1. TOL & TOG were just round the corner from home tonight for a show, so via Shenanigans involving me forgetting that Hammersmith isn't actually a single station they stood around in the sun with me for a bit before they vanished in to show (which twitter suggests was as good as I'd expect from Penn & Teller) and I got hugs and sunshine and stern looks about eating enough and bullshit about science and a brief discussion about the point of painting, and having left the lab it was fairly easy to pick up dinner on the way back in. (And on the way out I stopped off at one of my ridiculous corner shops and acquired stacks and stacks of emergency chocolate.) (And while on the topic of polymer chemistry and feeling vaguely contrite about the extent to which these people look after me, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sebastienne talked sense at me and I continue to feel better.)
2. We are tonight providing accommodation, as we occasionally do, for waifs & strays with appointments at Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic. Because, fundamentally, we're a trans-positive household a fifteen-minute walk from same, most of which involves walking through a rather nice cemetery, and consequently this is a concrete thing we can do that is helpful.
3. My supervisor appears to continue genuinely pleased with my labwork: we're trying a different introduction system with the mass spec this time around and the ion beam is stable and as of 11.30pm, every single data point from the past two days is usable (where with the introduction system I had been using, I was getting maaaaybe 50% usable data). Or, to put it another way, my chemistry has been fine and my tuning the machine up has been fine (she's popped in to check a couple of times while I was elsewhere, which I know about because she's told me after the fact that she had a play around and didn't change anything because it was spot on) (though I should really have retuned before putting tonight's overnight run on but if I had I'd've ended up locked into the building and that is no-one's idea of fun, and in any case the machine is pretty much rock-solid -- I've lost a tiny bit of sensitivity but nothing that should be a problem, and I'll tweak it back up when I get in tomorrow), it's just the ways in which these are fundamentally finicky beasts that are not actually under my control. Also, supervisor tends to rise early, so me leaving work at midnight means that when she gets in at 7am she can swing by the basement, have a quick poke, and make sure everything's where it should be, and set another thing going if necessary; and then by the time I rock up around 10am it's ready for me to have a poke again.
( lots! )
sebastienne talked sense at me and I continue to feel better.)2. We are tonight providing accommodation, as we occasionally do, for waifs & strays with appointments at Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic. Because, fundamentally, we're a trans-positive household a fifteen-minute walk from same, most of which involves walking through a rather nice cemetery, and consequently this is a concrete thing we can do that is helpful.
3. My supervisor appears to continue genuinely pleased with my labwork: we're trying a different introduction system with the mass spec this time around and the ion beam is stable and as of 11.30pm, every single data point from the past two days is usable (where with the introduction system I had been using, I was getting maaaaybe 50% usable data). Or, to put it another way, my chemistry has been fine and my tuning the machine up has been fine (she's popped in to check a couple of times while I was elsewhere, which I know about because she's told me after the fact that she had a play around and didn't change anything because it was spot on) (though I should really have retuned before putting tonight's overnight run on but if I had I'd've ended up locked into the building and that is no-one's idea of fun, and in any case the machine is pretty much rock-solid -- I've lost a tiny bit of sensitivity but nothing that should be a problem, and I'll tweak it back up when I get in tomorrow), it's just the ways in which these are fundamentally finicky beasts that are not actually under my control. Also, supervisor tends to rise early, so me leaving work at midnight means that when she gets in at 7am she can swing by the basement, have a quick poke, and make sure everything's where it should be, and set another thing going if necessary; and then by the time I rock up around 10am it's ready for me to have a poke again.
( lots! )