Miss Me?

In case you haven't heard, I am an employee at Mayo Clinic! I've been there for a month and it feels great! It's an odd realization, but I love wearing a lab coat. As soon as I slipped mine on that first day, it felt right :) Yes. I am a nerd. (But maintaining that "cool" nerd status!)

I am a Clinical Lab Tech in the Immunodermatology unit. I check serum and biopsies for various skin/intestinal based diseases NOT including cancer and acne. There are no more than seven people in the lab on a given day and I don't work weekends or holidays!! Pros: I'm learning tons. I'm in a lab. I'm surrounded by my "own" kind. Con: DRAMA central. There was an actual fight yesterday! Yelling and crying, but no fisticuffs. It's pretty ridiculous. People just need to talk less and work more!

My building is located downtown, which I'm super stoked about. I love the atmosphere down there. I can have lunch with the Studios crew, there is a Starbucks and Caribou in the subway, and I get to ride a bus to work! I've listened to many 'This American Life' podcasts on the commutes.

I wasn't really finding the job challenging on a manual level, but yesterday/today we had a minor crisis situation! I feel like I thrive on those days:) We generally do 700-800 samples a day of EMAs. But all 700 of yesterdays samples didn't work. So, we had 1500 samples to do today! That's insane!!! We did 1100 of the samples and are holding over the rest till tomorrow. It was very exciting to challenge ourselves to see how many we could bust out! We could've done more, but we didn't want the powers-to-be to think that we can do that regularly, so we shot (and hit) for mediocre.

Other aspects of life are good! I'm on the search for an apartment or possibly a house. The temp is generally below zero now, but there have been some great walks in the snow. Today, I was walking around downtown after work. It was snowing (without the wind), I was listening to Christmas music and Jamie Lidell, and I had a Truffle Espresso from Starbucks in one hand and Christmas paper in the other. It was a beautiful afternoon!

I can't think of anything exciting right now. Christmas is around the corner and I'm anticipating the marathon of Christmas movies!