Fixation and Processing

First off, I would like to thank all who attended and presented at the NSH Convention in Long Beach. It was my first time and I had a wonderful time. I came back really eager to start new projects and ideas. I have only been a registered histotech for a year now and a full time histotech for 5 months and I still have many questions.

My question today is as follows. Our tissue processor was set for weekend run last night and when I came in at 4:30, the processor hadn't started yet. I ran a short run on the processor consisting of 10 minutes in each step in order to process the tissue for the day. Many of the bigger pieces of tissue didn't cut well at all and were mushy. I plan to reprocess these tissues and was wondering how long to leave them in formalin when our processor run for today doesn't start until 6:00 tonight. My other question is that one of the tissues was a breast tissue that was positive and needs immunostains. Do I put these tissues in 70% ethanol all day and then put them on the processor?