One reason why I'm happy I'm leaving research right now...

It's 10pm. Apart from two hours off since dinner, I've been here since 8am.

I'm currently sitting here, waiting for a phone call. Our Liquid Nitrogen tank which we use to cryogenically store cell lines, biological samples and other less stable compounds has run out of liquid nitrogen. This means it's slowly approaching room temperature, which if it does means we lose thousands of dollars worth of samples, not to mention the countless hours (read: months if not years) of time taken not only to prepare those samples or their experiments, but to perform various analysis and calibrations required for each sample batch we receive in order to be able to standardise our experiments.

I've already called the emergency contact for such emergencies, who told me there basically wasn't much he could do. The other contact's phone is off. My lab heads phone is off. So I'm waiting for engineering to call back, but again I doubt there is much they can do.

Worse comes to worse I'll spend the rest of the night transferring samples from the big tank (oh, it's big) to several of the -80 freezers (which is warmer than liquid nitrogen, so may still impact on samples) unless I manage to get access to the upstairs liquid nitrogen tank. Best case scenario I'm told the tank will hold temperature till morning when a new tank of LN2 is supposed to arrive.


Either way, I don't see myself getting home (in particular to bed) for at least another few hours, and I have to be in again at 8am. I guess I could look at this as training for the long hours of Paramedicine, but truth be told even they'd sympathise with a (I don't want to count) hour day.