Stop! Blogging Time!

Even though I have no Hammer pants to don, nor can I dance as well as that man, I believe I shall convey my thoughts with the same jumpin' rhythmic movements and polyester sheen. Ok, maybe not...

From Guinea Pig, to over-worked researcher, this last weekend has been a trip. It started on Friday morning where I was making the base solutions for taste testing. Dr. Pittman was graciously aiding me with guesstimating how concentrated each of the salty, sweet, sour, and bitter solutions should be for the human pallet. Unfortunately, both he and I were blind to how concentrated these solutions should have been. Lemme tell you that 2 millimolar solution of Quinine (very dilute) still tastes like someone ground up 12 aspirin tablets and coated my tongue and throat with the powder. Retching ensued. Lovely, right? We diluted it far further, and it was tolerable. Still, it was an exciting experience.

Jump to Saturday: Two hours and 30 dilutions later, Stephyn and I left the lab for a bit of well deserved rest. I left town for the weekend with the idea of lounging for a day or so before I jumped into the deep end.

Sunday: Starting at 3pm, Stephyn and I started our pretest procedures. In order for our studies of the various senses to be valid, we had to first establish his sensory capabilities before any deprivations. Since this was our first attempt at any of these tests, we relied mostly on trial and error to tell us if the results were acceptable. The only bad part about said system is that in our case, we met with more error than success. We had to redo the smell test 3 times, and would have done the vision tests twice that day, but at 11pm, we decided to call it quits and hit it again in the morning. Of course, I had to prepare the tests for the morning, so I went to my room, grabbed the chips, and soldiered on. By 3am, I almost fell into the wall, so I figured I had better stop.

All in all, I guess the work is rewarding, but I can only hope that it won't be 10+ hour days from now on. That wouldn't be legit. It has to be legit. Too legit to quit.