Thursday, January 3, 2008

A Christmas Story (Part I)

I haven’t posted as frequently as I envisioned in my head. I have no excuses. Now, I am used to being *very* busy, but I had always managed to fit everything in, plus. Currently I cannot say that I am so preoccupied with work, social things, etc that I have no time to post. I am just lazy. I don’t know if it’s b/c of everything that’s happened in the last 6 months that has completely stripped me of doing anything then just minimally functioning or that I no longer have an ounce of motivation (probably a combination of both I imagine). I manage to find a way to utilize all my new “free” time by doing absolutely nothing. It’s quite easy actually. Anyways, that kind of set the tone for the holiday season. Summing up, I was just bah humbug.

Usually by Dec 1st, I have orchestrated a Christmas cookie party, festively decorated the home, blasted the holiday tunes, and sent out the Christmas cards way in advance of any US postal service backlog. This year however, to no surprise to those who actually read the first paragraph, I did nothing. It didn’t help that we were getting 70 degree weather here in the Carolinas, so to someone used to 3 ft of cold powdery stuff…wearing tank tops, flip flops, and basking in the sun outside didn’t have me anxiously waiting for Santa Clause (not that I am at all complaining about the glorious weather!) To all my faithful friends who didn’t receive lovely glittery cards, I am sorry but I just couldn’t get myself to do it (nothing personal and I hope you don’t remove me from your own lists next year). I did manage to set up a tiny tree, but that took me about three weeks to fully undertake. I also participated in the departmental holiday dessert bake-off which is the closest thing to Christmasy that I can claim. This leads me into my story of sweet disaster…

In lieu of the usual Christmas cookie party, I participated in the lab dessert contest for our departmental holiday party. Now this is a big deal, as the boss made sure to point out this fact during lab meeting. My self, along with two other women in the lab decided to take on this lofty task of creating the best holiday dessert the department has ever seen. After tossing around a number of ideas, we decided on reconstructing a three-dimensional version of Frosty the Snowman. Most sane people would realize this is next to impossible, but alas, we are scientists, nothing is impossible. Now, I have to let you know that we were doing this all free-hand, no molds, no recipes, just our pure creative geniuses.

We put Frosty together, frosted and decorated him. He ends up being about 1.5-2 feet high, we inserted a 50 mL pipette down the center for structural stability. His midsection was a little heavy and leaned slightly forward, as if he was on roids with a barrel chest, but nothing too concerning (at least at the time). Everything was going exceedingly well; a little too well. The night was still “young” in fact. Since we all take the bus to work in the morning, we decided to drive Frosty to the lab where he would be stored until he needed to be transported yet again to the Christmas party. We all had our reservations about the moving him part, but we had no choice. We took many pictures beforehand to document how awesome he looked in case something happened.



Frosty (before)

The rest is a tragic story. Frosty didn’t survive the car trip to the lab. He had severe structural damage that even 5 tubs of Betty Crocker’s frosting could not fix at 12 am in the morning. I was so disappointed. We, with the advice of the others in the lab the next day, spun him off as Frosty the half-melted snowman due to the unseasonably warm weather at the time. We fashioned a paper sun and positioned it next to our leaning tower of Frosty right next to his “before” picture. Although, not as aesthetically pleasing as he once was, Frosty sure was delicious. We even tied with another lab for “most creative” dessert, but honestly, the fertilization lab we tied with always does the egg and sperm theme, so to tie with them for most creative was a let-down.



Frosty, the half-melted snowman

I guess if you label something as Part I, you should probably have a Part II… I promise the rest of the Christmas series is not a modern rendition of "A Christmas Carol."

3 comments:

LabTech said...

Frosty looks GREAT!! I'm so impressed. I'm sorry you had such a blah Christmas. I'm hoping to post the Chrismtas at the Commune story soon. Like you, I had good intentions of posting more often than I am...but it's the thought that counts, right?!?

Dr. Who said...

I guess if we could telepathically read each others thoughts, then yes (;

Lil Kate said...

Frosty looks awesome! Half-melted or otherwise. :) Thanks for the update. I, too, am slow in posting, so don't feel too bad. We can all procrastinate together!! :)