the Charles Street T Station construction, as seen from the shuttles which bypass it when the construction precludes train traffic; there's 
the weird things the sun does on a hazy afternoon; and then there's 
the way that directional LEDs beam out into a hazy Long Island night, on a lonely, deserted stretch of access road deep within the Laboratory grounds. (Okay, I might have screwed with the exposure level a bit, but the yellow light really did beam out into the nighttime haze like this.) None of these everyday sights do more than to hint at the relish for otherworldly and silly feeling of being the last party awake in the lab.
(One more image: this slug in my backyard was impervious to the toxic effects of red Kool Aid. Something in me is ten years old, grinning from ear to ear and saying, "Gross!" But you see, I had the discretion to put only the smallest version where you would have to look at it.)But the crazy shit that went down on yesterday's beamline shift (We're working 4pm-4am, splitting the day with another research group this week) has me riding pretty high on the joy of the night shift. No sarc, it's realio-trulio an enjoyably life.
I volunteered to run the first hour or two by myself while the two other members of the team ventured into town on a grocery run. I wrote up a list for the few things I need: two tomatoes, a large cucumber, a bunch of parsely, some pita to go with the falafel mix I found still in the lab kitchen from almost a year ago, and some grapes for snacking. They brought back everything I asked for and a carrot cake.
"Here ya go. Went a little over the $20 you gave us, but I owe you for lunch yesterday.""Great," I say. "But what the hell is this?"
"That's a large cake. The biggest one we could find was this carrot cake."
"Cake?"
"Yeah, 'A large cake,' you wrote."
"CUKE! I wrote 'cuke,' not 'cake.'"
"Yeah, we thought it was a little odd. You never buy cake." So late that night, as the hungries started to show up, and thanks to the relaxed rules on eating while on the experimental floor, we had ourselves a little cake.
Right about that time, a nice, drenching thunderstorm came through. Booming thunder was loud enough to be heard over the warehouse-sized experiment floor packed with its pumps, motors, and beepy things. (They're called 'crickets,' but 'beepy things' sounds more serious.) I went out to bear witness to the trees and fences tossing in the wind and lashing rain. While I was on the back porch, I noticed the best label I have ever seen on a bike. It was parked on the back porch of the lab, by the loading dock. Does anyone but me and the biologists recall their high school biology? I mean, not counting the owner of the bike shop where this got started.
With four- and five-second exposure times, I almost but didn't quite catch the bright blue of lightning flashes against the sickly weird yellow glow of the loading dock's sodium vapor lamps.
I finally gave up and came back inside to find the storm had jolted our power grid enough to destabilize the synchrotron.The control room seemed to think they could get everything up and running in an hour or so. While we waited, the groupmate I'm helping out this week (My turn to head an experiment of my own design comes soon.) watched video of surgical procedures that grossed her out.
More cake for me.
