I was in a tempestuous mood on Monday; I already felt uneasy over the lack of office space and having to contact security to be allowed into the building, and then came confirmation that I won't be able to start the bulk of my project work for at least another five weeks. Thankfully, my current work wasn't impeded by Friday's delays, and removing brains actually felt therapeutic.
On Tuesday I confused security by coming in for an hour in the morning to transfer my brains to their storage buffer, and then returning after the ARUK Conference sessions to image my brain slices that had a 25-hour wash. Thankfully, they had stained really well, although on Thursday I realised that the control slices also had some background colour on them, so I may need to tweak the settings and/or protocol.
Wednesday was my first full home-working day in a while because the weather put me off going in post-conference, and I realised that there wasn't anything that needed to be done before Thursday morning. I was up early on Thursday, and going from animal unit to lab and back again while in a lab meeting was only slightly chaotic. Going through the surgery procedure with my supervisor was really useful, and helped me to appreciate that what I'm doing and the conditions under which I'm doing it are challenging, so I should give myself some credit! I also took the next lot of brain slices home ready to take for processing on Friday morning.
Thankfully, this Friday went totally smoothly, the roads were very quiet when I dropped off the slices, and they were ready for collection before the final conference sessions began, which gave me much more flexibility for the rest of the day. I was less focused in the afternoon, but I was able to stay grounded and get through my to-do list. I'll have to brave the winds this afternoon and Sunday to finish this set of experiments, but I'm happy to have some structure heading into the next week.
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