2 Day Attention Span

Revising Hastings Pore Water Analysis

Hoods and AC still down in the lab today, and both hood alarms are going off even though the sashes are completely down.  Noticed that if I tilt my head upward, the sound wasn't as awful (aren't ears just wonderful things???).  Rather than lose the day completely, I decided to do some housekeeping.  I washed all the glassware that was waiting for me next to the sink, then decided to rummage around in the fridge for unfinished business I could take care of.  Purged a handful of volumetric flasks from when Marc Tedetti was here (Nov 2011!?) and washed them up.  Also found a handful of liquid PAHs from Marc in the freezer.  Along with some of Ana's samples... to the sink with those!  Then I went back to the fridge, pulled out a big cardboard box... found it contained some more of Ana's samples and some that are apparently mine (from an NT cruise?).  Dumped Ana's and put mine back in the fridge in a smaller box with a mental note to decide whether I need to run them or can just go ahead and dump them as well.  Also came across the box of BIO samples that arrived last December.  These are the results of eluting filters from Jim Farr's instrument with DCM, and my plan was to run them on the AquaLog and on the FLog 3 for lifetimes.  Thought perhaps I'd do that, but then I remembered that I had stolen the noise filter/surge protector from the FLog 3.  Went online and ordered another one... will arrive next week.  Gotta love Amazon Prime!

Also noticed a box marked "Seep C"... Hastings samples.  Should go back and finish them up, but where to pick up?  I had a distant memory of setting up a spreadsheet with sample IDs in it, so I started by searching my Dropbox for "Hastings" to see if I could locate it.  Well, kind of.  Found a great spreadsheet that David Hastings must have sent me in Fall 2012 with lots of info for all of the sites in separate tabs.  Gold!  (Also very weird that I don't even remember receiving it.)  Also found 2 spreadsheets with VERY partial info for samples received in September 2013.  I obviously had great intentions, but quit entering info about running samples after only 2 days.  Two freaking days... REALLY Mary?!?!  Went to the logbook for the ALog and leafed through it and became even more disheartened with my pretty slapdash note-taking.  Went back to the freezer and fridge and compiled a list of sample IDs from the boxes, then back to the ALog logbook to fill in run details.  Discovered good news and bad... good news is that the box of "Seep C" samples in the fridge have apparently all been run (yay!); however, bad news is that those samples were from Fall 2012, which had all been in the freezer.  Why on earth I didn't put the box back in the freezer is beyond me.  Also found a number of boxes from Fall 2012 still need to be run:  DWH01, DSH10, MV02, MV03 and 2/3 of PCB06.  Might as well thaw them and finish up that box.

Got myself some Aquafina in a clean 50mL beaker covered with foil, a 1mL pipette and lined up samples 9 - 17 on the bench to thaw out around 1pm.  Ok... now how exactly did I decide to dilute the samples again?  I remember one version where I was using a separate Pasteur pipette to transfer the sample from the amber bottles to the cuvettes, and then lining up the bottles with the pipettes sticking up out of them like a little patch of grass with a foil "roof" over them.  But no, then I remembered deciding that pouring the sample directly from the bottles into the cuvettes would be best because I tested Aquafina pulled up into pipettes that had been rinsed 3x and there was apparent fluorescence transfer.  So how did I come up with the 1:3 dilution?  Oh, Mary.... Anyway, I decided to pour directly from the sample bottles into the cuvettes and then use the clean 1mL glass pipette to add Aquafina from the beaker.  Pipette stays clean, only touches clean water.  The 1:3 dilution will have to be just a ballpark.  C'est la vie.  Interesting note:  there's 2mL sample in bottle #16 for some reason (all others are ~1mL).  Looks like quite a bit of fluorescence as the EEM is running, too.  Might be a good idea to run PAHs and proteins, do PARAFAC on these somewhere down the road.

Decided that I really, REALLY need to write stuff down.  How about a blog?  Went to blogspot.com and discovered I HAVE a blog.  What... really???? Apparently I did 2 days entries back in 2007.  I guess 2 days is the limit of my attention span.  Sigh...