Every year I tell my genetics students that once we start our crosses they are on fly time — you schedule your lab work around when the flies produce eggs and pupate and start breeding again, forget the registrar’s schedule. Now I have live by that, too. My gastrointestinal stress is over, I hope, but I’m feeling drained and exhausted, and am feeling intimidated by the need to put my socks on, but I must go into the lab today. The flies are calling to me.

Just to compound the difficulties, we had a blizzard and a white-out yesterday, and I don’t want to go out there. The temperature is supposed to drop to -21°F tonight, and I’m going to come home later to pick my wife up at work, because she doesn’t want to walk home when it’s that frigid.

And then I’m going to lie down under warm blankets and not move for a day.