An odd day here.

Odd as in unusual.

All my staff are out.

One is enjoying Lanzarote.

One is attending his grandfather's funeral.

One is off sick.


So I'm running the lab on my ownsome.

It's kind of nice. All the issues facing me, the need to write procedures, deal with customers, organise peoples projects, review data, all the stuff I forget that will come round to bite me on the bottom. All these things that press in have been swept away in a river of samples that need testing.

It's nice to have a lab day sometimes. To determine to do nothing else and just see how much can be hammered through in a single day.

I'm a little slower than I was 10, or even 5, years ago.

10 years ago I would work on sheer adrenaline and anger. The amount of work that can be processed when driven by focussed anger is astonishing, but it doesn't make for good working relationships. Nor does it help one sleep at night or be nice to people when you get home.

But it has been productive. It's nice to know the old man can wave pipettes effectively if he needs to.

I really appreciate the guys that work for me, though, even if sometimes I wish I was just a plate-jockey, back in the lab running assays all day without having to plan any further than how to fit an impossible amount of work into the next few hours. 'Appy daze' and a colleague would say.

This is my afternoon coffee break post.