Chris is making dinner right now.

I've been home sick this afternoon, with areally nasty cold. Yesterday was manic - well the whole week has been *feeling* manic, even when I've been sat around in meetings.

But I just have a sense of enormous gratitude that she'll get out in that kitchen, make dinner for me when all I've done is sit around, sleep a little and cough till it hurts.

Colds do odd things to me, and I don't really understand why they affect sleep and emotions as they do. There is a biochemical mechanism at work, through elevated temperature, interferon metabolism etc but I find they profoundly affect how I feel. Monday & Tuesday I was working away doing the 'job that pays the bills' and just felt a complete desperation to get away: resign and leave. Tuesday particularly it was necessary to take myself repeatedly by the psychological collar and give a good shake - to tell myself to get back in that lab, to continue the process I'd started and then later on, to salvage whatever could be saved to generate data for the project (and it was worth saving too).

Yesterday by contrast I was back in my 'own' lab, happy, briskly busy, productive and toward the end of the day, aware that I was gradually succumbing.

Some people may wonder what I'm doing (or have forgotten). I've made cell lines that secrete specific antibodies that recognise part of a natural hormone. The idea is to create a test to measure the hormone that people will use for research, possibly even as a diagnostic aid later, though that's fairly unlikely. The process was started in March/April 2010 when I selected which bits of protein the antibodies should react with, and will hopefully be more-or-less completed before the end of the summer when I'll have a test kit available for sale. At the moment I'm purifying antibody from cell culture fluid that was used to support the growth of antibody producing cells, and that's generally been working well.

The next stage will be to chemically couple the antibodies to certain markers and coat them onto plastic surfaces - then I can find out which ones may work and which may not. Some have done really well, and given surprisingly high yields - I hope they have high affinity, specificity, low non-specific binding and come from cells that grow well. Not too much to ask. ;-)

So anyway, I'm really grateful to have a wife who lets me rest while preparing dinner. At the end of the day, in so many ways, having dinner is what it's all about.