Wetter ‘N Wilder [August 2023]

In August, the best way to describe work was dramatic, but on the home front, despite yet more rain, we did manage to hike during 3 of the 4 weekends.

Tuesday, August 1 – At work for 11 hours straight running two columns at the same time, but still got home at a reasonable hour because I arrived at the office at 7 am.

Wednesday, August 2 – Despite the best-laid plans of mice and men, our purification started going awry even with all hands on deck.

Thursday, August 3 – Forged onward with our run at work and on an unrelated note, my first cherry tomato started turning red.

Friday, August 4 – Somehow made it to the end of the week with product for the client, slides updated up to the minute, a newly packed column for the following week, and a relatively clean lab.

Saturday, August 5 – Went to a park in a neighboring town and opened the chocolate (brownie batter) hummus I picked up at Target.

Sunday, August 6 – Put in a solid hour of pickleball before mentally preparing to repeat the previous week’s schedule.

Monday, August 7 – Started the week too tired to bother asking for dinner while working the late shift.

Tuesday, August 8 – Double column day went more smoothly than last week, which was good.

Wednesday, August 9 – It took ten hours, but we managed to squeeze in both unit operations we were supposed to do last Wednesday instead of delaying one to Thursday.

Thursday, August 10 – Broke out some freezer goat for tomato goat soup for dinner.

 

Mystery sunflower (see last month's post)

Friday, August 11 – Wrapped up take two of our 10 L run much more successfully and cleaned up the lab before leaving for the weekend, having accumulated 16 hours of overtime in two weeks; also harvested my first cherry tomato, so it was a pretty good day.

Saturday, August 12 – Went for a hike and saw swallowtail butterflies and a giant hydrangea bush, then made pizza from scratch for the first time.

Sunday, August 13 – Started Champions of the Force, the last book in Kevin Anderson’s Jedi Academy trilogy (again, not too bad).

Monday, August 14 – Spent the day at work partially recovering from the previous two weeks making summary slides, preparing buffers, and working on freezer inventory.

Tuesday, August 15 – Had rice and beans for lunch.

Wednesday, August 16 – Returned to my standard peanut butter and jam sandwich lunch.

Thursday, August 17 – Tomato harvest began in earnest and my new laptop arrived to replace the 11-year-old laptop that held on through the end of my computational PhD.

Friday, August 18 – Went out drinking with coworkers to celebrate surviving the first half of the month.

Saturday, August 19 – Hiked at a property we hadn’t been to in years and visited the community garden.

Sunday, August 20 – Tried a new hot chicken place for lunch.

Tomatoes (and penguin)

Monday, August 21 – Arrived at work to discover most of management was out with work-acquired Covid, but started round 3 of the 10 L run, minus the initial filtration step, anyway, at the same time as a reaction DOE (design of experiments) for our other project.

Tuesday, August 22 – Continued the run but spent a decent portion of the day hiding in the supply closet working on organizing files.

Wednesday, August 23 – Officially tested positive for Covid along with half the company, after stopping by the office to pick up my laptop, so went home to read the D&D player’s handbook, do laundry, and organize my room.

Thursday, August 24 – Worked from home doing endotoxin research.

Friday, August 25 – Another work from home day.

Saturday, August 26 – MLS returned after the Leagues Cup break, and the Revolution began their downhill slide with a 1-0 L to Montreal.

Sunday, August 27 – Discovered that Pokémon episodes were on Netflix.

Monday, August 28 – Back at work to find out what happened during the rest of the previous week and welcomed a new member to downstream.

Tuesday, August 29 – Enjoyed homegrown tomatoes with horseradish chive cheese for lunch.

Wednesday, August 30 – More labelling shelving in the lab, more inventory updating, and another Revolution loss, this time to the New York Red Bulls.

Ferns

Thursday, August 31 – Meeting day at work, and closed out the month working on batch records for the start of the month to try and make sense of everything that happened.

Wet ‘N Wild [July 2023]

It was a bizarrely wet summer in New England, overall raining a lot but especially on weekends, lining up nicely with my days off now that I’m working. Still managed to get outside when it wasn’t pouring to explore some local trails.

Saturday, July 1 – Started the month with two finishes: Daisy Jones & the Six, which I enjoyed more than I expected, and my LEGO Millenium Falcon, which was exactly as enjoyable as I expected (also went hiking in a neighboring town and listened to the Revolution draw Cincinnati).

Sunday, July 2 – Had visitors in town, so even though it was rainy, we stopped by MIT/Harvard and ended up at Shake Shack for dinner, complete with milkshake.

Monday, July 3 – Quiet day at work before the holiday doing research and making general preparations for a future run.

Tuesday, July 4 – Celebrated Independence Day at Wegmans, then went home to do an escape room in a box (not as immersive as a room, but pretty well put together), and did my roughly biannual (6-monthly) file and photo backup.

Wednesday, July 5 – Back at work to make 20 L of buffer in a barrel.

Thursday, July 6 – Spent some time crawling around in the grass taking pictures of bees in the lavender.

Friday, July 7 – Leftover Olive Garden spaghetti and meatball for dinner.

Saturday, July 8 – Snuck in a hike featuring lots of toads and mushrooms.

Sunday, July 9 – Hot dogs and Long Trail Ale for lunch, then pickleball in the afternoon.

Monday, July 10 – Another long shift at work, including preparing a buffer we needed for the run on the day of the run itself.

 

LEGO Millenium Falcon

Tuesday, July 11 – Put the run on pause to bathe everything in sodium hydroxide to deactivate endotoxin and reorganized our storage room (again).

Wednesday, July 12 – Finally managed to run our chromatography column while preparing to run a filtration for a different project the next day.

