Thursday, October 2, 2008

The Arrival of a Miracle





Remember this day? Aww Yea...

How sad and frustrated I was when I couldn’t get my little hands on the research materials I needed? Witness the above PHOTO and see the very glory of a delivered Two Vial Parasite Collection System!!

How did I do it? No, not the Black Market of Bootleg Scientists. But I called Fisher Scientific again and gave them Adam’s old UMD address. They assumed that I was a UMD grad student, and offered to “put it on the UMD account” and charge my credit card instead of charging UMD.

And then they arrived. I’ve never been so relieved -- I did a dancing-around dance and squealed with excitement and felt SO relieved.

Of course, I also called the company that was supposed to send me my Whatman FTA cards -- only to discover that they were completely incompetent -- though I’d ordered them two weeks beforehand, they’d yet to even SHIP.

After freaking out a bit, they reconsidered and told me that if I wanted them to arrive on Friday, I’d have to pay for it. But if I was okay with them arriving on Saturday (the day of my departure) that they’d foot the bill.

What kind of a choice is this? A bad one, but I opted for the latter. They promised me a tracking number ASAP, and I gave up the fight.

When, on Friday, I was completely unable to reach them and get said tracking number, I figured they’d never come and I kicked myself for not overnighting them.

Lo and behold, come Saturday morning as we’re fixing to leave for Jesse’s house, the UPS man pulls up!! It does leave me the difficult task of finding where to put said FTA cards in my already-completely-packed suitcase.

An easy price to pay!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I remember how concerned you were about the FTA cards so you must be pleased that now you get co-authorship on a DNA study.

Laura Darby said...

I hope so! Let's see how the quality of my samples are!