A friend and beautiful person inside and out has died. I never knew. She passed back in January. I don’t know the circumstances yet. If anyone knows, please share with me. She left such wonderful comments and made an extra effort to stay in touch with emails full of empathy and hope. I really liked and felt connected to her and am deeply saddened. Her xanga still stands. Her former name was cinnamongirl78. I archived all of her posts and pictures for myself.

Hi , Yes, I’m afraid it’s true. Heidi committed suicide on January 10th. She was dealing with some personal issues and nobody knows exactly why she did it, but it appears that she had been depressed for quite some time before that. It was a huge shock to all of us who knew her, as it happened very suddenly and without warning. I’m very sorry to confirm this…

–Vadim

When you’re worried about losing your job I think most people hope that their coworkers will rally around them. Something along the lines of, an angry mob heading to the boss and demanding that you stay on board. If not, they all walk out in a defiant exodus on your behalf.

I was consoling myself with this unrealistic fantasy anyway.

On Wednesday morning I was early for work. I headed for the in vitro department, the building still empty and quiet. A**** was early too, quietly drinking her tea in our little two person office. The night before I had told her I was worried about being fired. I sat down, she closed the door and asked, “How exactly did it happen?”. I explained the incident, talked about the possibility of going back to Canada and how I felt about it.

A****: “If they fire you, I’ll start looking for a new job.”
Me: “Really?” (in a surprised feeble voice)
A****: “Yes. I wouldn’t be able to quit right away because () is still looking for a job but it would be the last straw.”
Me: “…”**lengthy pause** “Well, it’s good to know that it would bother you if I was gone.”
A****: “Oh yeah. It would be the worst thing that could happen.”
Me: 

Later in the day my boss met with the CEO and all the other study directors where my incident was discussed.

After that I was filled in.

My boss got right to the point and said that I would ok, I’m getting a warning to appease upper management. It means nothing to him and it shouldn’t to me either. According to him, he emphasized my good intentions and positives, then shifted blame and the focus away from me.

I get the feeling that it was close though. Feeling relieved, I enjoyed the mafia-like turn his lecture took.

I first tried to cover you by saying you had an accident or that it slipped your mind that the oven was set higher. But then you took responsibility on to yourself by admitting that you knew the oven was higher. Negligence is worse than an accident. Microbiology is making a big deal out of it, saying they can’t do their tests now. It’s an excuse. We make a lot more money than them and there’s jealousy there. For them, you’re an easy way out, someone to blame. You should have come to me first and not (the maintaince guy). We could have come up with a better excuse. I’ll protect you.  But you have to protect me. Support me as the head of this department. When something goes wrong we need to keep it in our lab. You, A****, Trish, genetox, we’re like family.

It was like Christopher getting a lecture from Tony Soprano after some stupid move. I feel dirty, but also kind of thrilled, to know our little department is a tight unit of co-conspirators ready to circle the wagons at a moments notice. Since the incident I’ve been feeling the love from the other techs. It’s really does feel good to know you’d be missed if you were gone.

If I could rank every day of my life in terms of “badness”, today would be in the top 100. The absolute pinnacle would be the day Mango got run over. Also near the top, the day I yelled at dad, “Fuck off”. Grandma getting cancer. Best friend moving away. Ah. there’s plenty more. What a depressing exercise.

Anyway. Today’s probably up at about 72nd most bad. It’s kind of a follow up to Friday where I broke a special oven at work that’s going to cost $4000 to repair. (I melted a plastic bin into molten goo and then it leaked into the drain, cooled, hardened and ruined everything). Also, it hasn’t been all too long since I spilled crystal violet all over the lab floor, ruining it. Today the CEO (who’s a notorious tightwad caring more about money than people) found out about the oven and had a meeting with my boss, presumably over whether to fire me or not. Adding a cherry of doom to my sundae of displeasure, today, I screwed up two $12000 tests so I’m sure my study director wasn’t in the mood to defend me to the big cheap cheese.

This sucks. I used to be the golden boy there. I worked hard, got a lot done quickly and correctly and am usually cheery and fun to be around. That was the whole reason I was being trusted with these big money tests in the first place. Now I might be canned. Like a sardine. Except less delicious and more demoralizing.

I wish the rest of this album was better because this song is such a timeless jewel.

