So, I got all of my marks back: I pulled off a 78 average in term 2, as a cancer patient.  I do believe that makes me some sort of brain champion.  My brain meats are superior to the brain meats of others. Oh, not you.  Your brain meats are also superior; although perhaps not quite so superior as mine.  Mine are awfully superior, after all.

Gather Your Science Nuts for the Long Winter Ahead, Children.

I am sitting in my lab, waiting for some oil to heat up.  The oil is for science, not for pouring over the battlements while longbowmen whizz shafts past my head.  That whole sentence is two or three adjectives away from some kinky sex, or possibly a scene from Monty Python's Holy Grail.  Coconut.

Technically, it's not my lab, it belongs to the University.  The oil is mine, though.  I called dibs.  You have to call dibs in this lab, or all of the science gear disappears into cupboards, never to be seen again.  Finding things is the primary impediment to my work.  It would be less of an impediment if there was some enforced system of organization, in place of Gather Your Science Nuts for the Long Winter Ahead, Children.

It took me three hours to find the parts I needed to assemble a Soxhlet extraction column, this morning.  Three.  Hours.  That's a round bottom flask, the Soxhlet apparatus, a condensing column, a heater, a stand, two clamps, some boiling chips, ten grams of my sample, and some hexane.  That would have taken twenty minutes, tops, in any other lab where like equipment goes with like equipment in drawers and cupboards labelled things like, "stoppers," and "beakers." Oooh.   Aaaah.  Mysterious.  Exotic.

I've been trying to put my finger on why this keeps happening, exactly.  Even I am forced to stash my tools when no one is looking so that I know they'll be there later.  From what I have observed, there are three primary factors:

1 - Language. 
I work with a collection of people for whom English is a second language, at best.  In some cases I would be willing to put money on English being a third or fourth language, which is actually quite impressive.  Because English is often the only common language, this contributes to caches of science stored in secret for the revolution. You have a group of very intelligent people that often cannot communicate effectively with each other.

2 - Time.
Many of the graduate students and post-doctoral candidates that come here are come only a few months.  They cram a cupboard full of samples and glassware, and then disappear across an ocean without cleaning out their hoard.  As a consequence, there are forgotten trinkets and discarded (potentially hazardous) samples in every occupiable storage space.

3 - Culture.
 For many of these students, science is a competition.  They are fighting for the credibility and funding that comes with being published.  They are fighting for their future careers, and to do that, they have to publish first.  At least before the other people who might be duplicating their work, or making it obsolete or irrelevant.

I wonder how many labs are like this.  Le sigh.  Ah well, I still love my job.

Apple Bottom Jeans. Books to Return.

I was on campus on the 28th, to hand in a term paper and return a library book.  The attempt at handing in the paper was complicated by a number of things, most notably the whole department being closed, so I decided to take the book back to the library.  While walking, I began to notice that every ass in sight was glorious.  Impeccable.  Pristine.

This continued the entire way to the library.  Bam.  Ass.  Booty.  Butt.  Cheeks.  Mmmm.  Dayum.

I walked into the library, and the cavalcade of caboose continued all the way to the checkout/dropoff desk.  Girls coming down the stairs had dat ass.  Girls walking by had dat ass.  Hell, even the girl behind the counter had a respectable portion of posterior.

As I approached the counter, she smiled at me and said, "I can take that for you!"  All chipper and bouncy and friendly.  I checked the book for remnants of bookmarks I had used while perusing it for my paper, and handed it over with a grin.

The act of handing that book over and making as if to leave the library triggered some sort of quantum shift in the nature of the ambient derriere.  From the very first step away from that kiosk, suddenly, the badonk had no adonk.  Meh at best, the entire walk back home.

The lesson here, is that Libraries Reward You With Butts.  And when you leave?   They take it away.  Big sad.

Note to self:  Renew Library Card.