Day 16: Officially Lab Certified :)

Monday morning started off nice and morning-like. Now, I am someone who prides herself on her promptness. I try very hard to be early to almost everything and very rarely end up late. However, the last week or so at the Museum the lack of official time I am required to come in has led to late mornings. Generally I shoot for 10am, and generally I make it in by 10:15 but there are occasional slip ups. Monday, however, I had a meeting scheduled with the guy in charge of all the labs in the museum at 10am so I really had to get up, get going, and arrive at the museum on time. I was happy to see that given the requirement of 10am I was back to my usual self, showing up at 9:45 and waiting outside his office for 15 minutes. haha. The walkthrough itself took about 45 minutes. He took me through all the different lab areas, pointing out important features as we went and informing me of any and all potential health hazards. Luckily, it seems as though there aren't too many terribly hazardous chemicals in the lab, so there's really only so much damage I could do if something went wrong. He did inform me however, that a specific fume hood was where they do testing on various birds that are sent to them from the government and sometimes other countries that they test for various very deadly viruses and diseases. Sooooo, lets just say I will be staying as far away from that fume hood as possible. No dead bird infections for me, please :)

After walking through the labs (which luckily I was already fairly familiar with since I had already worked with Andrew in them) we just sat and went over additional safety information and logistical stuff. The guy was extremely nice and I actually really enjoyed the 45-minute run-through. After, I ventured back to the 'old infants school' (the name of the building that Andrew's office is in.... weird, I know, but I guess that's what it used to be wayyyy back when!) The rest of the day I worked in his office taking more photos of specimen and organizing some display boxes to determine which specimen would be used for our next collection. In the afternoon Andrew mentioned that next week we will be discussing and deciding what specimen and project I will be heading during my time here for a paper for me to co-publish with him! He seems very excited about the idea and very determined to make sure I get to have something published, so that's exciting. At the end of the day I packed up and headed out after my tasks were complete. I stopped on my way home to grab a few groceries and once I got home I totally crashed. For some reason I was wholly exhausted and I ended up spending most of the night just chillin'. At the end of the night though I decided to give myself a mani/pedi and it turned out super successfully. I put flowers on them and everything!