icy

today was another very busy day at the lab. i was doing about five different things at once. some of them worked, some of them didn't. some i won't know for a couple of weeks if they worked or not. my day started out with erik being pleasantly and unusually cooperative before daycare. i've been making him hold my hand going down the stairs there lately because they've been wet from all of the snow and i've been worried he might slip and fall. sadly today i was the one who slipped and fell, and pulled poor erik down with me! luckily neither of us got hurt ... we both landed on our bums! i felt terrible though for making him fall. aside with the trouble with some of my experiments today, the other bad thing that happened was that i got bitched at by a certain stomme kutwijf who will remain nameless because i happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. apparently someone had slipped and fell (i see a theme today) on some water that was in front of one of our lab's -80 freezers. granted I had been in that freezer twice this morning, each a quick visit, but i suppose some ice could have dropped from the door onto the floor, but i really didn't deserve to be spoken to like that. i feel terrible that someone got hurt, but in a room like that (the freezer farm) with so many freezers in a small enclosed space, it's inevitable that water will get on the floor from time to time. i'll be more mindful of that in the future and clean up any messes immediately, but i also think that people just need to assume that the floor in there could be slippery and take the proper precautions. as i found out just this morning, slippery wet floors can cause you to fall! only i didn't feel the need to curse at someone for my bad luck and clumsiness. hopefully we'll be getting some non-slip mats to put in there, and maybe that will alleviate the problem.

as per my entry yesterday, i took my little camera to the lab today, but only had time to take a couple of shots. the ice on the monongahela river was really pretty and interesting to look at today, all crackly.



it was hard to get a really good picture from inside the lab because of the reflection in the windows, but i waited until it got a little darker to take another one and kind of like how the lab reflection looks on the photo of downtown pittsburgh.




this evening after work/lab, we went down to costco to order erik's birthday cake. we let him choose what he wanted, and i think peter was pretty relieved that it wasn't pink and purple with princesses, butterflies, and unicorns on it. instead he picked a colorful caterpillar on white icing, on top of a chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling. sounds yummy! i'm still trying to motivate to clean the house. we got some things done to that end, but still have a long way to do. as for now, it's almost 1:30am and i need to be getting to bed!