Monthly Archive for September, 2005

taking a dive

Published
by
ESC
on Wednesday, September 21, 2005
in daily
. Closed

I was going to blog more about my frustrations with my supposedly “quick” and “easy” project and paper that is turning out to be more and more NOT “quick” and “easy.”

Or I could blog about how my knitpicks yarn came in today! And that I just started the smaller Knitty Satchel. Hooray!

Or I could blog about how I had another Curves weigh in today, and while I’m not losing any weight, my thighs continue to drop inches at an alarming rate, a rate way higher than any other part of my body. All together, I’ve lost 13 inches from my thighs - 6.5 inches from each. Pretty soon I will be a big ball of fat supported by pencil legs.

But what I WILL blog about is how 10 minutes ago, I finished taking Sadie for her last walk and poop of the day, with Kev keeping guard to make sure I’m not harrassed by perverts. I came back to where he was standing, at the top of the few steps leading up to the condos, and started up the steps, when I caught the toe of my flip flops on the ground, broke the toe strap, forcing my foot all the way forward, causing me to completely lose my balence, and falling face first on to the concrete steps.

My hands and elbow saved my face. My right elbow is sore, but otherwise OK. No damage to palms of hands.

But…

I have a huge scrape on my thigh, above my knee.

And…completely tore of the main callus on the bottom of my right foot.

It actually only slightly stings right now…but BOTH of these injuries are going to hurt like a SONUVABITCH tomorrow. I’m not sure how I’m going to walk - the callus was on the ball of my foot, where all my weight is put at the end of each step action.

Not good.

errrgh. my foot is REALLY starting to hurt. I cleaned it out and was liberal with the betadine. One of our undergrads in the lab got a cut on his foot over the summer that turned into a staph infection. YIKES!

Would bathing in betadine be wrong???

Ouch. Please excuse me, Kev is offering me some drugs.

ps: stupid blogger not letting me publish! “try again in 10 minutes” FUCK YOU! I’M HURT! AND IT’S LATE! AND THE DRUGS ARE KICKING IN! Will try again in the morning. Hey…maybe with pictures! and…purple elephants dancing on my coffee table with the happy bunny and green…

damn. these are good drugs.

some quality Julie-time!

Published
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ESC
on Monday, September 19, 2005
in blogging, rants and science!
. Closed
mmmmm...tasty!
Julie enjoys pastries

So I got to meet Julie on Saturday! YOU ARE JEALOUS!Julie and her friend Leenie came over aroun 3:30, after I marathon worked out, went to the lab, and cleeeeaned my disgusting, dog hair covered abode. We chatted for a bit and exchanged gifts. She got me the Wiccy Magic Muscles bar! HOORAY! I can’t wait to make Kev use it on me. My back is is soooooore!

I got her two balls of a beautiful mohair blend yarn from Artful yarns, colored in greens and turquoises. So pretty, I wanted to keep them for myself! But I know Julie will make something really cool out of them.

We hung out for a bit, did some Sadie wrestling…

Sadie wrastlin'

and massaging…
doggy massage

we headed to the Dekalb County Farmer’s Market, and Julie and Leenie…well, watched me shop. Julie bought some raspberry flavored dried cranberries AND she bought me a bottle of wine! And yummy pastries for me and Kev, and a turnover for herself (see first pic above - she couldn’t even wait until we got home!) Leenie bought grapes and some bakery treats for her friends.

I bought…a lot. The farmer’s market bag got it’s first real workout. The checkout guy crammed it full of my purchases, which incluced red peppers and onions and some skirt steaks for fajitas. Then back to the condo for margaritas, daquiris, and STEAK FAJITAS, BABY!

I felt a little like a less entertaining Alton Brown, as Julie and Leenie sipped their drinks and watched me chop the veggies and marinate the skirt steaks. I hope it turned out OK! There was nothing left after the vultures got through except for some peppers onions, and some shredded cheese.

We had planned to check out the ultimate in redneck entertainment: the stone mountain laser show, but by the time we started eating, we would have had to be there already. Oh well…

So we just hung out and chatted and watched some bizzare UFC shows on SpikeTV. Homoerotic fun! We stayed up far too long chatting, and poor Leenie looked exhausted. She still had to drive herself and Julie back up to the ‘burbs! So big hugs all around and they were gone. And I ate half my brownie from the farmer’s market (THANKS JULIE! SOOOO GOOOOD!) and pretty much passed out.

My impression of Julie: what you see (or read) is what you get. She’s every bit as cool and laid back as she comes of in her blog. Very funny, and full of good stories about….ummm…I’m probaby not allowed to say. And even though I teased her about the decision making rock she bought earlier that day, she still seemed to enjoy herself! Even Kev enjoyed himself, and that’s after ALREADY forcing him to be social friday night. TWO SOCIAL NIGHTS IN A ROW! HE’S SCARRED FOR LIFE! Anyway, I would totally recommend Julie to all my friends. Two thumbs up, all the way. Everyone! Go meet Julie!

