Been in the lab for too long?

… the following are either derived from personal experience or adapted from various sources over the WWW, fellow scientists, baby scientists or lab equipment/reagent manuals.

DISCLAIMER: Any resemblance to real happenings is unintentional and coincidental and is not intended as a personal attack or anything similar. 
And please, for the love of god, do NOT try any of this stuff at home. 

Of course, feel free to add more in the comments. Let's get a kick out of making this page a comprehensive compendium of lab-crazy of sorts.

I've posted this already. By now, it's become a classic.

YOU KNOW YOU'VE BEEN IN THE LAB TOO LONG WHEN:

• You say “mills” and “migs” and "aliquot" in everyday conversations.
• You use the expression "orders of magnitude" when you try to describe how bigger something is - in an everyday conversation. 
• Spelling deoxyribonucleotide, Ralstonia solanacearum, immunoprecipitation etc. is easy peasy, but you need to google how to spell tongue.
• "Conjugation" sounds a bit dirty to you.
• When someone mentions "knockout mice", you instantly think of Rocky. 
• You seriously appreciate the aptness of insults such as "There are cells in this lab more competent than you".
• You know RT-PCR, SDS-PAGE, IHC and ChIP, so making acronyms for everything comes naturally.
• The word "significant" makes you jealous.
• So does "pee" (as in P).
• "Media" is the plural of cell food, nothing more.
• You say "get off, bitch" out loud to your cells when they are trypsinizing.
• Nobody in the cell culture lab reacts to your bitching to the cells. It's ordinary practice.
• If you grow cancer cells in culture, you know the motherfuckers are vicious killers, but you still find them endlessly cute under phase contrast.
• Having to give regular pep-talks to lab machinery is ordinary business.
• You determine the quality of latex gloves by how far you can shoot a pipette tip/tube cap/eppendorf with the glove used as a slingshot.
• Actually, and sadly, the smell of latex reminds you of work, not play.
• You know how far you can shoot with a squirty wash bottle.
• You can't get a basketball through the freaking basket for the love of all that's holy, but you know how far away from the bin you can fire a pipette tip and score.
• Making "ice balls" in liquid nitrogen is highly entertaining.
• So is making glorious fog by pouring water over dry ice.
• You experience thorough, instant gratification when you grab a fistful of eppendorfs from the jar and they are the exact number you needed. That can actually make your day.
• Making patterns in the tip box as you take tips out.
• Or, turning all nutball-OCD, cursing people who fucking do that and angrily rearranging the tips so they are neatly aligned in the box.
• You dream of the day when a guy uses "If were an enzyme, I'd be DNA helicase so I could unzip your genes" as a pickup line (when he's trying to pick you up, obviously).
• You mentally write "I'd get into his genes pronto" instead "I'd get into his jeans pronto" when ogling the hot piece of meat from the neighboring lab.
• Nitrile glove puppet, complete with eyes and toothy smile, is sometimes the closest you get to having company.
• You order nitrile gloves based on which color goes best with your outfits.
• Seeing someone with a blinking timer clipped to their hip turns you on. 
• You judge people by how/if they wear their lab coats and how they accesorize it.
• You feel like Superman when you exit the lab and get to "rip open" your lab coat. Press studs FTW, oh yeah!
• USB stick as a keyring? Absolute necessity.
• No matter how well you plan your experiment, it WILL screw up your lunch/evening/weekend plans at some point. 
• You see cooking as glorified experiment protocols and experiment protocols as glorified cooking, but you still manage to screw up at least one of them. Daily. 
• Inadvertedly, you alphabetize your grocery list, pantry, CD collection and shoe closet. 
• And when you realize what you're doing, you feel a mix of self-admiration and "when the fuck did I turn into an OCD nutcase?"
• You feel the urge to write your name and date on the carton of milk you just opened.
• You actually do write your name and date on the bottle of contact lens solution when you open it. 
• You become very good at transferring tiny amounts of liquid between containers.
• You also become very good at diluting stuff.
• When you mix a drink, words like "weak" and "strong" don't compute. Dilution factors, baby!
• You feel comfortable with nanograms, picomoles and microliters, but a five-meter distance is a complete enigma.
• If you manage to grow friutflies in your trash, you can't help but check their eye color.
• Opening shampoo, shower gel and toothpaste with one hand is the only way you know how. Two hands is for pussies.
• You want to have parafilm at home, too. 
• Also, you want to have write-on tape at home. For labelling stuff, you know.
• Bright orange warning labels are a source of curiosity, not caution.
• The ability of faster-than-lightning blinking has probably saved your eyesight at least once in your career.
• You feel a total badass for being able to hold an erlenmayer of boiling agarose with only a latex glove as protection.
• Same applies for holding the metal rack from the liquid nitrogen tank. Krypton-made skin! 
• No one in your family has the faintest idea of what you actually DO.
• No one in your group of friends has the faintest idea of what you actually DO. Provided you have friends, of course.
• Review papers are light reading. So is Alberts' Molecular Biology of the Cell.
• Thumb callus from opening PCR tubes does not bother you anymore.
• Carpal tunnel from excessive use of crappy pipettes does not bother you, either. 
• You associate the rotten egg smell with RNA isolation. In and out of the lab.
• You associate the bleach/chlorine smell with DNA isolation/PCR setup. in and out of the lab.
• You associate the alcohol smell with cell culture. In and out of the lab.
• If you accidentally grow mold on your food or in your bathroom, you want to take a sample to the lab, grow it on a coverslip and take a look under the microscope. You find this a bit disturbing, but scientific curiosity prevails.
• When you start peeling after a bad sunburn, you want to take a look at your dead epidermis under the microscope. You find this a bit disturbing also, but again, scientific curiosity prevails.
• The collection of brand junk you've acquired from vendors and at conferences/trade shows is a source of pride and a bragging right. The more "Molecular probes" postits you have, the higher your rank in the lab food chain.
• When you want to be a total asshole, you try to pass said brand junk you snatched at that fancy conference you attended as "thoughtful souvenirs" for colleagues.
• You simply can't get over the fact that James Cameron spent 300 million bucks on Avatar, but didn't bother hiring a cheapo grad student to teach Sigourney Weaver how to use pipette.
• You mainly stopped watching CSI because the scientific bullshit drove you coo-coo.
• The following happens at least once a week: you bend down to pick something from the lower drawer, and all the sharpies/pens/forceps/tictacs from the breast pocket of your lab coat scatter all over the floor. The Olympic champions even roll under the biggest piece of furniture/equipment.
• You use Kimwipes as tissues and are not particularly phased about it. 

Maybe not as classic as the "Zheng lab" number, but definitely worth of your time.