P-Touch, Tool of the Organized

My very dear friend, Dr. Xina, is moving to St. Louis to head her own lab.  We have known each other for over ten years, and were lab bay-mates back in grad school. We even went and bought a stereo together for our bay. Aw.

I am planning on going out to STL in July to help set up her lab (and hopefully catch a glimpse of Nelly.) I may be a PhDon't, but I am one damn organized person and the labels on my bottles were always impeccable. I'm a little OCD. I cannot help this.

Part of the bargain is that I will get my very own white lab coat with my name embroidered on it. It will be left hanging on the lab coat hook for my annual visits/lab inspections. We hope to have all of the lab members live in fear of me and thus keep things neat and organized--and labeled well. I also get to pick out the P-Touch label maker for the lab!!! Funny thing is, I've never had to pick one out, because everywhere I've worked, there already was one.

It actually took me a couple of hours to figure out the best label maker to get, but I think I'll be happy with this one. It is PC/Mac compatible so I can design the labels on the computer and preview them, there are 8, count 'em, 8 different fonts, and a whole bunch of bells and whistles. Come July, there will be whole lot of fancy label-making going on at Wash U...

Happy Birthday, E$!!!

The little nephew turned 4 (!) last week. He had a party at the Prospect Park Zoo, so I made cupcakes with an animal theme:

I was just waiting for some smartass four year old to tell me that the sprinkles on the zebra cupcakes didn't match (they're dolphins--I didn't have zebra sprinkles), but luckily, they didn't notice.