Thursday, July 13 – Worked the noon to eight shift to get the filtration done, but at least got dinner.

Friday, July 14 – Finished The Courtship of Princess Leia, my latest Star Wars read, which have all been surprisingly bearable so far.

Saturday, July 15 – Removed my poor fungus-ed yellow pear tomato plants from the bed, walked a nearby rail trail, and watched the Revolution beat DC United 4-0.

Sunday, July 16 – Reread some of The Light Fantastic, went to a Wegmans one last time before it closed, and ate an apricot.

Monday, July 17 – The first groups of cherry tomatoes started making their appearance.

Tuesday, July 18 – Multitasked (#efficiency) by keeping an eye on a column while also writing up endotoxin prevention/removal notes.

Wednesday, July 19 – Packed our first 5 cm column on the AKTA Pilot at work, then at home watched most of the MLS all star game, a moderately depressing 5-0 loss to Arsenal (featuring minimal Carles Gil and no Matt Turner).

Thursday, July 20 – Helped out with take two of a tech transfer run.

Lavender and incoming bee

Friday, July 21 – Continued the tech transfer run, attended Lunch and Learn, organized the lab’s resin collection, and sorted paperwork.

Saturday, July 22 – Went blueberry and raspberry picking, ending up with almost 3 pounds of blueberries and a pound of raspberries.

Sunday, July 23 – Tried a beer inspired by Singapore, a coolpool pale lager that was part of Jack’s Abby’s Lagers of the World series.

Monday, July 24 – Interviewed a potential downstream process (DSP) candidate.

Tuesday, July 25 – Put my 6 years as a computational researcher to use by reorganizing DSP files all day (I finished my PhD with on the order of 10,000 files and I know what/where almost all of them are.).

Wednesday, July 26 – Dropped by Target on the way back from work to buy pants, then caught the majority of the Revolution’s Leagues Cup group stage 5-1 victory over Atlético San Luis.

Thursday, July 27 – Had half of an interesting taro/mochi bun for breakfast.

Friday, July 28 – Final preparations for our first 10 L scale run.

Saturday, July 29 – Made pancakes with blueberry compote for second breakfast, went for a morning hike around a pond to beat afternoon rain, and baked a blueberry lemon pound cake in the night.

Sunday, July 30 – Played pickleball and tried the pound cake.

Blueberries

Blue jay

Monday, July 31 – Discovered a stray sunflower growing in our flower bed and jumped into our first ever full 10 L run for one of our projects.

[June 2023]

I couldn’t come up with a punny title for June, so we’re just going to jump straight into the post. Here’s how I spent the month:

Thursday, June 1: A normal day at work, spent running a chromatography column, eating a peanut butter and jam sandwich, and attending group meeting.

Friday, June 2: Pizza day at work, then made a batch of chocolate pudding at home.

Saturday, June 3: Started a 3000-piece Marvel superhero puzzle, the biggest puzzle I’ve attempted.

Sunday, June 4: Went to the mall and got the mango chicken special for lunch.

Monday, June 5: Started the week with a 10-hour shift waiting for our protein to elute from the column.

Tuesday, June 6: Slightly less long day at work, featuring a “can’t be bothered to pack lunch” lunch of yogurt and chips.

Wednesday, June 7: Finished work on one project at work just in time to start on another project; Marvel superhero puzzle assembly continued.

Thursday, June 8: Finally got a new phone even though my apps still supported my version of Android because my old phone’s 2 GB of memory were really starting to struggle.

Friday, June 9: Snuck out of work a little early after completing preparations for the upcoming week.

Saturday, June 10: Made it through A Storm of Swords, stopped by the library book sale, and watched Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (would recommend).

Roses in bloom

Sunday, June 11: Played pickleball and made my watch think I was having an hour-long heart attack.

Monday, June 12: Laundry day, started a new season of Heartland, and finished the superhero puzzle.

Tuesday, June 13: Second 10-hour shift in a row to start the week (should’ve stuck with computational work – you can’t alt-F4 a chromatography column).

Wednesday, June 14: Spent the entire day testing the endotoxin level of samples.

Thursday, June 15: Data analysis and documentation day. Also ate half a grapefruit.

Friday, June 16: More endotoxin testing, buffer preparation, and back to back Friday afternoon meetings.

Saturday, June 17: Rearranged the furniture in my room to add another bookcase.

Sunday, June 18: Bagels for lunch, pickleball in the afternoon, pesto linguini for dinner, and cookies and cream (Oreo) cupcakes for dessert.

Monday, June 19: Began inventory of the lab stockroom and chemicals to fulfill the first of the 6 S’s.

Tuesday, June 20: Continued inventorying and helped stop a chemical reaction/load a column.

3000-piece superhero puzzle

Wednesday, June 21: With no more inventory to take, attended a meeting about inventory.

Thursday, June 22: Saw a northern mockingbird and its mostly grown baby on my daily walk.

Friday, June 23: Tomatoes reached the second ring of their cages.

Saturday, June 24: Went for a quick hike at the town forest and watched the Revolution take on Toronto, earning a 2-1 victory.

Sunday, June 25: Rewatched Pitch Perfect because acapella.

Monday, June 26: Met some squirrels and rabbits on my walk.

Tuesday, June 27: Summarized a year’s worth of data for one of our projects at work, as per a request from my manager.

Wednesday, June 28: Next item on the organizational agenda: freezer cleanout; plus, started season 19 of Grey’s Anatomy.

Thursday, June 29: Had a red banana with my peanut butter and jam sandwich at lunch.

Friday, June 30: Rearranged the contents of two stockrooms because why not?

Ghost pipe sighted while hiking