it wasn't just Monday

If I thought yesterday was bad, well, I shouldn't have been so excited for today.

Today I spent 9, count them, 9 hours in lab. If I get the camera to record, the motor controller freezes. If I get the motor controller to start, I can't start the camera without it losing connection with the data acquisition card. The current solution is "jiggle the cables, reboot, and try again" and I wasn't able to get a single run all day where everything worked. This does not bode well for the remaining 17 days.

Directly after a (thankfully) peaceful lunch, I was in lab when I heard my UROP drop something. "Uh-oh," she said. Dylan (the French student who works for another advisor in our lab) and I murmured something like "what?" when my undergrad piped up "Uuuuh, I think this is bad." "Is it on fire?" I asked. Don't forget, I lived in EC, unless its a fire or major chemical spill, not much phases me. "Um, no, but its bad," replied the undergrad. Suddenly you could hear the sounds of glass cracking, as if you dropped a plate, but it didn't stop. Dylan and I got up and went over to the lab bench. A small metal block had dropped onto the table and now the compressed tabletop was fracturing under its own compressive stresses. "Uhoh," I said. "I'll call someone," said Dylan. Thank goodness for his French and in no time the professor whose bench it was appeared to investigate. Luckily everyone was totally ok and very "don't worry, accidents happen" but it was still kind of stressful. For the rest of the day professors kept stopping by to see the mess we made. And it was still cracking more than 6 hrs later when we left lab. Ugh.




So then I went to the Patisserie on my way home and picked up some treats to try to improve my day. My favorite girl wasn't there and they were shorthanded so the line was long. Of course by the time I got to the front of the line I had forgotten what I wanted and had to do a lot of pointing to get my desired pastries, which I always feel bad about because its slow and awkward. At last I retreated to the quiet heights of my apartment and opened up the little bit of cheese I had left from the weekend and unwrapped some bread from the bakery. And then I turned and knocked over the full glass of OJ that I had put on the table. It went right off the side and spilled directly into my row of shoes that I have lined up neatly next to the door. Every single one of the shoes I brought to Paris is now filled with orange juice. And people who know me well will know that (1) I love shoes, (2) I picked only my MOST favorite to bring with me, and (3) I have a crazy sized foot so I can't just buy new ones. Oh, and I'm a cheapskate so I didn't buy paper towels at the grocery store. I used up 3 rolls of toilet paper cleaning up the mess, and I'm not sure the shoes will recover.

I know I said yesterday that I would watch the soccer game with other people, but there is no way I'm leaving my apartment tonight. I'm going to bed.