiting rooms and DMV lines, but there's no way that's happening with this book. 

I'm so glad I grabbed the annotated version though because it has all these added tidbits of information that really explains a lot more about the author and his times.

So far The Festival has been one of my favorites out of the few stories I've read. I've just started Call of Cthulhu and already my mind is blown by all the things Lovecraft has spurred by his weird tales!

I love the cover art of this book. It's creepy but illusive just like his stories.

I've never seen the Re-animator movie, and though I was somewhat familiar with the premise already, reading this story gave me chills. 

I admittedly do not normally like even walking past or seeing a morgue and definitely not a dead body. I'll always have a weak stomach for those kind of things. 

The characters in the story almost maddeningly crave the chance to find a fresh body. Unsettling but again I couldn't put it down. 

 I attached this little snippet of text because I had to laugh when I read it all. :)    

Food Not Lawns: Why I Hate Grass, or 'How to Kick Monsanto in the ...

Food Not Lawns: Why I Hate Grass, or 'How to Kick Monsanto in the ...: I hate grass. Well, that's not really truthful. It's not that I hate the plant–or I reckon it's plantS, since there are thou...

4LadiesandaBeaker...and a dude?

Our organics room is notoriously full of women. Before our group there have been many other women that have advanced forward or left these laboratory halls forever.  For my time here years have gone by without any sign of testosterone.  Recently and for a short time only we got a new hire that was a man!  And he enjoys graffiti as much as I like to doodle so that was fun.  He still works in the building, but was moved to a different room. 

Here is his graffiti for our room OEP

 A view from farther away to capture both of his hoods

This is a closeup of his other freehand.  I requested this spot for graffiti so the SPE counter would have a good view of it!  I thought the colors turned out great and it really brightens up the room.  We deal with mostly water samples and I love the flowing feel of this piece.  I couldn't quite get the feel of the record to come through even in a close-up, but this record is pretty perfect and looks so legitimate you want to reach out and touch it. 

Throwback Thursday Lab Style

I was going through books recently and found a journal I had to make for school in the 4th grade. Apparently science has always been my favorite subject.  I have no idea what the witch experiment was, but maybe that partially explains the old time look I went with here.  The design isn't much but kitchen supplies and random shaped objects in what seems to be a dusty wizard's lair.  When I was young I'm pretty sure I thought science was closer to magic.  Science was and still is fascinating to me in the way that magic is, but reality is usually different from imagination.  I imagined scientists more as crazed alchemists in caves making concoctions from recipes in ancient books, and creating bubbling explosions of liquids and gases of various colors.

So here's what 4th grade me thought science looked like vs. what a real life science laboratory looks like.  

Working on a Saturday

Here is what working on a Saturday feels like.  Actually working on the weekends isn't bad at all except for getting up early and going to work.  I just took this picture as a joke to send to coworkers.  Only a few people work on the weekends so the lab is mostly dark and quiet and calm.  Usually overtime on the weekends is not necessary however, we use it as a chance to catch up on dishes when it's busy, or if we need to make up hours for doctor's appointments etc.  Doing dishes in the laboratory business means washing analytical glassware.  Glassware includes things like beakers, buchner funnels, volumetrics, and flasks.  Our dishware is mostly glass, but we have a few items that are teflon or other plastics.  We wear kevlar gloves and then layer up with those huge green gloves in the picture.  We wear a lab coat every day all the time in our room, or in the hallways and coolers getting samples, but in the dishroom we wear an extra layer of plastic apron over our lab coat.  We wash our glassware with hot water and citranox, a liquid acid cleaner.  Here is the MSDS on citranox.  An MSDS, or material safety data sheet, is where you find information about the product you are using.  Labels are often not read and overlooked but worth the read always!

<https://www.alconox.com/Resources/StandardDocuments/MSDS/msds_citranox_english_ghs.pdf>

After a wash with soapy citranox, the glassware is rinsed with tap water in a sink and then washed again in a solution of sulfuric acid and water.  Sulfuric acid is known to stick to glassware, leaving a residue on the glass.  Because of this the final steps to washing analytical glassware include rinsing with tap water and then DI (deionized) water.  We take the finished glassware back to our regular O.E.P. (Organic Extraction Prep)  room where at our leisure we rinse out glassware again with a squirt bottle mix of acetone and methylene chloride.