'Vacation' Is Over

Tomorrow it's back to work. With a new twist: on first shift! This is something I haven't done in 16 years. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I may need to wash down a B-Complex with some more Amarone before I head in to start at 7am. There are too many people on the day shift, plus the new love of my life, the DXC600i, takes up an enormous amount of space in an already too small lab. So the tension level and stress have been running high. Plus I have never met the Beckman-Coulter rep I'll be supposedly working with. One person said he was nice, one person said he was mean. *sigh*. I think I'll be optimistic and believe the first person. And in Beckman Land, we had explicit directions for what we were supposed to do for 8 hours every day. I have a feeling I'm not going to be getting that tomorrow.

My throat is still sore from yelling at the Wings game today. I guess I can be a sports fan after all. What a frustrating game. They were being nasty: fighting, shoving, hooking... and the Wings' passing was crap. You want to talk about seriously toxic levels of testosterone... The entire first period was completely scoreless, and the Wings got *ALL* the penalties. Apparently the refs turned a blind eye to the Anaheim Ducks' various transgressions. The high point was the beginning of the second period when Andreas Lilja scored. For various vague reasons, I decided last year that he was my favorite Redwing. #3, that's my guy! But after all that, the Ducks tied with 48 seconds to go in the third period, and then scored again in overtime, taking the lead in the series. Bummer. We should have tried harder to go to a game in Anaheim while they were out there last week, and won both times.

I'd better get to bed. I plan to get up at 4 and begin my day with my usual treadmill and bike exercise. Gotta burn off all the margaritas and nachos and every other dietary sin from the last 2 weeks.