Murphy’s law still rules.

A cantankerous mass spectrometer outlasted the patience of the Geologic Survey today, causing them to reluctantly retreat in frustration after lunch. I grabbed the vacated machine, and slowly convinced it to come back to the land of the living, gradually finding the beam, finding the peaks, and getting the focus. I wish I could say that it was my technological savvy that allowed me to do this, but truthfully? I just waited the thing out. Anyway, finally leaving it running the calibration, I ducked back to the office to confirm with the boss what I should program it to run over night. As we are talking, the hallway lights flicker. The computer screen in a nearby office wobbles. And we feel, rather than hear, all the gate valves in the nearby ion probe slam shut, as the electrical interruption sends all the instrumentation in the school into self-protect shutdown mode...

Thanks to some great technicians and that rarest of gems- a professor who actually understands his equipment- we got the machine back up and running by five. But the computer had crashed, so I had to find all the peaks and focus points all over again. And if I had saved them before running the calibration, the blackout never would have happened.

Now, that periodic table:

1.Harpies Heal
2. Little Bed Bugs Can Not Ovulate For Neophytes
3. Naked Mongols Always Slide Past Scantily Clad Argonauts.
4. Kilt-Clad Scandinavians Tickle Very Cruel Men; “Feel Cold Nipples!” Cursed Zen-Grappling Germans, As Swedes Bribed Kraken.
5. Rub Strongly, You Zebra Nabbing Monkey Teacher! Ruthless Rhyming Paladins Agree: Cuddling Indian Snipers Snubs Tempestuous Irate Xena.
6. Cassandra Babbles. Lazy Cesar Praised Nude Prometheus, Smooching Europe’s Gaudiest Tubercular Dykes Hopelessly. Eros Tempted Yobbos Luridly. Halftime Tackles Weren’t Recorded. Osama Irritated Patriotic Aunt Hildegard, Titillating Pablo Bitterly. (everything from here on is radioactive) Polls At Random...
7. ...Frowned Radiantly, Accepting The Patriachy Utterly.