I called my boss irrational

After much deliberation (which including talking to mom, Geeka, and fiance) I finally faced the reality that there was no way in heck I was going to have my dissertation written by Monday. I felt much better. However, I still had to talk to my boss. The first thing I did was call the person in the department in charge of the students. He was completely supportive, said it was no big deal. It happens more often than not. Don't rush it if I need more time to write. If anyone gives me problems, have them talk to him. I shot an email out to Kiwi telling him I had to meet with him Friday and we decided 8:45 before his day started. He had a meeting at 9:30. I spent all evening and morning thinking about what I was going to say and how I was going to say it. After interacting with his craziness for 6 years I thought I knew how he was going to react. He'd be pissed, complain and whine, insult me, but ultimately say it was my decision and it's between me and my committee, he wouldn't want a part in it.

I thought wrong. He is much crazier than I thought he was - and that's saying a lot.

This was the rational that I would use:

1 - I have been working non-stop but the reality is that 1 1/2 months is not enough time to write a dissertation from scratch. Without a manuscript to start from.
2 - I understand I will not get a stipend after May. He won't pay me. I'll deal with it because it's my decision.
3 - The committee won't care, all they want is a manuscript which had to at least be submitted by the time I defend, which it isn't. It's been on Kiwi's desk for weeks.
4 - It serves no one to turn in something that isn't done; it is a waste of every one's time.
5 - It will not affect him at all since he won't be paying me. I just have to write and schedule a meeting.

It's hard to even describe how the meeting went. He asked how it was going. I said not that great. And told him I finally faced the reality that it wouldn't be done by Monday. We argued for the next 20 minutes. Through the course of the argument I reiterated several times what I mentioned above. Here are some of his comments.

"I will not even entertain the idea."

"I recommend you don't pursue it."

"As far as I'm concerned your dissertation is on the 19th."

And the best one "I'll be there on the 19th for your defense whether you are there or not."

He had the look of a petulant child throwing a tantrum, like he's going to do it whether I like it or not.

Then he proceeded to compare me to a student who had rescheduled several times and was there 9-10 years. I just interrupted him, told him that isn't even a fair comparison. The difference is my work is done, all I'm doing is writing, and I'm pushing to leave. She wasn't.

I must say it was wonderful to call him irrational to his face, and ridiculous. I'm just glad I've developed self-control over the past few years with him. There was A LOT worse running through my head.

Finally, he said turn it in next Friday instead of Monday - which I should be able to do. But I never actually verbally agreed to it. Then I asked him why in the last email he sent me he said the manuscript had to be completely reworked. We went through it, he's only scanned it so far. I asked him if he looked at the part of the dissertation discussion I sent him a couple days ago. He hadn't. I made him open it and go over it with me. I made him 1/2 hour late for his meeting. I don't care. If he was going to be such an ass, he was going to give me CONSTRUCTIVE feedback on what I sent him.

Grrrrr.... I went and vented to Geeka. We calm each other and prevent the other from harming people.

Of all the scenarios I ran through my head that was not one of them. And at the end of the meeting he had to sign the GSR letter stating I will get paid the month of May. He looked at it - "What's this," "What does it say?" and proceeded to read it. It is the same letter he has signed for every student since before I was there - every semester. Like I was hiding something in it!

He's gone next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday so I scheduled a meeting with him Thursday morning.

I can't wait to get the hell out of here. Oh - I told him that too. If he thought I was making the decision lightly about rescheduling I wasn't, I want to be out of here and get this done more than anyone. I want to move on with my life.

BSL2+ training

We had mandatory training yesterday for BSL2+ work. Forget the fact that we have been working in BSL2+ facilities for over a year. Apparently now we need training. The most interesting thing about the training - the full time biosafety officer teaching the class passed out candy for those who would answer questions or make comments. We were in the BSL2+ tissue culture room. In a safety class, we were encouraged to eat in the same room we were just told that we weren't allowed to eat in.

Ridiculous.

And during the same meeting we learned that the two table top centrifuges are room temp only. They aren't refrigerated. In a common lab space only an idiot would order centrifuges that don't refrigerate. Two of the three labs here use refrigerated centrifuges, however the lab in which the Center lab manager belongs to doesn't. She obviously doesn't think of every one's needs. Kiwi is working with her and the other lab boss to figure out what they are going to do. Absolutely everything our lab does requires equipment to keep it all cold. Kiwi was eyeing the centrifuge next to my bench. He wanted to take the centrifuge from our lab benches but I said no, bad idea. That's the only refrigerated one by the benches. I told him he can't have it. They will need to fix the problem without stealing the equipment the rest of us use. Especially the equipment I use!

What a week.