I wrote a couple of private entries unsuccessfully trying to explain away the restlessness I feel here in Boston.

I read some entries from a year ago and marveled at the optimism and lightheartedness that seeped through. As a full time student with a four-night-a-week job, I was working twice as hard but also having twice as much fun. I reveled in living alone at my apartment. I loved having my girlfriend 1000 miles away. I liked sleeping weird ass hours and sleepwalking through campus disheveled, twitchy and secretly happy. Now with a girlfriend zero miles away I feel shackled into an ill-fitting life. I will NOT marry her. Things are going to crack eventually. They have to. She’s tired of waiting. I don’t want to cave in. I’m not going to ask.

The timely entry of A**** into my life is an exquisite twist of tantalization. A woman seemingly dropped into my lap to cause chaos and turmoil in my heart. Intelligence without condescension. Soft and sympathetic voice. Sensitive and thoughtful. Well read and spiritual. An almost unnatural interest in anything I say. Environmentally aware and musically inclined. Large innocent blue eyes and beautiful natural red hair. Mmmm.

I’ve never met her husband. He barely survived birth due to genetic defects. He has all kinds of problems because of his bad genes. I’ll bet that’s why they haven’t had children. I feel evil for even being infatuated with her. But even though I’m not married I’ve been with Merle longer. And I can sense she has the same feelings about me…

I spent earth day at the zoo. It was a special day because Jane Goodall gave a speech. A concise and inspiring one on how our planet continues to inch towards the ecological tipping point while we wallow in apathy and unsustainable lifestyles. (It wasn’t as, “in-your-face” as I just put it though.) She was pleasant and warm, straightforward yet nuanced and incredibly persuasive. I feel lucky to have seen and heard her.

Yesterday I spent so much money on groceries. Man. Organic food is expensive.

On Thursday I spilled a crystalline chemical all over the tissue culture lab bench and floor. It’s used in gram staining and as an indicator in a bacterial test I do. Crystal violet. I quickly wiped up what was on the counter into a biohazard bag, then dashed out of the lab to the phone (tracking size ten purple footprints as I went). The safety officer said it wasn’t a significant health hazard. Ditto from my study director, other lab techs.

So after work I set to cleaning it up with heavy duty chemicals. Methanol, Acetic Acid, Dispatch. I was scrubbing hard, sweating, breathing heavy, thinking of Cinderella while inhaling massive quantities of fumes. I did as well as I could but really just made a giant purple amorphous floor blob.

On the drive home I was woozy from the fumes. Online I checked the MSDS for crystal violet. Toxic. May cause cancer. Harmful through inhalation. Use self contained breathing apparatus for spills. Causes tumors in mice. Shaking and enraged. I was in terrible mood for the rest of the night. Irreversible damage may have been done to my young and supple body. It was a jolt out of my routine fog though. I daydreamed of getting cancer at 35. What I want to cram into ten years of life.

I’ve cooled down now. But I wish it wasn’t so. I want that fiery motivation back.

The evening isn’t a great time for self-expression. Tedium, obligations and social crushes have ground down my spirit.

Sonic fairies are gently healing with their lovely chiming though. If they could massage my shoulders too then I’d be in heaven.

Bleah

I want to update and check up on my subscriptions (ie, the only people who can read this) properly sometime soon.

I think that’s my new favorite album cover. Not only a Metallica homage but a duck riding lightning. heheheehe. Not much is going on. Living in Boston with Merle. Watched Tsotsi this week-end. Ate at House of Tibet and at a cheap place in Chinatown. Reading The Idiot by Dostoevsky. Listening to a ton of 70s music cause I downloaded Pitchfork’s top 100 greatest albums of the 70s. There’s all kinds of cool shit in there.

My job is tough but I enjoy learning from the fresh challenges and my fun and sexy coworkers. I got somesuper-tasty caramel cookies from Trader Joe’s this week-end too. Gonna eat some. Then turn that lightning duck into a lab coat name tag.

edit: It turned out so incredibly awesome.

I didn’t ingest any caffeine during the last 120 hours or so. It took a stomach flu to shove me into it. The week-end was hellish but now, now, NOW. I have some delicious aromatic dark java steaming in front of me. It’s half empty and my neurons are singing.