I got to do an experiment!

And any day you do an experiment is a good day.

The story is as follows: I got up and drove out to the Coastal Studies lab on South Padre Island. I thought it would be an uneventful drive, but to my surprise, ran into a couple of massive cloudbursts. The sheeting down, "Can't-I-make-the-windshield-wipers-go-any-faster?" kind of cloudbursts that slow even normally aggressive Texas drivers down to 30 miles an hour. I'm sure there are other places in the world that matches the southern U.S. for the ferocity of cloudbursts, but I haven't been there yet.

Fortunately, while the burst is intense, it's quite small, and I'm out of it fairly quickly. I get to the Coastal Studies Lab to pick up a juvenile spiny lobster that they had been showing off to the public. They had two small lobsters, so I left one behind, so that the public wouldn't be deprived of the viewing pleasure of seeing Palinurus argus. (Couldn't find a link to a decent picture of the beast, sorry.)

Then I scampered back to the lab to look at this beastie's nervous system. This gave me the first real chance to test out my nifty microscope (that cause so much trouble to order... but I won't rehash old details). It worked well, although I may have to see if I can do something to get a slightly larger field of view. Sometimes, even the lowest power magnification is still a teensy bit too high.

The exciting bit is tomorrow, though. Some preparations have to sit before you get to see the results, and this is one. Tomorrow I get to see if it gives me a definite answer to my question... or not.

;;;;;

Irrelevent recommendation: Down With Love with Ewan McGregor and Rene Zellweger.