I had hoped we could hang out a little before she left on tuesday, but as I haven’t heard from her, I guess not. Oh no…what if I gave her food poisoning?? OH CRAP! JULIE! ARE YOU OK????

Sunday I PASSED OUT after church, work, and errands. I rarely left the couch (except to make some tagliatelle with gorgonzolla sauce….mmmmm….). Today I STILL feel a bit hungover.

Other random bits:
-> comcast cable is up and running. Kev talked to a technician on the phone, and eventually got it all figured out. today I did the dreaded cancelling of the DSL. I hate talking to BellSouth. No, I DON’T want to keep DSL at a discount, NO I DON’T want a free 30 day side by side comparison period…JUST SHUT THE DAMNED THING OFF!!!!

-> The oh so exiting news that I might get another paper took a bad hit today. Part of the “easy” part of this side project was that all the strains were already created by another lab. We just had to email and request time. Well, it turns out the head of that lab isn’t sure he still has them. Seems that his lab generally doesn’t keep strains, they just remake them whenever they need them.

WHAT

THE

FUCK?????

First of all…the WEEKS AND MONTHS WASTED REMAKING STRAINS must KILL his lab’s productivity. SECOND OF ALL….I’m pretty sure that’s unethical!!! Once you publish your work, it needs to be available to the community, to verify, to further the research, etc.

If all the strains have to be remade, than this is NOT a project for me. It would take far too long.

Still possible he could find the strains…but I’m not holding my breath.

(a note to DrJim: it’s not a protein 2D gel, it’s a DNA gel. And the new technique will be able to easily tell us where replication forks are coming from through whatever and where ever your favorite gene is)

-> Just found out that my best friend since middle school is probably going to be moving to Boston soon. Her boyfriend just got a job up there, so as soon as he’s done with school, he’ll go. She’ll follow, probably sometime after January.

And again I say…WHAT THE FUCK??? Everyone’s moving to Boston! STUPID BOSTON! STOP STEALING MY FRIENDS!

Seriously, it just means I’ll have to visit Boston alot. Maybe meet some more bloggers?

Karaoke brought us together…

Published
by
ESC
on Saturday, September 17, 2005
in daily
. Closed

The concert friday was AWESOME! Click title for more song action (again, probably iTunes only. sorry!)

After dinner at raging burrito, we walked over to Eddie’s attic. It wasn’t crowded, which was good, because I didn’t buy our tickets online ahead of time like Elizabeth and Michael did. In fact, we were able to get a table, which was VERY cool, since table reservations were $42, and we only paid the $8 price.

The opening act was a guy named Brad Passons. He was very good, and very funny! I think he improvised a lot the words on the spot - he asked the audience for the name of a pretty girl, and Michael told him “Elizabeth!” Elizabeth was MORTIFIED and said “nooo!” Then Brad kept mentioning in the rest of his songs how “Elizabeth hates me.” It was damn funny. We chatted with him after his set. He had 2 cd’s, but we could only afford to buy one each, so he gave us permission to buy and copy it for the other. How cool was he?

It got a little more crowded before Danielle Howle came on. A group of 4 girls sat at the table in front and to the left of us. They ordered drinks and shots right away, and were loud and giggly. I knew this wasn’t going to be good.

It wasn’t. It was OBVIOUS they had no idea who Danielle was. They treated the night like they were at a bar that had live entertainment, rather than a concert venue that had a bar. They talked and laughed the whole time. They kept acting like “ooo..look at us everybody! we’re LESBIANS! we’re sloppy drunk and obnoxious! watch us KISS!”

Ugh.

But Danielle managed to ignore them and put on a GREAT set. It’s hard to explain her style…southern folk funk rock? She sings with her whole body. And she’s shy and hyper all at the same time, interacting with the audience and telling stories, but sometimes making not a lot of sense as she nervously talked too fast and not realizing we don’t live in her mind. But it was in a cute, not annoying, way.

At one point, she sang one of my favorite songs of the CD I have, Karaoke. I softly sang along, and she could see that I knew all the words and kept grinning at me. She messed up one of the verses, saw my confusion, apologized to me quickly, then went back and repeated the section with the right words. How cute was she??? We laughed about it when I talked to her afterwards. “you knew all the words! and then I messed up, so I had to go back and fix it.”

I bought her new live cd as well. My mini floweth over! I had to borrow $20 off Kev to buy both Brad and Danielle’s cds, and he told me that I am going to REALLY have to work it off to pay him back (ooohhh noooo!).

