Almost three months have gone by since we moved our lab from OU to KSU. I wish I had been able to compose a post about it sooner, but let’s just say that life has been tremendously busy ever since. Those who follow my blog might remember that our home move was a saga of epic proportions. As a consequence, I lost many nights of sleep worrying about the lab move because it’s a lot more complex, and too many things can go wrong. One of the major differences between a home move and a lab move, is a higher sense of urgency in the latter. When you move your home, you can always leave boxes hanging around, and set up just the basics: a place to sleep, a place to cook, a place to sit down and collapse at the end of the day. But, a lab is a full entity of sorts. The whole thing needs to be put in place as quickly as possible because: no lab, no work. No work, no progress. We anticipated a lag of a couple of weeks, and that’s more or less what happened. A big thanks goes to a company called TLM (Transportation Logistic Management), that moved all our stuff without breaking or losing anything! Plus, their whole crew was a pleasure to interact with, very nice group of men and women working hard and in great spirits. If you can believe it, they went through the trouble of wrapping up our large test tubes individually. And we have more than 500 of these!
One of the most stressful things about a lab move is that quick decisions need to be made on the spot. For instance, this “little” piece of equipment, called a French press, weighs a ton (well, almost a ton) and obviously once it sits on a spot, it better be its permanent home! 😉
Of all things that were moved, perhaps the most important was our – 70 C freezer. It holds all our bacterial strains, as well as very sensitive reagents. TLM had a nice strategy to deal with it: they packed the whole lab over a couple of days, and closed the truck. Next morning, at 5am they came to get the freezer, loading it just before starting the 312-mile drive. Six hours later, the freezer would be unloaded first and quickly plugged. If you don’t open the door, the temperature will stay cold enough to preserve its precious contents. Well, to add a little excitement to the adventure, once the freezer was unloaded, we realized that the plug and the outlet did not match! Frantic calls were made to electricians on campus, and they came to the rescue. Thanks to their efficiency, our freezer was plugged back when the temperature had risen only to – 44 C. Big sigh of relief!
Another very tricky piece of equipment to move was our double water-distiller. All parts are made of glass, connections are delicate and convoluted. I bet our grad student was wondering if it would ever be back in working condition…;-)
But it had a happy ending!
The huge baby shown below is a cell culture hood. We use it to work with mammalian cells, much more fragile and prone to contamination than bacteria. This machine has a special laminar flow of air that isolates the environment inside the hood. Plus, it also holds a germicidal UV lamp to sterilize that environment. It weighs a lot more than a ton, and it required a special lift to have its legs installed in place.
But once it is all said and done, setting up a new lab is a great experience!
Drawers are labeled… and stuff is stored inside….
New, clean bottles are labeled, solutions prepared, sterilized and stored, ready for use…
Chemicals are organized, benches get ready for experiments….
And we are finally back, cranking up some data! Here is a shot of our SLM Fluorometer 8100, a Rolls Royce of a machine, that needs to be operated in a dark room. It got a nice upgrade before our move, and it will be a major player in our projects in the near and not so near future.
I hope you enjoyed the glimpse on what a lab move involves. I can tell that we intend to retire here (not anytime soon, mind you!), because another move would just about kill us! 😉 Seriously, though, we are thrilled to join KSU and feeling energized and ready for this next phase in our professional life.
If you want to know a little more about our research, visit our webpage at KSU by clicking here….
ONE YEAR AGO: Honey-Oat Pain de Mie
TWO YEARS AGO: Carrot and Leek Soup
THREE YEARS AGO: Chicken Parmiggiana 101
Bewitching Kitchen 
The pictures of your lab remind me of mine during my master’s and afterwards when I worked as a lab tech/research assistant etc. Fun times though, thankfully, I never had to do more than move myself from one lab to another not the actual lab and its contents. 🙂
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Moving from one work place to another is already tough enough… 🙂
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I guess there’s more than one kind of “french press” 🙂 I can’t even imagine the level of detail involved here, luckily you are just that sort of talented person or you wouldn’t be working in this field in the first place. What sort of research do you work on? You may have said once upon a time, but I might not have “known” you back then! I’m glad everything went so smoothly and I bet it’s like any move, you know where everything is now!
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Barbara, I included a link to our webpage at KSU – probably a lot more than you wanted to know, but at least gives an idea. 🙂 I also wrote a little piece here in the blog a while ago, you can jump there if you want
https://bewitchingkitchen.com/2011/03/09/meet-our-lab/
at the bottom of the webpage at KSU we included both of our Curriculum and that gives a list of all the publications each of us was involved, even before we worked together. As I said, more than you wanted to know, but once my life gets back to a more comfortable state, I intend to write a post with more specific stuff about our work at the moment. It is exciting and challenging: perfect combination. Almost as challenging as making a strawberry genoise cake!
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I’m stressed just reading you brief recap — or is it the double espresso? Seriously, though, you’ve so many details to monitor on an everyday basis. The idea of moving them all is beyond me. Thank heavens you found a reputable moving firm and that the move went so smoothly. You were definitely well-prepared and it paid off. Well done!
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ah, the lab French press… I hate that machine, it makes me nervous. The incredibly high pressure generated inside the thing always makes me wonder if it could explode in my face… oh, well – not really. But I usually don’t jump up and down with joy when I need to use it… 🙂
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Very impressive.
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I hope by the time you come to visit the whole lab will be fully organized and nice…
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Wow! Good luck Sally 🙂
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Thank you!
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What an undertaking Sally! And you’re so right, a lab is a singular entity – you don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing and dipping in here and there when you please. It’s sort of an all or nothing proposition and that’s enormously time and energy consuming… the cell culture hood is so cool and I want some of those adorable tubular beakers 😉 (have always loved the shape – and you can stuff them with little gifties :)). Amazing how many elements are at play – I don’t think I’d be moving again anytime soon either! Bravo on the work Sally; things are looking great.
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Indeed, there’s a few things in the lab I am always tempted to take home… some of the nice beakers would work wonders for rising bread dough… he, he, he
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Oh my gosh, just thinking about moving our lab would give me nightmares!! Kudos to you for getting through it!
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yeah, imagine all your cell lines!
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I am so glad the move went well (except for the plug, haha). Seeing all the pictures of your lab makes me miss working in one (…never thought I would say that…) but yes, I do miss a lab, and science, and thinking critically…!
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Preparing to give a talk this week, I just realized I’ve been a “lab rat” for 30 years, since my undergrad time… unreal! I just cannot imagine myself out of it, I think… time flies when you are having fun at work!
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Holy cow Sally! That is a TON of stuff to move. And all so important and intricate. I’m sure you’re happy to be settled in again. Here’s to the next phase of your professional lives! 🙂
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Thanks, Kristy! We feel as if we are just revving our professional engines now… change is great. Period. Great.
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