Why I Don't Dig Plants

Today was perhaps the most tedious one that I've ever had in the paleobotany lab. It turns out that I was audited by my supervisor over the weekend and she had a whole list of things that I'd done wrong since I started working in November. By the way, this is the first time that she's checked to make sure that I'm doing things right. As it turns out, I'd been mis-numbering specimens. Instead of starting on rock #13546 like I should have, I started on #14546, meaning that it looked in the books like I'd forgotten to enter 1000 rocks that I'd peeled. Not only that, but apparently I'd been entering data into the wrong book. I'd started a black book when I started working and had not seen the book that I was apparently supposed to be using until today. Oh, and two envelopes of peels had the label in the wrong place.
So what I had to do was re enter all of the data in the appropriate book, including redoing the rock outlines, then renumber all of the peels that I'd made (about 250) by scratching out the offending grease pencil 4 and replacing it with a 3. What comes next is possibly the most tedious part; I had to re-number the rocks themselves. For those of you who have never tried, it is just about impossible to erase grease pencil from rock. My supervisor recommended a solvent called zylene, but I wasn't too thrilled about that because its carcinogenic (mildly, but why take unnecessary risks). What I used instead was my favorite, tried and true degreacer: Pumice soap! It was actually working fine until one of my co-workers pointed out (about as forcefully as the fellow could) that I'd ruined the brush that I'd been using and really should have been using zylene. So I ended up using zylene for the last three rocks anyway.
I'd really be much happier if I could just work on macro-vertebrates or even small tetrapods, but no, only the paleobotany department was hiring. I hate Mondays.