There is a departmental retreat tomorrow in a department that Kiwi holds a secondary appointment. He is giving a 30 minute presentation about all of my dissertation work. As a result I didn't do any bench work this week. What Kiwi doesn't realize is that it takes a considerable amount of time to analyze and prepare my images and movies. I make live-cell microscopy movies. If I do lab experiments everyday there is no time to prepare data. The ideal would be to do an experiment then spend the next day going over the results. But as we all know experiments must be done everyday until I'm done. So I had all of this backed up imaging to prepare and it took me all week. This week was just grueling.

Tuesday night I stayed until 12:30am then had to get up early the next day to proctor an exam for Kiwi since he wasn't going to be around. I'm still not sure how I got talked into that! And that day (yesterday) was just crazy. I was all ready to give the exam, I even got there 1/2 early, then the fire alarm went off. Luckily we were let back in early enough that they were able to finish the exam. Then I went back to my building (the exam was in a different building) to find the power was out. Emergency power was on but there are only so many outlets to plug major equipment into. So everyone was running around looking for power strips and extension cords. The lab next to us, FD and I all had samples that had to be processing so we were hooking up hoods and centrifuges and working in the dark. And for some reason, the other buildings had their power restored about 3 - 4 hours before we did. Another odd thing, the air conditioning was on full blast. We were all freezing. It's like all the power was diverted to the air conditioning. Who cares about freezers warming up, cells dying, virus escaping hoods - as long as the air is on! One good thing about the fact that most of the Center is still empty was there were emergency outlets places where there was no large equipment, so I relocated myself to the aisle, plugged my computer into an emergency outlet, and work on Kiwi's presentation. I made the presentation for him because I have all my data and know what I do. Even though it took me what felt like forever I still could do it faster than him. So the day became very long because of the exam then the power outage. I was running so late that I didn't get my scope time in the evening and had to come in early this morning to do it.

And today the building still wasn't functioning properly. Every now and then we hear a big "whoomp" and that either means the power is going out or something is wrong with the air. And today we had the opposite problem - we had power but no air. Some rooms reached over 85F. This crazy building. It's brand new and full of problems.

Not only did I put Kiwi's presentation together but I had to make him a 'cheat sheet' that told him how I did my experiments and what various reagents were used for. And what cells he was looking at. This tells you how little he is involved in my project. I had to make a cheat sheet.

Because of the retreat tomorrow I'm doing part of the monocyte isolation today and finishing it tomorrow evening after the retreat. I tried to talk FD into processing some of it for me tomorrow but he said he was too busy. Oh, well. I tried.

I'd be home by now but I had to spend time with Kiwi putting the movies into the presentation because he doesn't know how. With all this work I put into it he better do a good job!!!

I can't wait to to just veg tomorrow, listen to presentations, eat a good lunch and not be in lab. I talked Ding into coming with me so I'd know someone there. And the new post doc is coming with us. So I guess we'll get to talk to him a bit.

What's up with my boss?

Today I had to process blood in the hood room of another lab in the Center. It was a bit of a hassle because of the crazy lock mechanism on the doors (it takes two hands to open). I had to lug all of the reagents and stuff I needed from one hood room to another all afternoon. And after I started processing I realized that the other lab's centrifuge didn't refrigerate. It only worked at room temperature. I thought I was going to have to spend the afternoon running between three hood rooms because ours was full, I was working in one, and there was a refrigerated one in another hood room. I couldn't use their hoods but I could use their centrifuge. Kiwi was there when I was frantically running from hood room to hood room to hood room. He decided to be useful and told me that the lab used to process blood at room temperature all the time. So, that's what I did. The cells looked okay, just a little haggard at the end of 4 hours but they were alive. I'll see what they look like tomorrow.

While I was starting to process blood, immediately after the centrifuge temperature conversation we had this conversation:

Setting: Me preparing to start blood in the hood, all gowned and gloved and ready to go. Kiwi standing on my side of the BSL2 room door with no protective clothing. Trying to talk to me. I use this as an opportunity to mention the other hood room.

Me: So, did you talk to Incompetent Lab Manager about getting our other hood recertified?

Kiwi: Yeah, last week I sent her an email about it.

(Silence . . . me staring at him saying nothing.)

Kiwi: (hesitantly) Well, I could go ask her again about it. See if we could get things moving along.

Me: (in a tone that says, yeah, you better.) That would be nice.

Kiwi: Okay, I'll get onto that.

Me: Thanks.

(Uncomfortable silence.)

Me: When I have some free time next week . . . well, not really free time, don't have any of that. . . I guess when I have spins and incubations I'll get the other hood room set-up so when the hood is recertified the room is ready to go.

