The Foul Rag and Bone Shop

Monday night, I was at the Ryman with a friend, Bryan, and we were seated in the balcony and I could see a digital clock with a red LED readout behind the curtain. The time was 7:11:10..11..12…13, and counting.
There were no colons, so it looked like this: 71110.  I think it is there for the entertainers. 
But I, being who I am, didn’t realize it was a clock and could not figure out for the life of me what it was counting and why there were over seventy-one thousand of them.  And so, after spending around five minutes thinking way too hard, I looked at Bryan and I asked, “Hey, you see that timer thing over there? I wonder what it’s doing.”  He looked at me, then up at it, then at me, and said, “Umm….I think that’s a clock.”

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other given.
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss:
There never was a bargain better driven.
His heart in me keeps me and him in one;
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own;
I cherish his because in me it bides.
His heart his wound received from my sight;
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For as from me on him his hurt did light,
So still, methought, in me his hurt did smart:
Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss,
My true love hath my heart and I have his.

-Sir Philip Sidney

The next time that someone jokingly says to me that “there’s an app for that,” they’re going to get a slap…for that.   

-A friend

I am working late tonight.  I have another hour or so [I am performing a Western blot and my membranes must block in 3% milk in PBST for an hour before I can apply the primary antibodies overnight (boring)].  I usually do not turn the little switches on the door handles that cause the doors to lock upon shutting, but today, for whatever reason, I did.

And shortly after setting up my transfer apparatus [uses electricity to carry proteins (transfer them) from acrylamide gels to aforementioned membranes)], I, planning ahead, started thinking about mixing up the milk and antibodies and decided that since antibodies enjoy cold weather, I may want a bucket of crushed ice around.

I left the lab without my keys or my phone.  On the way back from the ice machine, I realized what I had done, and immediately screamed loudly in my mind and began to think of the wasted work (The transfer apparatus can run for an hour, give or take a few minutes. Depending on the protein size, if you over-transfer (say, all night), it will leave the gel, go through the membrane, and out into the buffer solution, where it will be lost)].  I then endeavored to MacGyver myself out of the situation somehow and assessed my potential gear: one styrofoam bucket half-filled with crushed ice, 1 polo shirt, 1 pair of blue jeans, 1 pair of running shoes, 1 clicky eraser, 1 UAB ID badge, and assorted cards from my wallet.  I attempted to open the door with my expired military ID card.  This wasn’t going to work, so I wandered down the fluorescent-lit, Wal-Mart-tiled, only-pretending-to-be-sterile corridor looking for other people who’d rather be at home at 10:30 and found no one.

But wait! What is that sound! I hear water running in the girl’s bathroom!  I think I’ll wait outside, but not too close to the door, because it’s late and that would be weird and I don’t want to scare some (probably very small, Asian) woman to death.  I’ll play with my ice for a minute.  …  It’s been more than a minute.  I am strangely filled with rage at the thought that a sink is just running water to mock me (now I realize that I should be asleep).  I think I’ll step inside.  Ah, a running sink..

I then went to the lecture hall on the ground floor and got on the lectern computer to send a desperate email to a co-worker who was probably asleep, when I remembered: the wall phone in the lobby that the janitors talk on all the time!!

Hmm…There are numbers tacked up by the phone…I think I’ll call “Building help.”

…ring…ring….Hello, You’ve reached John Fletcher. I have retired and no longer answer this phone.  For help, please call This Unintelligible Name at whatever-the-number-was.

I’ll call the number…hmm, it calls an office in my building…which is empty..

And so, I called the UAB police, who came (2 of them), and after looking me over and calling back to the office to have them verify that one Benjamin D. Jackson, CMDB graduate trainee does indeed work in room 466 in the Bevill Biomedical Research Building, they let me in right as my kitchen timer was going off.  Lucky.

And so, the timer has 26 more minutes on it, and then I can go home.  :)

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: 

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

.

Í say móre: the just man justices;

Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—

Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

On Saturday evening, I was walking around Freed’s campus and I walked by the echo spot on BK lawn, and at the time there was some church group taking pictures, and one of the people standing there said, “Hey kid! Get in the picture!”  I looked where he was pointing and saw some middle-aged people lined up with their arms around each other and an older guy with a camera, and he glanced up and saw me and said, “Yeah! Come here! You can be somebody down on my wife’s side!”  So, I got in the group picture and put my arm around somebody, and then he got a close-up of me for the church website.  Afterward, we chatted for a bit about where we all were from.  Fun!  :)

Not long ago, I had a friend tell me that she needed a ride home around lunchtime so she could walk her dog and take a shower and do some other stuff, so I said, “Sure, why not?”  Later in the day, I got a message on Facebook from her saying that she left her phone in my car, and since I was going to be finished working much earlier than her that day, could I drive it to her apartment and leave it in her mailbox?  And I said, “Sure, why not?” 
Later, as I was on the way to her apartment with her phone, I thought, “I should probably text her to let her know what I’m about to do with her phone.”  And so, I texted her phone to let her know that I had her phone.  Right after I sent it, I realized that not only was she not going to see it anytime soon, when she did see it, it wasn’t going to be very helpful.  :)