A day of ups and downs.

I’ll be a day late getting some data to a customer. In the cosmic scheme of things, 24-hours isn’t much time, and we did put this together on very short notice for them. I ran my ass off getting things together. They’re very grateful that we’re doing this at all for them. Still and all, though, it’s frustrating. I wanted to make get the data to them today, and I didn’t make it. To me this is a failure.

On the positive side, we tried a new assay today that none of us had ever performed and it turned out perfectly. Got a perfect curve over a range of serial dilutions and got the assay to less than 4% variance from the standard. The literature says up to a 10% variance is acceptable.

Every day and everything is a learning experience. Some are obvious, like learning a new assay. Sometimes you don’t realize that you learned something. Like slamming your fingers in a door. You don’t realize it while you’re hopping up and down, but you just learned something. It’s a constant process. Even the most mundane things are part of the constant process of assimilation of information. We just try to avoid the painful lessons.

The wife returns home tonight. She’ll probably be pleasant, having been away for a day, but there’s no guarantee. One never knows.

People here are bailing right and left, leaving early to go to the county fair. Already had the fair in the county I live in. Not up for it tonight, anyway. The kids got some movie they want to watch tonight, something called “The Rookie”. At least it’s not another Air Bud movie. I’m beginning to develop a thing against Golden Retrievers. Anyway, fine with me. I’ll kick back and watch the movie with them. And await the storm which will blow in around 9:30 or so with the arrival of the wife. If the markets haven’t closed yet, consider buying stock in liquors before I head out the door this afternoon.

Almost got a nice tenor sax for a good price last night, but some asshole with software beat me out at the very end. I watched it happen. I just want a nice horn for my kid and this asshole is going to resell the damn thing for twice the price. Got beat out in an auction for a piece of art the other day, too. I knew all along that I would, but there’s always this little voice saying, “Maybe, just maybe you’ll get it”. More of that self-delusion I mentioned earlier.

More on the art later. Maybe.

I don’t want to be the only fool who didn’t leave early today.