Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Picture a Day - Day 301

Everyone put on your Apoptosis hats and get out your refreshing SDS beverages because it's Kill Cell Day!

I love Kill Cell Day. It's that magical time in lab when everyone comes together to snuff out the cells you've had growing in your incubator for the past two weeks.

The magic starts on Kill Cell Day eve with all the preparations and decorating. While not strictly necessary it has become rather common to cover racks with multi colored eppi tubes and leaving the clear ones for everyday use.

What is tradition is to write in super tiny script on each tube little messages to the Science Gods asking them for a good bounty and a perfect Kill Cell Day.Once those are laid out in order (it's just between you and Martha Stewart if you really have to color code them as I did) it's time to go to sleep with visions of sterological pipettes dancing in your head.

What was that? You dash from your lab bench to find a present from Father Killcellmas, a sterile hood filled with all kinds of goodies.
Everything you could possibly need to finally be rid of those cells that were taking up so much time and energy. There's a bacteria to infect them with and why look at that even some concentrated lysing buffer, a pipetteman to add it all and oh he even included a Sharpie as a lab coat stuffer. You can always use one of those.

It's going to be the best Kill Cell Day ever!
I just hope it doesn't denigrate after a few years thanks to commercialization to nothing more than an excuse to go out and drink til you can't open an incubator and then spend 10% of your gross income on stupid life size replicas of Macrophages and bacteria made out of tinsel.

It'd be awful if Kill Cell Day went the same route as Love Day.

How do you celebrate Kill Cell Day?

1 comment:

valerie said...

That sounds so fun (is that morbid or weird?)! I hope you enjoy your Kill Cell Day! :)