Bone-weary

Going on to my sixth straight hour in the lab. :(

Barely time to sit down, and of cos' no loo breaks (Well, I could have if I really needed to. But that means taking off shoe covers, mask, gloves, walk through the sanitised mile of corridor. Time is a luxury I cannot afford. Besides I've only just got the chance to sit down.), no food or water.

First day of drug dosing and my rats gave me hell. Most of them were fairly docile the past 2 days when I was sham dosing them but somehow they've realised that today's drug day so they've made it a point to scream at the top of their lungs and struggle as hard as they could so I could not inject properly. :( Now, there was no way they can get out of the injection and the more they squirm (very forcefully), the more it'll hurt for them (and for me too. I don't particularly enjoy inflicting this on them, you know.) cos I'd have to repeatedly remove and insert the needle until I can inject all of the individually allocated drug.
And since there's a timing for my injections, I can't afford to take too long and I get really stressed. A few times I had to restrain myself from shouting and shaking the fat old rodents or tightening my grip on their abdomens.

To top the above off, I've not yet had a good night's sleep this week. Went out yesterday to meet up with a friend of a friend of Christian who's on transit in Singapore for a night. She's really nice to hang out with. So that was ok. Tuesday night I got home later than I'd have liked to. Was invited to a 'Discovery - Travel & Living' promo event at Rochester Park (very near my workplace, which was why I said ok in the first place). Santino Rice (from Project Runway season 2, if you guys watch it) was the guest star. The friend who had asked me to go couldn't bear to leave the restaurant. (Possibly cos' of the cute waitress.) There was nothing going on after the guest star had said his piece. And of cos' after I had my fill of the finger food, hee, which was quite good, by the way. Ah, I've digressed.

Back to my whining. Finally, the 'icing on the cake' comes in the form of my left shoulder blade unaturally, incessantly aching for the past couple of days.

Morale of the story is, I feel like crap. Sigh.

Next week I'm going to start another experiment that would have to be run concurrently with this one. (They'd both take about 5 weeks to complete!) And those rats have never been scruffed or injected, ever. I can just imagine how much they'd like it. Just thinking about it sends my heart rocketing into my throat. Also, it'll probably take longer than 6 hours (everyday!). Hell on earth, here I come... *sniffles*

Oh ya, and boss had said to me as we were discussing my experiments on Mon that they'll probably not work, so don't get my hopes up, though it'll be interesting to see the results. So I asked him why we are using these tests anyway and his reply was, 'Well, we had funds to spare then, so we got the kits and then we hired you, so...'
'Gee, thanks boss. You're very encouraging, you know?' I said to him. At which he laughed and said, 'Ya, I know, I'm such a morale boaster.'

Work doesn't get any better than this...