New year?

Another new year
Another year of lab work
Maybe some progress

what I do for fun now

It's Friday night what
better time to track down some
obscure articles

Internet searching for turtle vocalization sound files led me to a claim that a certain species vocalized. (But why would I trust an wetlands ecologist on that one?) Anyway, I found a journal article backing it up.
FTW.
I really need to get out more.

whew

finally finished
fellowship application
feel much better now

solution

Today I spent two
hours adjusting pH
dissolve all ready

pH=2 syllables because that's how it would sound out loud. True story. 2 hours-ish. 1.75 would have messed up my syllable count. EDTA won't dissolve until the solution hits about pH=8. I did not know that when I dumped in 180 grams of the stuff. After letting it stir for a few hours, I looked it up. Let that be a lesson to you. But I won.
And clearly I can't sleep and am all ready betrayed by the time stamp on this post.

Thursday in the laboratory

My shiny new drill came! That's a good day right there. I've also discovered just how useful DigiMorph is. I'd heard about it but never used it until today. Also, reading circulation diagrams is harder than I expected.

Peace.

Research Thwarted

It's spring, clearly. And as it is spring, it's warm enough to turn on the building's air conditioning. I've also finally gotten my tissue sections to be clean and pretty (aka: usable). So I'm all set to start doing reconstructions. Too bad there's an unbalanced fan on the roof that is shaking the building at an unperceivable level and shaking the microscope such that I can't do the reconstruction.
Back to reading articles until we get the fan fixed or a fancy vibration-isolation table.

post-election commentary and some other stuff

How 'bout that election?! I can't say that I'm surprised. My reaction is not what I expected. I'm cautiously optimistic. That said, I'm really annoyed with people on both sides who are reacting so strongly to the results. The universe will not come to an end. Neither will the universe suddenly be full of fields of daisies and puppy dogs. I do worry that all the people who are so excited will end up disappointed and then be forever disillusioned and cynical, dropping out of the political process forever. It's been said that slavery is this country's original sin (OK, it was on a TV show, but I think it rings true. High-five for naming the show). I hope that in some small way we as a people are beginning to atone for centuries of oppression, racism, hatred, violence. 

Other exciting news, apparently our pipes are leaking such that the water is coming out of our downstairs neighbor's vent. Rock. It should be getting fixed today. 

I started physical therapy for my leg last week. I had no idea that PT could hurt this much. What a terrible idea. Yeah, I know, it has to hurt for it to heal. And I don't care. I would like magical instant pain-free-ness. The appointments are at 6:30am, so it forces me to get up earlier than usual. And I enjoy that. I wish I had enough discipline to do this all the time.

Lab stuff is going nicely. I'm still waiting for IACUC approval. *sigh* So I've been working on some smaller projects, mostly anatomy. Not terribly exciting but very necessary. The tissue processing technique that I'm using is from the late 1800s. Adventures in Victorian Biology--that's my new memoir title. And I'm going back to doing that now since my timer is about to go off.

Peace.

Midterm

I'm taking my 1st and only midterm right now. It's take-home. And lame-tastic. 9 essay questions. About a day and a half to write. I'm bored. Or can't think anymore. 

Post-vehicular assault, I'm feeling better. My hip hurts and I'm still mentally foggy at times. Considering that I got hit by a car, that's pretty good.

Earlier this week I was really missing Oklahoma. I finally got a glimpse of the sunset. Glimpse being a bit of an overstatement. Roommate, roommate's mom, and I went to an orchard to pick apples. It was sweet. We were way the heck out of DC. It was so beautiful and peaceful. You could see really far because it was up on a hill. Good times. But sadly, no pictures. 

I'm still waiting to do anything in the lab other than finishing up the Golgi stained stuff. IACUC has to approve my protocol. I should hear back in a couple weeks if it's been approved or modified or what. Until then, I have 2 notebooks, a file of articles, and other sundry items to go through. 

Aside: All the TAs for the lab I teach spend 3 hours in the section they're in charge of and 1 hour in another TA's section. When I was in my extra hour, one of the students in there informed me that, "Of course your class finished. You're the good TA." That made me feel super-special.

Back to experimental design.

Peace.

Month 1, and a retraction.

I'm beginning this during office hours. I don't think anyone else is coming, though there are a few who really should. But I have a real office now with a desk and a door and everything. And desks for the two other people that I share it with. So, far it's worked out pretty well. The lab is still in chaos. Moving to our new space is still being delayed until the countertops are replaced. With what, I do not know. I'll get to start my first round of experiments soon, once all the protocol paperwork has been approved. I will say that it's an immunohistochemical study of immediate early gene expression, mostly to impress you, but not to bore you with technical details. I helped get the outdoor owls ready for impending winter. They have new owl boxes and heat lamps, and they seem pretty please with the additions. The great part of this is that my role was holding the ladder, while my adviser climbed the ladder and maneuvered the owl boxes into place. This is funny when you realize that my adviser is about 5-feet tall and generally very tiny. The South African accent enhances this effect.

Classes are pleasant and helpful. It seems that I spend most my time reading for those classes and for lab.

Amazingly enough, I'm really enjoying the teaching aspect of my job. My students are, for the most part, smart and responsible and generally pleasant. There's a couple that need to get their acts together, but hopefully that will change.

One Andrea DenHoed graced me with her presence last week. That was probably the most exciting thing that's happened to me thus far.

The weather here is fantastic. It's been in the mid-60s to mid-70s.

I've acquired houseplants. They appear to be happy.

There are some very good possibilities for a permanent church home.

The quest for a non-Starbucks coffee shop is still floundering. There's one that's very promising, but it's being remodeled (after a fire, I believe). I have found a sweet bookshop though, and that does allay my distress a bit.

I learned a new word: tokogenesis. You should look it up.

I still feel like this is just an extended vacation some days.

I've uploaded some photos to thefacebook. Take a look. The stories will be visually enhanced.

Retraction: My classmates/colleagues are not as normal as I thought. Thank God. They're actually pretty great. And they (sometimes) laugh at my jokes.

Peace.

late lab night.

Well. . . Here I am in the lab at 11:30 PM. Neat. It's been one of those days. Everything went well. Then due to tangled cables, everything went badly. After that was fixed, everything was fine again. Then my hand slipped, and it all went to crap. And then there was recovery. And things improved. Unfortunately, improvement didn't happen until about 5:30 PM. So, there was the 3 hour experiment, followed by rinsing and perfusion that is still going.
All that said, I've got a damaged experiment that barely worked, and I'm here at 11:30, waiting, until at least midnight, maybe one.
And I still want to do this for a living. I don't know what that says about me. I'm simultaneously tired and caffeinated.
I really wanted to give up and go home after damaging the spinal cord. Somehow, I was convinced to give it a chance to recover and maybe get a decent motor pattern. I could only get one clean form of scratch and no swimming. I actually need the swimming example. And I had a really nice one pre-slippage. But I take what I can get. It's days like this that it's so tempting to cut corners. Like right now, I want to cut this perfusion short by about 150mL just to go home a little sooner. But I know that going off protocol for one experiment, even just a little, is a big deal. And it's worth the extra 15 minutes (or 4 hours) to have usable data.
But I still want to go home.
Until then, I'll just keep catching up on podcasts.


Peace.