She played late, and then a quick encore. We didn’t get home until after 1, after a quick run through the mcdonald’s drive through for a vanilla shake. Mmmm…shake.

Today I ran some errands, worked in the lab, cleaned, and….oh yeah, met Julie. But more about that later…with pics! ;)

happy working girl

Published
by
ESC
on Friday, September 16, 2005
in daily and misc
. Closed

It is a beautiful thing to enjoy work again.

:)

********************************
friday rant

Attention musicians. I sort of understand the concept of the “hidden” track on your cd’s. It’s a nice little bonus for your fans, and you get to throw in your funky experimental stuff that maybe your label thinks might be a little avant-guard for the main cd. this is fine.

But PLEASE don’t put 10 FUCKING MINUTES OF BLANK AIR in between the last song and your dirty little secret. It’s REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING….especially on my mini, where I’m left wondering if my battery’s dead, or if I just had a stroke.

Keep it a minute or less.

Thank you.

******************************
busy busy busy

Tonight…if I get out of work on time, we’re meeting some friends at the Raaaaaging Burrito (woohoo!) and then going to see a concert at a small venue in Decatur that I’ve never been to before but I’ve heard it’s pretty cool.

***UPDATE***
alright, check the comments for her name (I’m avoiding google searches) Here is one of my fav songs.

Tomorrow I need to WORK OUT (I haven’t gotten to Curves all week! I can FEEL my muscles atrophying!), get to the lab for a bit, then hopefully I’ll get a call from a hung over Julie, and make plans. It will involve drinking. And knitting. And it will ROCK!

******************************
speaking of knitting

I “re”felted my tote bag. I’ll post pics when it’s dry. It definately shrunk some more, but the felting it a lot more even. Yay!

and lo, the darkness fled, and light came to the land…

Published
by
ESC
on Thursday, September 15, 2005
in science!
. Closed

crappy

Boy, have I been bitchy and ranty lately. I’ve been all I HAVE NOTHING GOOD TO POST, SO PLEASE ACCEPT PICTURES OF KNITTING AND MY DOG TO APPEASE THE DEMANDING MASSES!!! BECAUSE IF I POST HOW I’M REALLY FEELING, CHILDREN WILL CRY! THERE WILL BE MOANING! AND GNASHING OF TEETH! BEWARE!!!

But so far, no one has complained.

So why was my mood so dark for so long?

Well, some of you may remember my adventures in 2D gels. All you need to know is that the 2D gels are a way for me to test that the yeast strains that I made are working correctly. It is very important that the yeasties are doing what I hope they’re doing, because a lot of people besides myself are using these yeast strains in their projects. In fact there is a PAPER…IN PRINT at the moment that is BASED on the foundation that these strains are working correctly.

But the last 2D gel I did, while very crappy looking (see above pic), MIGHT have indicated that one of my strains was not behaving itself. In fact it might have been doing the exact OPPOSITE of what everyone was expecting. And let me tell you how VERY BAD THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN FOR ME, THE WHOLE LAB, AND PEOPLE IN OTHER LABS. We’re talking lynch mobs. Torches and pitchforks.

All coming after…me.

This is the second time I’ve made these strains - the first batch had other minor (or major, depending on the application) complications. If I had to make a strain for the THIRD TIME…

There’s no way. It would have delayed me a year. Delayed EVERYONE a year. and the paper in print would have to be retracted.

I’m not sure how I could stress how important it was. My graduate carreer, and possibly even my LIFE was depending on this - because if it all went wrong NOT ONLY would I have probably quit grad school, I probably would have been put on suicide watch. It’s not so much that MY research would be affected, I could live with that. BUT the other people who’s research it would have screwed up. That’s what would really devastate me.

BUT….

There’s another NEWER test that’s QUICKER than a 2D gel (which…from cell culture to DNA isolation to phosphoimager can take 2 weeks - in contrast this takes 4 days). It’s based on a phenomenom noticed by another lab here - so while the techniques are well established, the application I’m using it for is not. Therefore, I will STILL have to do a 2D gel. But only if the results are good. If not….then….no 2D gel. No nothing. Done. At least I would find out QUICKLY if I needed to fall on my sword.

No sword neccessary. Everything is…O-FUCKING-K! Just got the results this morning, in time to give lab meeting.

Not only THAT…but we’d like to publish a techniques paper, showing how this new protocol application can replace the 2D gel in certain circumstances.

ANOTHER PAPER! WITH MY NAME ON IT!

So fucking happy. N was so happy she got me a Twix bar from the machine. Of course, it had fallen down while she was getting her Starburst, so it was a freebee…but still. Free chocolate…for me. We’re all pretty happy around here. And I feel like a 2000lb weight is off my chest.

*siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh*