parafilm. most of my solutions involve either parafilm of paper-based labeling tape, and this was no exception. i ended up gluing coverslips to the bottom of a petri dish with heated parafilm. tricky job, that! fortunately, the boss walked in exactly at the right moment, when i was bending over a metal brick heated to 95C, gently pressing the coverslip down with tweezers, completely absorbed in the process (hah, who wouldn’t be, when your plastic dish sits on top of the hot block??). he even whispered to me, what are you doing?? so he got an earful of angrycellbiology and is now sure i’m working very hard. which i am, but i wish i had more decent results to show for that and not just complaints.
brought the acetone back to christien but didn’t have a chance to talk to him :(. his phd student artfully maneuvered me out of their lab. hrmph.
christien said the magic word “acetone”, he even gave me some, and it didn’t work, either. damn he had the vacuum grease somewhere but he couldn’t find it, so he did come up an alternative solution - any coating, he said, will surely be dissolved by acetone, so you’ll have your squeaky clean glass. well, no. my list of “tried it. didn’t work.” grows longer and longer!
my order got screwed up. and instead of insanely coveted ibidi 2-wells (cat #80287), i got 8-wells (cat #80827) which are well... they have their niche i suppose, but to me, they’re well... completely useless. i do not understand why one would work with 8-wells even if it can be avoided, but they’re extremely popular around the lab. biochemists, what can i say. the order took 2 weeks, so another order will take 2 more weeks, and i only have another month. suddenly, tricky!
so. what i have amounts to: a) ibidi glass-bottom 35 mm dishes - lovely! glass bottomed culture dishes are the handiest invention in the world! however the ones we have are coated with “ibi-treat”, some proprietary shit that makes them incompatible with my protocol. tried it, didn’t work. b) cell culture plastic, but it’s too thick, i can’t focus. yes i can but with the 20xLD lens which, after all, does not have the definitive focus option, so goodbye, cell movies. plus, my protocol makes the plastic cloud over. tried it, didn’t work. c) those bloody 8-wells but the wells are too small.
d) the seminal article of Pelham and Wang where they used Dow Corning’s vacuum grease to attach glass to glass to build a special chamber thingy. i vaguely remember it being toxic on my cells a few years back, but i’d give anything a go these days. i wouldn’t need a chamber as such but if i could attach a plain coverslip to the bottom of those 35-mm dishes, that would kind of save me I suppose.
e) christien from downstairs who is a microscopist, a very accomplished one, and also a bit of a DIY guy, so i suppose he might have the vacuum grease. or if not, maybe he knows who might, maybe there’s an ultra centrifuge around? or something? a tube of vacuum grease can come in handy every once in a while. heck, what if we have it? it will be an extremely messy protocol but as long as it works, i don’t mind the mess. or perhaps he’ll have some alternative advice? idk but it’s worth a shot. i think i’ll go whine a bit to him tomorrow, see what he says.
f) i also got j, who, while she cannot help me professionally, offered a long distance shoulder to cry on during the acute phase of the crisis. THANK
