there are still good things

Fifteen hours of work yesterday. Not successful. Going in today for what is bound to be at least a whole day.

But, I got a postcard from baratron and a family Xmas card in the mail last night. Also M at the lab brought in a garland his wife made: little reindeer embroidered with sciencey best wishes.

failure continues

Today it occurred to me that this whole experiment of doom could be a Cardcaptor Sakura setup in which I'm deliberately being fucked with to cause me to try my hardest and become more awesome thereby. That would be unacceptable. Admittedly my limits are not where I thought they were, but there is no actual reason for this torture. (And I think it's the butterbur that moved the migraine limits, not some stupid endurance training.) Luckily I think it was merely a passing paranoid notion.

No one has any idea why it's going so poorly. We'll try to move forward with the crummy result from this step, but hell if I know whether it'll work. Damned embarrassing if it doesn't, but not actually the last chance for the paper revision, so we'll cope.

There continue to be good things, but right now the best one is I'M NOT IN LAB and I had a chance to buy groceries and shampoo, and do a little laundry tonight.

oh thank fuck

There is a reasonable hypothesis that explains our screwed-up results to date. Not sure how much of the failure to think of it sooner is due to the attitude that the grad students can/should work 16h days and how much is simply that scientists are not all as smart as PI. Will have to try harder to provide own brain power in future, though that is hard when it's all going toward actual execution steps of plan.

So maybe this horrible experience will result in actual learning the way they're supposed to! Sorry for recent brevity and irascibility, all. Please hope with me for improvement.