It seems I only blog while trying to work at LBL now. This is probably because I am alone, frustrated, and cut off from normal forms of communication by the lack of cellphone reception.
Today's reasons why it's 9 pm and I haven't collected any usable data:
1. The tip doesn't sit in the holder properly. Imagine trying to maneuver a very delicate chip, less than 2 mm wide, into a shallow slot with a pair of tweezers. If you're off by, say, a tenth of a millimeter, you can't use the instrument.
2. The glue I was using to hold my samples down leached gunk out onto the samples, wrecking the data I took all afternoon before noticing that there was a problem. Now I'm trying to hold slippery polyethylene in an even more slippery Teflon holder. Getting the samples to stay put took half an hour and most of my short supply of patience.
3. I've had to clean the tip, the Teflon sample holder, the samples, you name it. "Cleaning," incidentally, takes up to 30 minutes per item, and provides a fantastic opportunity to break the tip.
So it's 9:16, I haven't finished my homework for tomorrow, and if I had any sense at all, I would go home. Instead I'm chilling in an empty room in an empty building in an empty national laboratory, trying to muster enough patience to have one more go at sliding the ridiculously small and fragile tip (which I spent all of last Thursday making) into the ridiculously small and poorly-carved slot.
Yuppie moment of the week: I joined a wine club on Sunday. I know, it's a little ridiculous, just like the rest of my life. But their wine is really, really good...maybe I should start bringing it with me when I come up here :-)