Making work for idle hands

I had last week off work, so I'm waiting for cells to grow today and I'm attending a conference tomorrow so won't be in the lab. When I say attending a conference tomorrow, that means I will be sticking name stickers on people. It always happens. I am reliable, sensible, dependable and I always I have a pen - so I usually find myself running errands. I like to be busy and I like to work - to the extent I find it difficult to stop. I am the sort of person that you'll find in the kitchen at parties washing up.

I'm also trying to write a paper at the moment too, which is one of my least favorite jobs in the world. I have found, to be honest, that the further I get in my career the more time I spend at my desk. I don't enjoy being at my desk. It's covered in chocolate wrappers and diet cola cans for a start, but quite simply I don't like sitting down. I have the concentration span of a goldfish and if I was a an animal, I'd probably be a hummingbird - small, fast and high on sugar all the time.

My desk drawers are also full of random objects. Apart from the cola cans, I cultivate an unnatural and slightly distrubing aura of tidiness - in that I sweep the desk surface into a desk drawer every so often. I have tidy surfaces and cupboards bursting at the seams. It's the same at home. I vowed I'd never have the drawers of random stuff my parents have, but it must be genetic. One day I will clean out my wardrobe and then I can go to Narnia like the book promised.

Sometimes, like today however, that organised chaos pays off. I needed a card to send to friend who's been a bit under the weather and it really needed to go in the post ASAP. A quick hunt through my desk drawers yielded the following treasures:



The pompoms and the foam sheets have been in there since Easter last year and I bought the googly eyes in to send to somebody and never got round to it. The 6 cm plastic dish was on my desk in the lab, where I was using it to store paperclips.

Ho hum... I have thirty minutes before I have a hot date with a mass spectrometer, so this'll have to be quick...

Right. Select yellow foam sheet - draw round dish.



Cut out circle, then check it fits in the dish.



Select pompoms that fit in the dish and glue them to the foam circle.



Add googly eyes :)



And then the messages...



...and we're done.



Seal the plate with tape and that's it. I probably shouldn't stick it in the incubator though :)