The World is Sick

Tingly

Oh my, what a week. One of the better ones so far, actually. This was for several reasons.

One! I woke up early enough to leave the house without having a parasitic lamprey attached to me on three out of five days. On the other two days, I didn’t have anything urgent going on at the lab, so I let it leave first. Oh, and I didn’t have to see him on the way back on any of those days, either.

Two! One of the sub-plans of a sub-plan that I came up with has achieved fruition. The Thing shall not follow me to Melbourne. This makes all parties happier. Except maybe It. I really don’t care. Also, had a lovely talk with Yamon that evening.

Three! I have successfully made flight reservations to Melbourne, and have found what appears to be a rather attractive offer in terms of accommodation. A single room with a private bathroom, and a table. Uh huh, a table. I don’t have one in my bedroom right now. Ergo, that table is a highly attractive item. Oh, and what they claim to be high speed wireless broadband. It’s probably not as good as they make it sound, but it can’t be worse than what I’ve got now.

The alternative is a backpackers’ lodge. Sure, that option is cheaper, but it has a communal toilet and kitchen. It’s not like I can’t deal with that, it’s just that I think I deserve a break after all this. I haven’t reserved the room yet, because I’m sort of out of cash in my account here.

Mmm. Despite the fact that my bacterial conjugation failed, and that I’ve hit a roadblock with a particular plasmid extraction, which is normally a very simple procedure, I’m quite content right now. Two weeks. Just two weeks to go. Great, now I’ve made myself impatient.

I’m excited and weary at the same time. I can’t wait for the 28th to arrive. On the other hand, my time-travelling superpower of moving forward in time at a rate of one second per second does nothing to lessen the agony of going through this two weeks. Molecular biology is probably the most frustrating thing I’ve ever encountered that wasn’t a badly designed video game. It’s just a little difficult for me. I like being to see things. Maybe my mind just isn’t capable of handling the abstractions required to perform molecular work. That might be the reason I had strayed from mathematics and chosen biology in the first place.

My point is, when the closest you ever get to seeing what you’re working with is as a pale white line on a fragile slab of jelly, while putting yourself at risk of mutagenesis from multiple sources, and having way too many commas in a run-on sentence, it begins to feel like you haven’t achieved anything at all. I guess I’m being impatient and unrealistic, but I miss being able to stick a flask under a microscope to see little globules.

Two weeks. And then momentary freedom. And then some. Then, UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH, OH YES. I CAN TASTE IT NOW. SWEET, SWEET BANDWIDTH. Cough.