Dr Jekyll and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (more apologies, to Judith Viorst)

I went to bed without flossing and when I woke up my mouth tasted like something had died in it and also the cat clawed me awake, again, and I had gas and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

At breakfast I found out that there was a hold placed on our credit card because of suspicious activity: an in-flight movie and last night's dinner at a restaurant we have eaten at before. I wasted ten minutes explaining this to CitiFolks.

I think I'll move to an HHMI lab.

At work a paper just came out in C/N/S that, although it doesn't exactly scoop the manuscript I just submitted to One-Tier-Down, still kinda takes the flash out of our findings. Who cares about C/N/S, anyhow?

Advisor seems more interested in Other Postdoc's data than in mine.

Someone left a bunch of stinky mouse cages out and the smell made me gag. I hope you clean up those mouse cages, I said. I hope the next time you do an experiment, it goes horribly wrong and cancels out all the good data you got already, and you can never join an HHMI lab.

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

That's what it was, because we had to do a data blitz with neighboring labs this afternoon so I spent all morning making three stupid PowerPoint slides. I hate making PowerPoint slides.

Since experiments have been bad lately and because my experiment time was constricted by data blitz, I decided to do a "fun" alternative experiment. I couldn't get that to work, either.

In the afternoon, Advisor asked me if I was washing my tissue with PBS before storing it long-term. No, I said. Nobody told me to do that or gave me a protocol. Well then your data will be screwed up, he said. Next week do it differently.

Next week, I said, I will be in an HHMI lab. But nobody even answered.

After crying in the bathroom, I decided to calm down by making myself a mug of hot tea, and I was careful as could be, but somehow still upended the liquid all over my skirt.

After experiments we had the data blitz and my imaging movies, which were kinda super-important, wouldn't play. They can make me present a data blitz, but they can't make me like it.

Before I left work I got an email from a collaborator who said all the data I collected last Saturday was useless.

On my bike ride home, an SUV cut me off by turning right just in front of me, and I had to slam on my brakes and skid and even so nearly hit him. I tried to follow him to find where he lives and kill him, but he got too far ahead of me.

This week's New Yorker still has not arrived.

Dr Hyde came home and hugged me and kissed me and said some days are like this.

Even in HHMI labs.