Pirates?

It's about time for me to get back to work.

But before I do, I'd just like to note that today's Opening Day for the Pirates, playing at Milwaukee. While I probably could have hooked up some kind of "me getting to Wisconsin", I've got group meeting in two weeks to prepare for, I've got no car, and I really probably should just be at Northwestern. Particularly after spending most of yesterday waiting for the White Sox/Indians game to come back from rain delay.

But that's cool. I'll just check out the Brewers/Pirates series in late July or something.

The problem with today is that the game starts at 1:05 Central, which is five minutes after an appointment I've got with the Workers Comp people. Turns out I've kind of got to get a blood test to determine whether or not I've got mercury poisoning. It seems that when you stumble upon some sealed NMR tubes of a certain chemical (a very common NMR standard for mercury in the sense that it's remarkably good in that purpose, and essential to the research considering our group's MerR work) in the lab, and then are six feet away when one is broken, you've got to go in, even if you've bolted from the room. It was stored safely, and posed no real threat to anyone as it was, and it was simply in the act of disposing it that a tube cracked. It's almost certainly nothing, as the ventilation kicks around here and no one actually came into contact with it, but it's something we've got to get checked out, and I'd like the peace of mind of knowing that it's nothing.

In a related note, here is a very well constructed telling of the tragic Karen Wetterhahn story. I'm not familiar with Wetterhahn's work, and from all accounts I've heard she was a world-class chemist, and hers is a story that should stand out to any student of science as the reminder that with the rewarding bits comes quite a lot of risk.