It’s freaking hot out. There’s no wind. None at all.

And I’m unhappy.

In most facets of my life, I’m pretty content. I have awesome friends. My social life is incredibly stimulating. Photography keeps me sane, as does music.

But there’s one thing that has the power to override all the happiness I get from those things. Grad school, aka my job. I don’t like that it has such an emotional impact on me, but it does, and I don’t know how to change this.

I set up an experiment this week. Plated out some cells into a 24-well plate on Wednesday. Added fluorescent dye to them yesterday. Today, I was supposed to start a 48-hour time lapse video that would hopefully give me some cell migration data before I left for Alaska.

I had a confluent monolayer of cells (the entire area of each well was covered in cells). I put a big scratch down the middle, so that the cells would have an empty space to migrate into. Washed the cells to get rid of the debris. Put new media back on, and looked at the cells in the microscope.

And the whole fucking monolayer of cells had come loose like a giant flake of sunburnt skin. In every single well out of 24. My experiment was fucked, and I don’t have the heart to set it up again before leaving.

I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. I’m patient to a point, and I’m determined to an even further point, but when this shit consistently puts me in a bad mood on a Friday afternoon when so many other things in my life are going well, it’s just not healthy.

I need a vacation. A break. Alaska can’t come soon enough.

I need to clear my head and think about the implications of all this. And maybe an exit strategy.

Or, maybe things would be all better if somebody bought me this shirt. Oh sense of humor – you always know how to make me feel at least marginally better…