Wine and cheese make everything better.

Laurent hard at work.
Originally uploaded by littlee.

Today was a perfect spring day in New Haven. Today was also the first perfect spring day to fall on a weekend, the other two periods of warm air and bright blue skies materializing cruelly in the middle of the work week. The sidewalks on Chapel Street were packed with people wandering aimlessly from one store front to the next - never going inside for fear of missing even a moment of sunshine. The green in the center of town was well-populated with undergrads trying to play frisbee. I say only 'trying' because on April 9th, "The Green" is still a misnomer. Though it has warmed up considerably over the past week, the grass has only just reached the soft peach fuzz stage, and that is only when you are looking at it from an angle or from a distance. Up close it reveals itself to be wet, sandy mud and the frisky Yalies dashing around after frisbees spent must of their time slipping in the muck and picking gravel out of their flip flops.

Knowing that there will be plenty of sunshine in the days to come, I did what I normally do on Saturday. I went to lab. (Please, this is not a cry for sympathy, I spent most of the morning running around East Rock and lolling about in front of Lulu's, drinking coffee and gabbing.)

The post-it To Do lists on my desk in lab were full of cryptic instructions left the night before. Many of the tasks were merely small things I'd put off all week, but there was one big experiment that would keep my bustling until well past dinner time. With internet-streaming KQED entertaining me, I set up at my bench for the long haul of bacteria lysing, yeast streaking, gel pouring and general science wackiness.

I started messing up almost immediately. Reaching for a glass pipet on the shelf over my bench, my elbow nudged my ice bucket, sending the bucket, the ice, and all my tiny, ordered samples skittering across the floor. Minutes later, ice and samples restored, I edged just a little too close to my lit bunsen burner and put a nice black singe hole through the sleeve of my lab coat. Lost of few arm hairs, but nothing serious.

I took these set backs in stride, too happy about the sun pouring in through my window and the fact that my lab was empty and therefore, devoid of witnesses to my extensive coordination problems. It was when, an hour or so later, I poured the wrong part of my sample down the drain that I started to get a little peevish. By "wrong", I mean that I wanted the part that was now in a small splat of liquid in the sink. I did NOT want the gooey white bits still sticking to the side of my tube. (Sometimes you want the liquid, sometimes you want the gooey stuff. Depends on the protocol. Evidently four years of graduate school isn't long enough to get it right every time. Rats.)

In a moment of frustration mixed with pragmatism, I decided that The Big Experiment would not be happening today. It seems I could not be trusted to do molecular biology and it was time to step away from the bench. The urgency to do this became all the more clear when, while cleaning up the considerable mess I'd made throughout the afternoon, I managed to drop and smash to pieces one flask of sterile tubes and stub my toe hard not once but twice on the leg of my bench stool.

"Stop. Leave. Now." Fortunately, the lab was still sparsely populated and no one was nearby to listen as I began talking to myself in incoherent sentence fragments.

After completing a new set of To Do post-its (the contents of which looked depressingly similar to the ones I'd made the night before) I packed up my computer and hit the road. I festered as I drove away, knowing that for all I'd accomplished, I might as well have spent the afternoon picking gravel out of my toes and chasing a frisbee on the The Green.

The good news is that I was heading towards the apartment of Laurent, a postdoc in my lab as well as the boyfriend of Annie, and most importantly, the guy who was cooking me dinner this evening. When I arrived, before I could speak even a word of complaint about my failure of a day, I found myself holding a glass of wine and munching on tangy green olives. Soon to follow was tasty salmon with mushrooms and rice. A baby arugula salad came next (as it should, AFTER the entre) and finally, in keeping with the cuisine of Laurent's native country of France, we settled into a cheese course with more wine.

Thank God for French postdocs. In his miniscule kitchen, working by the light of a tiny lamp, Laurent had whipped up a simple but totally yummy feast. He and Annie had sedated me with food and mindless, happy conversation and by the time I left, I didn't care at all that I'd stayed two hours longer than I intended. Laundry and grocery shopping will have to wait until tomorrow. As will my taxes. Taxes. Ugh. I'd rather go break stuff and light myself on fire in lab.

To bed to bed...