More complete update

Not everything is going as horrible as dress shopping.

My current lab is fine.  The people are friendly.  They have a tendency to go towards gossipy-ness-but most things are said light heartily and not spitefully.   I'm working with mice again.  And I'm always kinda surprised that I have no problem with that-I'm rather good about compartmentalizing.  Of course this is really where my morbid humor works well to protect me.  Last Friday I was watching mouth-to-mouse resuscitation. Ok there was no human mouth, but there was an oxygen tank.

This week has been long.  Monday I got in at 9am and left at 9pm, the other woman was actually finishing up until 10:30.  Lunch was at 4:30.  That's what tomorrow looks like too.  Though we are starting earlier and should be a little faster.  This is when I get ansy and want to have more control and planning so that we can be better organized and more efficient.  Today, I got off at 6pm. Again, it was a long experiment, but I think that we could have started earlier than we did.  I long to have more control over my own schedule.   Because frankly, on long days, I would rather arrive very early and get done at a regular time than go so very late.

Friday I am taking off to drive up for a wedding.

Despite the long week, the lab is pretty good.  The research they are doing is directed towards making vaccines for HIV and for para-influenza virus (PIV) that actually kills a good number of infants.  The PIV vaccine is actually in human testing.  It's in adults right now to see side effects, but the problem is that they can't really see if it is a good vaccine in humans without testing children.  Most adults have already experienced this virus and are now immune.  So by the time they get to infants, they will be confident that it is not harmful to humans, but they still will not be positive that it works until they get to un-infected infants.  And of course, here's the real problem, who wants to volunteer their healthy baby to test a vaccine that might offer protection.  But it's exciting, but it appears like a very easy and successful vaccine.