No, really. I'm getting a little tired of this.

It's 1:50 am on Saturday night/Sunday morning, and I'm still at the lab.... It seems completely unlikely that I will be done with all that needs to be done by my last day of work (Friday 09/28/07). I still have an incubator full of cells (the biggest time suck of all), slides that need staining, slides that need counting, a manuscript to revise and return to my PI, other experiments that need tending, multitudes of frozen cells that need to be moved to the liquid nitrogen tank and recorded, and on top of all that I need to clear out my desk and bench and file cabinets to make way for the next person who'll be using them. And it would be nice if I could organize my samples and reagents that I'm leaving behind.

You might think that I'm a procrastinator and put all this off till the very end; on some level that's true, but there was also the issues of the cells not being ready this summer and I certainly had plenty of other things to do to keep myself busy. I feel like I've been going non-stop since about mid-July; that's about when I started to get back into the swing of things after defending my dissertation and finishing the revisions and then going to various family reunions in June.

Of course, one of the other major tasks I was supposed to be working on this summer was finding a job, and I've completely dropped that ball. I haven't even done anything job-related in about the last month. I should have been sending my resume out to companies all summer. I got some advice to take one afternoon per week to work on my job search, but I couldn't even manage to find that amount of time in my schedule. Therefore, as of Friday, I will be officially unemployed (and officially terrified at the prospect).

In the meantime, here's a nice video of some beating cells that I took tonight.

SER-iously.

Work is really, really, really kicking my butt right now. Seriously.

(With apologies for the Grey's Anatomy reference...)

SLU parking changes

Propaganda
Originally uploaded by gecko_12.

The city of Seattle is implementing a new pay parking plan for the South Lake Union neighborhood. I saw several new parking meters and signage today, as well as these inspirational posters on every light pole. I'm sure it's no coincidence that they're appearing at the same time as the parking meters. The other posters have similar catchy phrases with people's names in them, encouraging the reader to commute using non-car transportation. I'm always in favor of alternate transportation, but I find this ad campaign a little cheesy since it's clearly meant to distract you from the other changes being made.

Two-way Westlake opens up

Two-way Westlake
Originally uploaded by gecko_12.

They opened up the new southbound lanes of Westlake this weekend. There were very few cars traveling in that direction, but then again it was the evening rush hour again. Photo taken at Mercer and Westlake, facing south.