Frustration and Jubilation

Eisthen & Coddington Lab, Woods Hole, MA
It's finally up and running....mostly.

SO, I've taken some more pictures and experienced a few new things. Time, once again, for an update!

My roommate Hannah has finally arrived! She's from Arkansas originally, but she goes to school at University of Illinois. She's in her third year of graduate school as a physics major, and she's at MBL for the physiology course. Hurrah! It's nice to have someone around for a change.

Speaking of people being around, the town is steadily filling with students. Three more courses start this week, and the new arrivals are pouring in from the bus stop, large rolling suitcases in-tow. The dining hall is going to packed like never before!

I'm not a stalker, I swearz.

Insert excited axolotl face here.

Oh boy oh boy!

The events of today were a little frustrating (what else is new?). It's my "day off", but I had to hit the animal room to prepare odors for my experiment tomorrow (we get body odors from animals by placing them in Ringer's solution overnight). Lo and behold, the lights in the animal room were OFF, which is really bad news since we're trying to mimic the light cycle of Mexico in winter to get our axolotls in a reproductive condition.

Insert shocked axolotl face here.

SRSLY??? But I needs to be der HORNY axolotl!

In addition, the temperature was around 20 C (it's supposed to be around 17 C) and the water pump that we use to make Holtfreter's (the water that axolotls live in) was flowing slower than an oil-covered turtle on Louisiana's coastline.

Insert frustrated axolotl face here.

ARRRRRRGH

Heather came by to do animal care and we decided to call Dan the Animal Man to notify him of these problems. We've renamed him Dan the Worthless Man. He doesn't listen, he interrupts, and worst of all, he offers futile solutions and expects us to fix these problems ourselves. This wouldn't be a problem if we weren't paying MBL large sums of money ($$$) for our animals to be cared for.

(Donald Herrington or Jessica Venier, if you're reading this, plz get your butts to Cape Cod and replace this fool)

Insert sad axolotl face here.

WHY, DAN, WHY???

On the lighter side of things, Apparatus Mike has fixed our second solenoid controller! Three cheers for Mike! We still need to test it out on an animal, but it looks promising so far.

Insert relieved axolotl face here.

THANKS MIKE!

Mike also showed me some of his shoes from his 400+ shoe collection. Mike really likes collecting and wearing shoes, mostly shoes made for women. He admits he's kind of a freak, but I've reassured him that it takes all kinds to make a world, and I appreciate his courage to flaunt his hobby in the open.

"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not."
-Kurt Cobain

Rock on, Mike.

The dining hall isn't open on Sunday evenings, so my labmates Sarah and Erin are going to join me for dinner somewhere in town. Should be a blast.

I miss everyone. Hope to see as many of you as I can when I return for my 21st birthday on June 26th.

Thanks for reading!
Lila