Plastic Fantastic.

Today was, without a doubt, one of my all-time Top 10 Professionally Horrible Days. (There's a list for you to work on, Jeff.) I had human resources issues that spiraled quickly, completely and unforseeably out of control. I had a faculty member who was angry at me, again, and how. As a true measure of how bad it was, both of my bosses were quite supportive and one even had a tray of cookies and brownies sent over to brighten our day, and I made peace and greatly improved my relationship with the aforementioned professor (which alone would normally put today solidly in the great column), and STILL it made the top 10. Or is that the bottom 10?

In any case, the cherry on my sundae is when I find out that the cryo-blanks haven't sent the vials to our donor, as promised, along with the media he needs to send us the "stuff." And we really hoped to get the "stuff" FedEx'd from him tonight, so we'd receive it tomorrow. He phones me at work to tell me this, as soon as he's realized we're missing a key piece of our puzzle. Once we've determined the vials containing the media will not be reusable, I jokingly suggest Tupperware, and tell him I'll call him back.

I race home to see if we have any vials we can FedEx to him, delaying D-Day by only one day and hopefully still having a slight chance to "Catch That Egg." (When I say "Catch That Egg," it helps if you imagine some sort of game show, with a well-coiffed and nicely dressed host and a studio audience yelling out the words that start the game a-going. Try it: "Catch That Egg!" See, doesn't that liven up the story a bit?)

Anyway, no vials at home, and the cryo-blanks are sorry but tell me their pickup has already gone out for the day, so no luck there either. Then they say they do have a suggestion. Great, give it to me. I'm desperate here, folks. My ladyfriend's egg is going to show up soon....very, very soon. Sure, the lady says...(wait for it. It's good)...have him put it in TUPPERWARE.

So, to make a short story long, he's a sweetie who's trekking to Target tonight in an attempt to find a leakproof vessel of some sort, having already tested the ones he owns to find that none were going to do the trick. Hopefully, he'll find something without too much trouble, and hopefully he'll be able to ship the "stuff" on Thursday, and hopefully we'll get it Friday morning, and most hopefully of all, we'll be just in time to "Catch That Egg." Cross your fingers, and remember, Tupperware's slogan IS, after all, Plastic Fantastic. Plastic Fantastic, indeed.