Kiwi: (enthusiastically) Okay, that's sounds good. Let me know when you're going to do it and I'll help you.

Me: (slightly stunned, no words come to mind immediately so . . ) Okay, thanks.

Kiwi: (smile on his face) No problem!

(He leaves the room and I get to work, a bit baffled)

Now he's really starting to scare me. I mean, someone mentioned to me the other day that maybe he's medicated. And in all honesty, I think he might be.

The day started good, at least for a couple hours

Okay, it's only a bit after 9am and this day is off to a bad start. Well, it started out good then went downhill. I only hit the snooze for 20 minutes this morning and I was here by 8am. Right on time. I needed to get my assay set up so I could make to a friend's defense this morning.

From there it went downhill, not steep, but starting to decline. I proceeded to set up my assay this morning, about an hour into it I realized that I made a stupid mistake. I used the old calculations for my reagents, I now add them to the assay differently. I need them at a starting concentration of 1000x. Not 1x. Needless to say - experiment down the tubes.

Next, I went to turn off the centrifuge by my bench since I didn't need it anymore. There, sitting right next to it, was a box that says "REFRIGERATE" all over it in big red letters. It was the antibody I had been waiting for since last Friday. Even though our lab is cold, it's not as cold as a refrigerator. Thankfully, the company said even though the box said 'refrigerate upon arrival' the antibody would be good for about a week at room temperature since they shipped it as a powder.

When I got on my email to send out a gentle reminder to everyone to please pay attention to where packages need to be placed I noticed an email with hood rooms as a subject. From the lab manager so can't be good.

Good morning all! I apologize for the short notice but we need to block off (hood room) tomorrow morning. Electricians are coming to wire the card readers on the doors and hence the doors will be open and therefore no one will be able to work in the hoods. Please plan to move your work to late afternoon.

Forget the fact I already have experiments planned for the morning. I've had them planned for a week now. The girl who is defending is one from my class. We are good friends and she is going back to her hometown Thursday. Who knows if I'll ever see her again. We are having a going away, celebration, you're finally done party tomorrow night. I CAN'T work late. I talked to the lab manager and she said she'll talk to the electricians, so I can either set up my experiment before them or see if they'll finish our hood room first. And I hate talking to her - she has one of those fake smiles, I'll just agree to shut you up smile.

Grrrrrrrrrrr.

Hood room woes.

We are having issues with the hood rooms again. Why can't the Center just leave things alone. First the rooms where shut down on Monday to install electronic locks. This was so only people with ID badges with permission to enter the biohazard rooms could gain access. Okay, that makes sense. However, on Tuesday when we came in that's not what happened. There were plastic black knobs where the lock used to be - the actual lock was removed. In its place is this black knob. Now it is impossible to hold anything while opening the door because it takes two hands. With one hand you have twist the black knob, which seems to be spring loaded, hold it in place, and open the door with the other hand. And as for only allowing certain people to enter, there is a huge sign on each door that says, with an arrow, "Turn to open." The lock is also flimsy also. Remember, the whole point was to make the room more secure - I wiggled it, and the lock fell out of the door, in two pieces. It just balances in the door.

There were also new additions on the inside of the room as well. We know have magnetic pipette holders that attach to the hoods. Which was a good idea, except where they placed them. I was, of course, focused on setting up my assay. I slide up the hood shield and Wham! The pipettes go crashing to the floor. And we just had them calibrated a couple days before. They placed the pipettes too low so the shield slammed into them. Another brilliant move.

There were also these plastic acrylic holders stuck to the hood. And I mean stuck! They used super adhesive tape to stick these things on. Can you guess what they are for? Not gloves, which would make sense. They were holders for kim wipes. All of us said the same thing - who the hell uses kim wipes around here in a hood. The only thing we use them for is to clean coverslips and microscope lenses. Which aren't in the hood. The bad part was where they put them. When we sit in the chairs they are above our heads. Mo cracked her head twice, I cracked my head once. The corners are very pointy and hard. It pisses me off, if they want to add things to the room fine. Give them to us to put where we want. They don't use the room, we do. Quit changing things to make it 'better' when they don't even use the place.

Well, I should actually be talking in past tense. The holders are no longer there. I was talking to Geeka about them and how FD, Mo and I were trying to figure out the best way to get them off. She suggested ethanol. Well, Friday evening Mo and I soaked them in ethanol, we used our squirt bottles. After a good dousing and shaking they came off. In pieces. The plastic directly attached to the adhesive is the only thing remaining. The lab manager of the Center will probably be pissed. But she was stupid enough to put them were we would crack our heads. I feel a little guilty at breaking them, because I don't know how much they cost. But boy, was it satisfying to break them.

I wonder if anyone will mention the missing kim wipe holders?