#unpublished observations

[cassiocantdrink]

my work friend is vagueblogging about me on insta, and i’m pissed. in 2015, i went to work in france for 3 months. we had submitted an article right before i left, and the request for a revision came when i was still there. ira had to do all the wet work, and then the boss and i worked on the texts. okay, i’ll admit, that was a hell of lot of work she did.  but now it’s 2019 and she’s turning her insta into a blog about wOrkIng iN ScIeNce, and she writes about about that incident. FOUR FUCKING YEARS AGO, DAMMIT, but no. how Responsible and Conscientious she was to put the workgroup before herself, and how different people have dIfFeRent PrIoRiTies. oh and how she was given too little time to decide and how the boss guilt-tripped her into refusing. she was the #1 candidate, i was the afterthought, ok? except she conveniently forgets to mention that a) i discussed my possible leaving at truly enormous length with the boss, when to submit the article, when to leave, what to do if, and then and only then, i agreed; b) you needed to write a project in english to get the funding, and she most definitely didn’t want to do that; and c) because of that extra work, she moved up from being the second author to being a joint first one. yeah we had two first authors and one last one cuz we were a smaller workgroup then. 

am still pissed. oh and she posts that she finds office (well, lab) friendships unnecessary and even harmful. like, WHAT? idk what particular incident she is referring to, probably something with the boss, (they’ve had a few run-ins recently) but *you*can’t*be*friends*with*your*boss*, you can be on friendly terms, as indeed, we all may be, but at the end of the day, you’re not equals and forgetting that will inevitably bite in you in the ass. i think i’ll dial down my friendship for a while, now. i don’t need that kind of shit in my life atm. 

[cassiocantdrink]

oh lookie our article has been rejected once again. two against one in our favor but the against is heavy shit. basically not good enough, and the funny thing, i've known that it's true from the start. parts of it might be a good beginning for a bigger work, but the way it is now, it's just a collection of data that don't really fit together well, and an unsupported theory. i want it in PLOSOne already, low impact factor be damned, because lets be honest, its all that it deserves and i want it done and gone. its been a fucking year and im tired. im so happy that i'm a lowly workhorse on that one and not the one who makes the ultimate decisions. though yeah, i know what mine would have been from the start, plos. i believe in the theory, btw, but its not a compelling case

[cassiocantdrink]

i love my lab though. you can dress however you like (clean, reasonably neat, and not too sexy) and no-one bats an eyelash. when you wear jeans all day long, but at the end of the day, walk the runway of the corridor in the above-mentioned sundress, because you’re going to a concert. or when you buy a jersey pencil skirt but it’s so bloody cold that you put it under your normal skirt and yes OF COURSE it’s longer and shows underneath and that’s the bloody point, and again, everybody just considers it perfectly normal. 

or that day when the evening before i decided to curl my hair and woke up with the worst bedhead in my life (we have a much better expression, “an explosion at the spaghetti factory) and again, everybody accepted it as an intended special effect. i feel positively blessed. 

[cassiocantdrink]

tfw your boss asks to take your old tinytablet with her on a conference (for science!!! she’s going to play cell movies. hmm. at least i think so). 

BUT THERE”S *P*O*R*N* THERE! and i’m not keen on her seeing my (small but well chosen) collection

but it’s behind AppLock?

but i forgot the fucking password!

oh there it is, lets just kill the files altogether er no, lets transfer them to my now-tablet, BIGGER AND BETTER. 

ok i unlocked them, NOW THEY”RE ALL OVER THE PLACE, IN AT LEAST THREE LOCATIONS AND I DON”T REMEMBER WHERE!!!!

phew. done. 

okay now i have to lock them on my big tablet b/c BFFS’ kids

okay did it, but where had i put them? in a new folder “*p*o*r*n*”, obvs, so while the files are gone, the empty folder remains. do i delete it? but would it affect the files??? do i leave it be? i mean the kids are (almost) 17 and 14, a little knowledge that i’m human too, can’t hurt them at this age, surely? what’s an empty folder anyway. 

oh shit. maybe i should have just let the files sit where they were, i’m not sure the boss would have gone rummaging around the tablet. but better safe then sorry, i guess. i left her a webinar on restorative yoga, she can use that if she comes across it. 

requires too many props though. oh well. not my problem. 

ETA: SHE IS NOT TAKING IT, AFTER ALL *HEADDESK*

[cassiocantdrink]

so, ah, how many cell biologists does it take to change a tube lamp? two, as it happens, but the result may be somewhat unexpected:

(still works though!) i'm proud to say that the left (correct) end is mine! (senior lab rat, phd) while the right one is my boss's (head of the lab, phd, dsc). there were sockets for two lamps, jfc, no need to stick it right in the middle, alright??

on the other hand, it was her who figured our where to procure a lamp late friday evening, so i guess.... she's the brain, i'm an auxiliary brain and hands? figures.

[cassiocantdrink]

also my theory that biol does its best when you dont look at it and dont fret about it, proved right again! the experiment that i deemed hopeless and didnt throw away only out of pity a week ago (and refused to even look into that corner) is doing effing great! now, on to the most difficult part, but thats for monday, when ill be just my own senior lab rat again.

[cassiocantdrink]

oh the joys of being an acting head of the lab!! when the department secretary confides in me that she cant get drunk and never had an orgasm, do i run out of the room shouting TMI! TMI!, do i just file it away as a funny fact about her or do i discreetly slip a sex toy into her desk drawer?? ive only been promoted for three days and i hadnt had such fun in MONTHS!

the showdown with a bunch of crooked lawyers on tuesday was the highlight of my budding bureaucratic career, of course. now if i only successfully finalize the retirement of our technician tomorrow, (those were her lawyers, too!), that would just perf. lots of adulting, not a lot of biol, but yeah, i love it! seems like i chose my career wrong????

[cassiocantdrink]

i protest. i think that an earthworm in my sink is Too Much. i don’t mind accidental drosophila larvae and the following flypocalypsis if we don’t find them and kill them in time; i do mind the e.coli stink (okay that was actually my fault), but that’s why i have a lethal weapon now, a chlorine-containing home cleaning product. I LIKE ESCAPEE MICE! snowflake who was stupid and hungry enough to be caught, lived for a whole yeah in a DYU two-level apartment with a private gym (the wheel yeah). and she even went on tv once!! playing a control mouse in some pop sci program.  but eathworms, nope. i like them, too, yeah, but please not in my sink. went downstairs and released it; hopefully it was the only one.