A brief update..

My busy summer life continues, and I'm getting a bit tired of not finding a routine. I know, I know, spontaneity is good and all that, but I really function best with crystal-clear laid out plans and a point-by-point schedule. Seriously, I make To-do lists everyday. In short, I want everyday to be the same, and it's all over the place right now.

What's throwing it off? I had some more trouble with getting an experiment to work, and then when I did, we had run out of the cells I needed for the next step. I went upstairs to the supply lab to get them, but they were out too -- and had placed the order 10 days ago. This left me with very little to do, so after leaving work early a few days, I just went ahead and started my new project. This, unfortunately, kept me occupied for all of six hours, and then the results came in this morning and weren't ideal. Or at least weren't expected. So I have to start that over (which is a whole lot more waiting again) and then hope my cells have come in so I can finish up what I have left of Project #1. The important thing is that I have sufficient data to present to my boss, indicating that I was actually present in lab on a daily basis while he was away, and I did try very hard. I've even been doing work at home! Not to grab points at work, but actually because using 4Peaks to analyze my DNA sequence is -- and I can't believe I'm saying this -- fun. I'm still not really sure how I, who has always identified as a chemist, ended up in a microbiology lab doing molecular genetics and loving it.

I'm currently reading Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's really good -- essentially a more in-depth discussion of topics that were just touched upon in his other book, In Defense of Food. I'm turning into a big food advocate, especially after how awesome my weekly farmer's market experiences have been all summer. Our airmiles account balance is seriously stagnant after giving up Safeway. Anyway, it's another book I'd like to discuss & review at some point, should I ever get those blog posts up & rolling!

I supposedly start training at my new part-time job next weekend. I say supposedly because I haven't received the email detailing the date, times and location of my training, which as you can guess by the opening of this post, leaves me extremely anxious. OMIGOD! WHERE WILL I BE AT 2PM ON SATURDAY?? WHAT WILL I BE DOING?? etc etc. I really want to just get working, get a regular schedule, and then get a regular paycheque.
I think I've mentioned before that this summer is probably the lowest I've been paid since highschool, and after 3 months, I'm really feeling the strain. Hell, I was feeling the strain before it even started! In any case, I'm really glad I don't have to pay tuition this year (it is auto-deducted out of my graduate student stipend) because I genuinely wouldn't be able to afford it. This naturally feeds into my hate for the system that forces students to take out exorbitant loans and keeps them in debt for most of their lifetime BLAHBLAHBLAH, but that is a rant for another day. To say the least, I have suffered much and I'm ready for it to be over!