Day Five Hundred Sixty Seven

Today was officially the most ridiculous day of my time in Texas thus far. And for those of you who have followed my adventure that has been graduate school, you know that this is really saying something.

It all started this morning, when I was planning on going to campus early to try and get a parking spot (weekday baseball games = half the student lots are closed) but didn't due to lack of sleep last night. Turns out I would have gotten nowhere fast anyway due to the 9-car-pileup on the highway. What?! It's not even raining or snowing or glaring sun or anything. So as I'm getting ready to go sit in the inevitable traffic, I get a string of frantic text messages from my labmate that all of the power has gone out in Welch Hall (the chemistry building). For those of you who don't know, power outages in chemistry buildings are bad. Like, really really really bad. Fume hoods need power to run and safely suck toxic chemicals out of the room. Without power, those toxic chemicals start to backdraft out of the fumehood and into the lab, making things smell very weird and making grad students working in those labs very nervous. Also, we have lasers in our lab. Lasers that get very upset (and dangerous) without power to keep them cooled. 

Come to find out, UT is undergoing a campus-wide power outage. Not a short power-outage, but a lets-argue-with-Austin-Power-Company hour and a half long power outage. About 20 minutes in to it, Welch Hall underwent emergency evacuation due to malfunctioning fumehoods (among other things). All of the doors were barricaded by either police officers or environmental health officials for the next hour, and it was weird. Some grad students tried to sneak back in (it didn't work, they got escorted right back out.....but come on we have to get RESEARCH DONE), others just brought their pipettes and samples and sat on the sidewalk to continue working (this isn't even a joke, I would have taken a photo if it didn't seem so creepy).

As if this wasn't enough for the day, there was also not one, but two bomb threats right next to campus that happened to coincide with said power outage. As far as we all know, they weren't related, though it seems like an eerie coincidence.

And that, my friends, was my Tuesday. I dare you to try and one up that. I just dare you.



PS - The power outage ignited a reach stream of Twitter humor. Search #UTPowerOutage2015 for a good laugh.