Many new things to screw up

So I've finished my first week of postdoc! It was very exciting. I have a fancy name tag on a fancy lanyard now. And a new parking pass.

I started the week off on a good note by driving out to Raleigh for traffic court. THAT was an experience. I've never gone to traffic court before, so I didn't really know what to expect. When I got up to the traffic court floor of the courthouse it was just MAYHEM. Seriously, it took me a good ten minutes just to find the end of the line I was suppossed to be waiting in. It was very difficult because the line wound around the room TWICE. I waited in line for 45 minutes. There is not much that you can do to entertain yourself when you're waiting in line, so I entertained myself by checking out all the fashion disasters surrounding me. I was struck too by the people in line who knew other people in line. I mean, are you at traffic court like every week? I don't think this is the kind of place where you want to be considered a "regular".
When I finally got up to the end of the line, you get to this desk where a woman asked me what I wanted to do with my ticket. I had no idea that I had options. So I said I didn't know, I'd never been here before. She told me to go talk to the ADA that was at the desk. This was a very nice woman who asked me if I wanted the ticket reduced. Sure! So she did. It was still $110 though, only 10 of which reflected the actual FINE. Oh well. It shouldn't cause any problems with my insurance now, which was the major concern.

At work I decided to jump right on in and start doing work. After discussing with my new advisor, he had suggested a project to start on that was similar to one I had been interested in doing that he didn't think was technically possible at the moment. Since I hadn't been doing lab work for a while, I kind of missed it and I was excited to actually DO SOMETHING. In general the week went okay, but yesterday I screwed up Every. Single. Thing. I. Did. Minipreps? Easy, right? Not when you forget to label the tubes. Of course, these were my second minipreps of the same thing, because the day before I had done them and forgotten to save some of the culture for a frozen stock. I did 4 maxipreps but stupidly stupidly used glass tubes when precipitating my DNA and even more stupidly centrifuged these at speeds that are apparently MUCH higher than they're physically able to go. How do I know? One of the tubes shattered in the machine and I lost the whole sample. And had quite a glass-powder mess to clean up. Ran a gel and forgot to load the size standards. Screwed up my tissue culture.

Once I get into it I know I'll be ok, but yesterday was a very frustrating day.

Fortunately I got to do out for drinks after work, because Karrie and Ben were staying with us on their way from Cleveland to some beach in NC. They got to the house right before I did, and we went to the Federal for dinner and beers. They have great sandwiches and the BEST FRIES EVER. As well as a great beer selection, including one of my new favorites: Tuppers Hop Pocket. Mmmmm....hoppy!