communication

So...today is supposed to be my day off from work so I can knit, knit, knit. Thus far I have succeeded to knit, knit, knit on the bus on the way to work. :-) Hee. I kind of miscommunicated with someone about our lab meeting presentation tomorrow, and suddenly I realized that I need to present. Eeks! This will certainly not be my most amazing presentation, but perhaps the lab members in attendance will have some good ideas for me to try out that will work better than what I've been doing for the past several months.

I bet you're wondering how the immunization went yesterday. Well. Yes. It went. It's a two part vaccine - one is oral, the other is an intramuscular injection in the leg. My partner in crime, Lori, and I got through feeding all of the mice and had injected more than half of them and were on the last 10 mice, all of whom were to receive the actual injectable virus instead of the control injection. We went to fill up our syringes and realized...there was about ONE dose of the virus in our tube, which I had thought would have more than 10 doses. Stupid me had not realized that the tube was contoured in such a way that made it look like it should hold a lot of liquid but in actuality only holds about 50 microliters, which is certainly NOT a lot of liquid. Oh dear...

Thus began an hour or two of confused frustration... Why had I thought I'd had so much virus? Why didn't I get more?? Who ordered the virus, anyhow, because it wasn't me? Would I have enough to do the vaccine? It turns out that I found the answer to the last question, and fortunately it was YES. That was good, but poor Lori had to go with me back to the animal facility (two buildings and a hill away) and didn't get to leave work until late. :-( Sorry, Lori...!!! Now I know better, and *I hope* that won't happen again!!

But hey - it's over! And see, despite the best planning I thought I had done, it still wasn't enough. Always something. Bleck. Oh well. So goes life, and today I'm still here and doing fine. Hopefully so are the mice!

Another miscommunication yesterday led to me not having my car back from the body shop. Also not so nice. I had asked that they call my work number when the car was done because my cell phone had no batteries, but they I guess didn't get that instruction and called only my dead cell phone to tell me that I needed to pick up the car by 3:30. ...! Not that I really could have done that anyhow, because of the all-afternoon vaccination... Anyhow, I hope my car is doing okay over in the middle of the city at the body shop. I shall find out in a few hours when the second half of my sort-of-off-work day begins...!