As I mentioned earlier Thursday was moving day for the laboratory. Against all odds, it actually went exceedingly well. We were prepared when the movers got to our old lab, and I get the impression that if movers gave awards for easy moves, we would be finalists. Our chemicals made it over on Wednesday, and the rest of our stuff arrived on Thursday. By Friday, we we had emptied all our crates, and by the end of the day, one of my research assistants found an alternative use, as you can see below.
There are still a couple of things we have to do before we can begin to conduct science again, but with any luck we’ll be up and running by Wednesday.
There were two odd events that occurred during the run up to the move that give, for better or worse, an insight as to how my mind works. Before dealing with the initial incident, let me digress. I attended a college that provided maid service once/week where they would straighten up, change our sheets, and make sure that we didn’t destroy the room. “Casa de Rosen” was, I’ve been told, such an ungodly mess that I had to bribe the maid to enter my room. It is safe to say that in general, I am/was considered to be somewhat of a slob.
But that is not an entirely true characterization. I will concede that I can be quite messy, but eventually even I can no longer stand it. I react by initiating what can only be called a “cleaning frenzy” that results in my places becoming habitable. Parenthetically, I will add that it is safe to say that my threshold for action is somewhat higher than that of my wife, but over the years I have begun to recognize the subtle signs she gives me and get myself in gear.
So back to the move. By Tuesday I had spent the the previous 4 days finishing all the packing and purging and cleaning that I could do in advance of the movers. At the end of the day, I decided that it would be a good idea to clean up my desktop. The desktop on my computer. I’ll repeat that: The desktop on my computer.
What on earth was I thinking? Was cleaning my desktop going to make my computer lighter? Was purging old files going to help consolidate things so there would be less to pack? Obviously, I had completely been consumed by the cleaning fever, and simply had to make my desktop spotless.
The other odd interaction happened at lunch on Wednesday. I met with my longtime colleague, Al. He was the foolish man who initially hired me as a post-doc for his lab, and we have been collaborating and sharing lab space since that time. He asked me whether I was a little sentimental about leaving the lab space that we had occupied since 1982. I remarked that I tended not to get too sentimental about buildings (I’ve blogged about this before). What he next said, drew me up short: “I was asking because you’ve spent half your life in that space.”
Yikes. I could quibble that 26 years in one space is only 49.056% of my life, but the point is taken.
For reference, I am putting in some pictures of our space taken before we moved in. Once we’re fully ensconsed this week, I will include some more.
