Spring break! yeah....

I can't believe it is March which usually means spring here in our area. Some people saw robins which is a sure sign that spring is here. I am not so sure based on the crazy weather we have.

It is spring break for us here for this whole week which doesn't really mean anything to me, other than a break from teaching for a week; We had nice warm weather (50 F - a nice balmy 10 C!) this past week and a lovely torrential out pour. I was delighted to see the rain and experience the phenomenon of melting, very foreign to me since I had not seen it this past two months. Well, the rain was all well and good until I was reminded once again of the joys of owning an OLD home. We had finished our basement with concrete last summer hoping that it will take care of the rain water that was seeping into our muddy basement. We had pipes under the basement and also made an area in the corner of the basement for water to collect from the pipes and fill into a bucket. Well, the rain that melted most of the snow, flowed down the hill and into our basement and finally started collecting in the bucket. We had to bail out more than 350 gallons of water nonstop for many hours for two days and through the night. Talk about a whole body workout! I couldn't help thinking about our home country where people are suffering from drought and here we are bailing out gallons of water into the roadside drain. The rest of the basement where the water could not get into the pipes started to spill around the corners starting out a flood in the basement. Needless to say it has been an eventful past few days. We finally got the plumber to put in a sump pump in the basement which bails out the water and it has been on for the past 48 hrs. The ground is so saturated and it doesn't help that we live on a hill so the water comes down and has to go somewhere; except that happens to be under our basement! Usually it is not a huge problem but with record snowfalls and rains this year everything has been out of the ordinary. So I can't believe I am saying this - but when I was bailing out all the rain water I was praying for the rain not only to stop but for it to become cold and freeze. இக்கரைக்கு அக்கறை எப்போதும் பச்சை.

Spring break also means catching up on work and in my case I am trying to complete a research project as  I have to present at two different conferences in April. So I have been setting up experiments and I started a major one this afternoon. This experiment involves some timed collection of media and addition of nutrients. I started the experiment at noon and I am supposed to add some nutrients at  6:30 p.m. today. Well guess what happens now? The rain that has been pouring all day turns to sleet and ice and the roads were so icy with sleet 1 cm thickness in 1 hour that it was too treacherous for me to drive to work to add the nutrients to my cells. Well, the consequence - the experiment is wasted. It takes approximately 3 weeks to grow the cells to this point before I can set up this experiment and now I couldn't drive out to continue the next step. This experiment with all the reagents also costs approximately $1000.00 to set up.

As I was contemplating about what a waste all this was and how I wish I had driven out to work anyway, this car comes up our street and starts to slide all over the road and it almost went into our drive way to hit my new car that was parked in our driveway! Yikes..

I have been taught so many valuable lessons these past few days, once again hitting it home that my plans are not God's plans and vice versa even in day to day or hour to hour stuff.
All I can do now is, thank God and start my work all over again tomorrow and hope for the best.

Gujili