Turkey Daze

Ready? Set? Moo!
Originally uploaded by littlee.

It’s a grey Wednesday afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving, and lab is still crammed full of people working away. No one has taken advantage of The Boss’ week-long absence to catch a matinee of James Bond or to get a head start on the glacial creep that is holiday travel along the I-95 corridor. In fact, there is no evidence of any kind that we are roughly 24 hours from the biggest, tastiest, nostalgia-inducing meal of the year. Gels are being run, supernatants are being decanted, macrophages are being lifted and replated.

And no one is saying the word. The total lack of voices accentuates the whirring and rattling of the dozens of machines in lab. As I sit at my desk, trying to reconstuct the last six weeks of experiments for entry into my lab notebook, I am starting to get the sensation that I have developed bat-like auditory abilities. I can hear pipet tips being ejected into waste buckets two rooms away. A soft ‘whump’ from down the hall tells me that someone has yet again failed to close the tissue culture incubator all the way, leaving it to leak a constant stream of carbon dioxide. If I strain, I might be able to catch the foul-mouthed mutterings of the person who discovers the neglected incubator, followed by a ‘click’ as they push the door all the way shut. At least I hope I’ll be able to hear this. If not, the guilt of knowing but doing nothing will force me out of my comfy chair and down the hall to close the stupid door myself.

One could attribute the deep silence of my labmates to some sort of steely focus on scientific discovery or a stern resolve to work dutifully while Craig is away. But I know better. This is not about virtuous concentration or polite regard for the needs of others. No, I believe that my labmates and I are in the grip pre-Thanksgiving starvation.

Evidence in support of this hypothesis is as follows. For several days now I have noticed that my coworkers are arriving at the lunch table carrying brown bagged meals that are both decreasing in size and increasing in peculiarity. Though no one will admit it, it is clear that the bonanza that is Thanksgiving dinner, with its overabundance of pie and refrigerator-busting leftovers, has my lab mates in a state of food storage terror. All cooking has ceased. Trips to the supermarket have been halted in an attempt to make room for the onslaught of tuppers sure to arrive on Thursday night.

Tragically, however, it seems that most have overestimated the amount of time it would take them to empty there pantries. With most edible goods gone in a couple of days, folks are now resorting to packets of oatmeal scrounged from the filing cabinet by the water cooler and stale Carr’s water crackers from last months happy hour. Dry cereal, long-expired yogurt and a pickle? Sounds like lunch to me! (Don't laugh - that was yesterday’s offering. Today I had a bagel, pesto and cheese sandwich. It was actually pretty good.)

Now, after a few days of this impromptu fasting, we are all floating around lab like zombies. This morning, attempts to talk about non-Thanksgiving meal-related topics left us discussing the awful weather forecast for tomorrow and the chemical plant explosion up in Massachusetts. Inevitably though, the conversation drifted back and someone asked if anyone had read the New York Times article about all the different ways to make pie crust. The room has been silent ever since as many of us contemplate using our last remaining blood sugar to trap and lock this person in the -80C freezer.

(Several days later…)

I am happy to report that since that bleak Wednesday, things have taken a decided turn for the better.

On Thursday morning I ran in a Turkey Trot through pouring rain, got soaked to the bone and had a fabulous time sploshing through puddles. Two days later was the Cow Chip Cross Country 5K, with clear skies, freakish 55F temperatures and the muddiest trails I’ve ever seen. Amy and I put in a bit of extra effort for our third running of the CCCC5K and fashioned ourselves some sporty Holstein outfits. Much appreciative moo-ing was heard from the crowd lining the trail.

Thanksgiving Day itself was witness to Eva's first encounter with a Jell-O mold. It was accompanied by a 20 lb turkey, dressing, stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, acorn squash, mashed potatoes and rolls.

There were also two bottles of red wine, one bottle of white wine and one of champagne.

There were three of us around the table.

Needless to say, the gnawing hunger of Wednesday is but a distant memory.


It is now Monday night, the week after Thanksgiving and I have just eaten my last of four meals of leftovers. The din of lab has returned to normal, with people yapping away while they transfer tiny amounts of expensive, clear liquid from one place to the next. (That's really all molecular biology is, but the way.) Sadly, I know I only have a few weeks of this jolly comradarie. By the middle of December, the Great Christmas Vacation Fridge Emptying will begin and the silence will decend once again.