The Naked Bench Where A Machine Once Stood.

I feel there should be a chalk outline or something. Although it's not dead...That's just hopeful wishing. And I guess there is an outline of sorts. You can't have something somewhere for 3 years, then expect there not to be a pile of clutter underneath once it's moved.

I never realized how loud the copy machine/printer was at work until this morning. Until now it was overshadowed quite a bit by its big brother. Man it feels weird to have that thing all the way across the lab. And in pieces too. It's nice that they left it all unassembled, without so much as a note or a phone message to tell me it's down, and I don't know, maybe when the ideal time for me to come into work today would have been. As it is I'm here now, with nothing to do, and there will be a lot of twiddling of my thumbs, but without the actual twiddling, because that takes effort. So what am I doing till then? Messing around on the computer. That's right. They actually need to move this thing next to the instrument eventually, because right now there's a lot of walking between building the run, and running the run. But for now, I'm just sitting here, keeping myself company with the click clack of the computer keys.

I think my bench does that too much on slow days, prompting my supervisor to say, "well, when you guys move to a high profile area, you won't be able to do that..." We'll see about that. If I had the work to do, I'd do it dude, but until someone cares enough to leave it for me, thank goodness for the internet. I'm the only one here so early, so really I'm stumped as to who I should even ask to give me menial labor. I used to pester my old manager to find me stuff to do on slow days, and he usually said, "let me think about it," then forgot all about it. Oh, I got the occasional project, but after I had to write the stupid Procedure for our bench...I stopped asking him for things to do. I am a little surprised that micro-manager didn't leave me a note or something. I got a lovely message on my phone during my off week telling me when to come in yesterday. Huh.

Really to make up all my hours I should have come in a half hour earlier. I don't feel too worried though, because yesterday we had a group meeting that went long, and I was here 2 hours longer than I thought I would be, just for that (Plus for our quarterly gift they gave everyone 200 bucks, which is infinitely better than a ruler with a calculator on it). I love meetings where they have food. There were m&m cookies (which in my opinion are the only ones that need to be present on most occasions, certainly any where store bought cookies are aggragating), some sort of little apple pastries (which were delightful), and fruit with chocolate dipping sauce. I think they're starting to get the idea of what pleases the workforce, after taking away all the chocolate in the vending machines. That still ticks me off. If I'm going to be healthy, it'll be because I want to, not because ACME Labs is forcing me to be. And I really do think chocolate is a daily must. Speaking of which, I brought my own, and I think if nothing else is detaining me I could totally take a break right now just for that.