Time is at a Premium

The last week has been my busiest yet and all I really remember about the last few days are the experiments I was trying to cram into them. Now that I've gotten comfortable with amino acid isotherms, I've turned the bulk of my attention towards mastering lipid adsorption isotherms. My first round of experiments ended disasterously when a volumetic flask I used to make one of my solutions got contaminated somehow, resulting in an impenetrable, inky-black semi-solid substance that was of no use to me (and encrusted my test tubes like char). In an attempt to make up for lost time, I launched a series of parallel experiments which, under normal circumstances, I would have done sequentially. So far, so good; no more black muck! I haven't finished analyzing all the data yet, but I hope to have everything plotted in another day or two-- so long as I don't get interrupted again. As it is, I can't completely move forward with my lipid experiments because my PI is more interested in my work with amino acids at the moment. She is always coming up with extra things to add and new things to try. Sometimes, the results are fuzzy enough to warrant a redo but thankfully, that hasn't happened too often. Today, we had to place this project on hold because we ran out of a reagent called Ninhydrin; can't run assays without it. It's probably just as well anyway since I've been falling behind on my reading and could probably use a few days at my desk (yeah, right! Not with lipid experiments I can still do!).

I must say though, that I'm starting to feel bad about aspects of my personal life that are starting to get swallowed up by research. I can't remember the last time I visited my own website, made any jewelry, or chatted with my friends online. Someone even approached me to express an interest in doing some research together and I still haven't found time to get back to him about it. Even my blog writing is suffering as more and more data screams for analysis while I'm sitting on the bus (where I write my blog entries). I also keep forgetting to take care of certain personal errands like getting my prescriptions renewed or returning borrowed items. In some ways, I feel like I'm starting to lose myself. One of my old professors once stressed the importance of having a life outside of graduate school. Since I didn't really have much of a life during those years I was sick, I sort of got used to going without a lot of things. I couldn't afford to go out or have hobbies and I barely had enough energy to get through the day, let alone do anything extra.