(whispers) i see white people

Fap?

You sit in front of a 5 step dehydration gradient at 15 minutes a pop, then stare lifelessly at a CPD for two hours twisting an occasional knob. No one really knows how old it is or why it hasn't been replaced, but CPD's can explode if you let the pressure climb too high.... and the release valve is "sticky"... so don't let that unnerve you too much. Another 3 hours to stub/dry. By the time the sample comes out bad anyway because some knucklehead undergrad tried to microwave the paraform into solution you've lost your window to start the process again. Try again tommorow.

Repeat again to get a crappy micrograph of what you wanted, but at least now you know the fixation needed to be shorter.
Repeat again, probably need to tweak the buffers.
Repeat again. No idea what happened there, looks like spaghetti.
Repeat again. Hey! that looks AWESO(mag to 25,000x)damit.
Repeat again. Repeat again.
Repeat again. Holy crap. It looks perfect. Now lets spend ten hours finding a spot with no defects or dust or charge where the critter is in just the right pose.

Have lame picture of critter. Be REALLY excited.

If the weekend happens to start either in the middle of those repeat again steps, or right after you get the lame picture, you had better believe a microscopist knows how to party.

/Or at least drink away reality.

That's pretty cool, but I still prefer Nikon's Small World contest:

http://www.nikonsmallworld.com/

I know, it's light microscopes v. EM....

That kinda looks like a Hieronymus Bosch painting, or The Burghers of Calais, by Auguste Rodin.

It's polyamide, isn't it? I can tell by the pixels...

That first one looks like an orgy.

I'm a confocal guy myself - microscopy with lasers is fun!