bronwynrh | Well, just

fuck me gently with a chainsaw, man.

So that anaerobic hood I mentioned a post or two ago? The one owned by nincompoops? Yeah, so there's a little meter in that hood that tells you (or, is supposed to tell you) how much oxygen is inside. If the meter read 000, that's supposed to mean there's so little oxygen that it's below detection level.

Ok? Ok.

The meter read 000 yesterday morning when I put my cultures in the hood. It read 000 this morning when I checked on the cultures, and it read 000 this afternoon when I went to remove the cultures. I just happened to take a look through the sleeve and found that the fucking glove had come detached from the sleeve. So that nice, sealed barrier that keeps regular air out and the special gas mix in? Null, void, gone, kaput. I don't know when this happened, because the oxygen meter still read 000!!!

So one-third of my experiment is shot all to hell. I have to rely on the other two-thirds to tell me what I need to know - only a couple of the numbers have mysteriously reversed themselves from what I saw a year ago. Are the cultures reversed? Was the result bogus? I have no clue.

I'll have to check the strains with some molecular tricks to confirm who's who and what's what.

I quit. I give up. I'm going to start some cultures and go the hell home to wrap a few more prezzies and edit Arthur's chapter (groan).