On the first day of Whinemas, the troll gods sent to me...

a huge lack of motivation.

In anticipation of the whining highlight of the year, the first-ever Whining Carnival at Phantom Scribbler's, I'm celebrating the 12 days of whinemas, beginning with my complete inability to do anything lab-related. I've spent the entire 8.5 hours I've been here today (except for 1.5 hours of "lunch") reading Phantom's archives. Happily, my slackness was rewarded with almost an entire month of unread posts (what on earth was I doing in April??). I also got the joyous news that I probably shouldn't start a big experiment this week because someone's still testing the reagents. I should probably be concerned about ever graduating (especially since housemate L. is already being asked if he's ready by his advisor and he's at the exact same stage as me), but instead my first thought is "yay! now I don't have to do anything this week!" I'm also wondering what exactly my advisor and everyone else in the lab thinks it is that I'm doing. Yesterday, I did actually go through the tables of contents of Nature and Science and open new tabs with papers that sounded vaguely interesting, but the only thing I actually read was about taking photos with bacteria. I always like the tales of other grad students' woes, too (although they're never whiny enough for my taste). Oh, I just found an article on how to magically feel thinner while looking for those links, too. Anyway, the rest of those tabs are still open and getting in the way of my blog-reading, but as long as they're open, I can still look like I'm working and I really will read them at some point... It might be more helpful if I went to some more specialised journals home pages, but they never have cool photographic bacteria so there's even less of a chance that I'll read more than the titles.