2006-11-15 - 6:20 a.m.

..couldn't sleep...

I woke up at about 3:30 this morning feeling thirsty, and I haven't been able to get back to sleep. K got up and got me a glass of water, and the two of us lay in bed for another hour, each pretending to sleep.

My mind just keeps trying to reconstruct a list of everything that was lost, and how I am possibly going to replace these things. Each time my mind goes over the list, I realize another irreplaceable thing or sample that has been lost. My lab notebooks, containing every measurement I've conducted over the last three years. My thesis samples, collected from above the Arctic circle on a multi-million dollar research cruise. The North Pacific sediment samples, collected from three multi-million dollar cruises. All of my high school student's samples (that would have allowed me to quickly redo the work that she had just lost). Glassware, gloves, goggles, pumps. All of the lab standards I developed at Dutchess. Beyond this, the innumerable human hours that had gone into processing the samples up to this point.

Each time I tried to picture of a peaceful place in my head, to relax and escape back into sleep, my mind managed to drift back to the dread I feel at having to redo all of this work. I want to scream outrage at every person I see at work. Somehow, no matter how I try to rationalize it away, this just feels personal.

After a 2-3 hour break yesterday afternoon, it is raining again - the next storm to sweep BC. It is projected that we will receive up to 150 mm of rain in the next 24 hours. This is more rain in 24 hours than some parts of the world get over an entire year. hmph.

Well, I will shower now - I have to meet the installation guy who flew in from Chicago to help me install my new lab equipment. Of course, now that the boxes are gone, I am totally unprepared for the installation, and have none of the equipment needed. Great. This will be interesting.