As far as the lab goes, things shifted into full-tilt apeshit mode on Friday. Dr. Zivago had come back. We had the following reunion:

He looked kinda pleased to see me, which was nice in itself. That's when things began to fall apart. Dr. Ziv wanted to use his phone to get to the bottom of this Depress-U-Drug scandal. He tried the cordles contraption. It was dead. He kept pressing the button, wondering why the god damned thing didn't work. He put me on technical detail to figure out why the phone had died. I had no leads. Finally we plugged in an old touch-tone phone and he went to town. He got first-hand information about the stuff I'd sent him in e-mail format. It's just his style to get it that way, I think.

He was upset that, technically, none of our research approval applications had been approved (since we don't have a biocontainment room yet). I tried telling him we only needed to get some medical health specs on these two drugs we'd be putting on rat brains and we'd be set: we'd have the approval. Dr. Ziv repeated my multiple tries with the same thing: we didn't have any approved research projects. It'd been 20 years since it had ever happened. He seemed to sympathize with the whole Depress-U-Drug problem, though, since he didn't get really upset or angry.

My next task was to finish a continuation application, the last of the three I'd been doing over the summer. I was replying to the vet pre-review memo (since a campus vet needs to check your application for obvious stuff before it goes to the council of bureaucratic elders). Dr. Ziv came in and wondered why I'd sent the thing in. "You don't send in continuations to the vet; you don't need to." I mentioned that we had to because of university law: Grettle was gone and the powers that be officially had to know. He said the pre-review was horseshit and just to send the application as it was. So I did.

Later he asked if we'd done any surgeries. I told him we couldn't. He asked why. I told him we had no Knock-U-The-Fuk-Out drug; Grettle was supposed to get that shit but didn't. He swore to himself.

In the end, though, we found out some good stuff:

1. Apparently having biohazardous waste just means getting a red barrel, some red trash bags, outlining what cleaning personnel and research personnel should or shouldn't do before or after the waste is collected. Cool, so now I can say I can officially handle biohazardous waste. More resume fodder. Yum.

2. The 3 applications are almost done.

3. Dr. Zivago's secondary interest in doing non-lethal anti-terror research could make for lots of money. Lots of money = happy Daath.

Today (Monday) I just went in, signed a sheet Dr. Ziv left me so I could legally use the Knock-U-The-Fuk-Out drug. That only makes for a few things left that are illegal for me to do.

So, life as almost usual. I say almost usual because yesterday a young man on 20 ounces of refridgerated Frappuccino realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.

Here's Tom with the weather.

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