Six Hours To Go

According to the Blogger homepage, newly updated blogs as of 8:30am include [sic]:

• NEWS FROM DA-HOOD
  
• hermaphrodites
  
• perfectionists
  and
  
• thai massage
  

For years, the greatest regret of my life is going to be not having updated sooner this morning, that I might have been among such noteworthy company. You cannot see me, but I am weeping. Weeping the hot, bitter tears of a fifteen pound chipmunk. Incidentally, the greatest regret of my life after that disappointment has passed is going to be the crippling dehydration from having wept so much.

Another question from our general drug testing inbox today:

I have collected a sample from a boy who has been living at our home. I cut off, with his permission, one of his thin, twisted dreadlocks. Your instructions indicate unraveling the braid first. Can I send this sample and have you unravel it?

In a word, no. In another, NO. It's fortunate that this inquirer got the boy's permission first, so that they were sure to obtain a large enough sample of hair for testing. But the analysis itself is done in a lab facility, not here, and I don't know that lab techs get paid enough to unravel dreadlocks in addition to the actual drug sleuthing.

Weekend plans include entertaining my long-absent best friend from college, as she takes a break from Microbiology and the Midwest, to visit our homeland. I also managed to watch Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest yesterday and am semi-unimpressed with how the movie ended as a vehicle to the third installment, rather than as a contained story all its own. I'm also disappointed that my supervisor has no idea who David Carradine is but remains untroubled by this fact as he sings the commercial jingle for Almond Joy. And I'm disappointed that Mr. T has not yet returned any of my love letters from 15 years ago (and last week). My life is full of hardship.