Saturday, January 20, 2007

1987

1987 was the year I started school. I was 4 years old at the time (my birthday was two weeks before the cut off date, but seeing as how my two goals in life were to learn to read and to ride a school bus, mom didn't think she should make me wait another whole year before I got to go) (and yes, I accomplished everything I ever wanted to do in life by the time I was 6 years old). I thought that I had left kindergarten behind a long time ago, but apparently I was wrong.

A little background first. I am the youngest person in my department by about 6 months and the youngest person in my lab by about 4 years. I work with 4 graduate students (2 from China, 1 from Gambia, 1 from Jordan), 1 post doc (Stephanie), and 3 PhDs. I am also the only person in my lab who does not have a PhD and is not working towards one. Now for the drama...

Back in December, one of the students, we shall call them Y., go into a fight with Stephanie over the two carts we keep in the lab. Y. was using both carts at the same time, Stephanie needed one, and there was some arguing and maybe some yelling. We started signing out the carts, and I thought all was well. I found out on Friday, however, that Y. was still not talking to Steph because of the whole cart incident. Y. is also only speaking to me on a need-to-know basis because (I guess) Y. feels like I took Steph's side in the Great Cart Scandal.

If this wasn't juvenile enough, there was more fun on Friday. About two weeks ago I sent out an email detailing some new procedures we needed to be following when we do surgery. I had gone over all the information in Lab Meeting, but I felt like a written explanation might help to make things clear. On Friday, I was assisting another student (we'll call them L.) with surgery when it became clear that L. had no idea what needed to be done. When I questioned L. about some of the things I had explained in the email, L. admitted to me "I didn't read the email because I didn't think it was important." Now this made me mad. I don't send out many emails, and when I do, they are usually about things that everyone needs to know. Since it was obvious that I couldn't depend on people reading my emails, I decided that the best way to make sure everyone was on the same page was to have a mandatory information session where we went over everything that needed to be going on. I discussed this with LabManager who thought it was a great idea, and then sent out an email telling the date and time.

Now, I will admit that I was still a bit mad (and maybe a bit menstrual--I'm just saying) when I sent the email. And I admit that there were some all caps, bolded, underlined sections, but since they didn't seem to read my emails all that often, I figured I needed to make it very clear what portions I expected them to read. This didn't go over to well. L. and Y. both got very upset and were going to to talk to BigBoss and do....well, I don't know--get me in trouble, get me fired, get me a raise (well, maybe not that last one). Luckily, LabManager headed them off, talked to them, and told them they needed to calm down or leave. LabManager then went and talked to BigBoss before he came and told me what had gone on. Then I had to go talk to BigBoss just to make sure that he understood my side of the story (which he did) and he assured me he was behind me 110% and that he would make sure that everyone understood that I was in charge of anything to do with animals and/or DLAR.

So, as of Friday afternoon here is where I stand with my lab: BigBoss & LabManager are on my side along with Steph & Jeff while L., & Y. are so mad at me that they are no longer talking to me and Y. has made sure that about half of the other students in the department aren't speaking to me either. No one knows what the other two students (A. and X.) think about all this since they haven't been seen or heard from since Tuesday.

Now, LabManager's excuse for L. & Y.'s behavior was that they are just young and aren't mature enough yet, at which point I had to remind him that I am 3-4 years younger that both L. & Y. and I don't act like that. It's bad enough that L. & Y. got all bent out of shape over an email that was sent to the entire lab (not just them), but Y. holding a grudge over the whole Cart Episode for two months is just ridiculous. She needs to just let it go. Oh well, we'll see what happens on Monday.

In other news, we are expecting some kind of big winter storm to hit tonight/tomorrow (which will hit this time since my friend Nathan is leaving tomorrow to move to Pennsylvania) so of course today I had to go stock up on the essentials (milk and yarn). So yes, I made my third trip to the Yarn Store since last Saturday. I needed to get another skein of yarn to finish up my Aunt Purl's Magic Scarf and I wanted to get some move yarn to make another hat using up some of the purple yarn I had left over. While I was there, however, I just had to go take another look at the Noro Yarns that I wanted so badly the last time I was in (umm.....Wednesday, yeah, I have a problem). Low and behold, they had restocked, and now they had a ton of new color choices!! I immediately gravitated to Noro's Kureyon color 90 and I just couldn't let it go. It was so pretty. It wanted to come live with me so badly. So I bought 4 skeins even though I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. I may need to take a second job to support my yarn habit.

The Noro yarn color that just had to come live with me. I am now the proud owner of 4 skeins of this stuff.

Oh yeah, and just in case anyone was wondering, I LOVED this week's Supernatural. It was totally awesome with just the right balance of creep factor, brotherly love/hate, and humor. You've got to love a show that makes fun of itself. Come to think of it, that's why I love Ugly Betty as well--and let me just say that the last five minutes of Betty totally caught me by surprise. Perhaps Faye is really dead after all.

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