Success!...Sorta

I spent my first day working in the research lab--or playing with STDs, as Justin says--today. It was relatively exciting, just a little overwhelming. So much to remember!

Luckily, everyone is very, very nice and helpful and they're training me well. -whew- Some professors sort of make you learn as you go and you're pretty much screwed. Although, I gotta say, I'm definitely giong to be developing an accent--probably Indian--since I'm going to be spending around 10 hours a week with people who don't exactly speak English... Oh well, they're friendly, know my name and I can inherit their biochem books. I'll take it!

Even better than meeting nice people and having some idea of what's going on are good results! First of all, we had no idea if our reaction was even going to work. She's very skeptical of the study whose results we're building off of, so when I developed my gel and got a nice big band o' dimer, it was very exciting. Ok, so you had to be there....and be a science nerd.. Believe me, we were happy.

Now I get to go back and try to get a little better, more tidy results on Thursday. And that involves playing with dry ice. Alright!

SNOW!

Despite being fairly sleepy and having to work 7-11 today, it was a splendiferous day because...


IT'S SNOWING!

Dirty Laundry

The laundry room downstairs currently looks like several people's closets have exploded. There are piles and piles of people's crap all over the place. Now, come on, folks! How hard is it to obey a few simple rules?

1. Do not indefinitely leave your laundry. I'm pretty sure the pile of guy's socks/underwear has been down there so long now that its owner cannot possibly have any of those items left. I don't want people touching my stuff...especially bras and panties...so I retrieve my clothes in a timely manner. I wish more people did the same.

2. If you indefinitely leave your laundry, do not flip out when someone moves it. Story time: Sometime last year, I needed to do laundry and while all the machines were finished, they, of course, were full of abandoned laundry. Well, I generally prefer not to move people's undies (eww!) and usually wait a little while (I check every half hour or so), nobody ever came to empty their washer so I chose to move someone's sheets. Oh boy. About 45 minutes later, I was down there again putting my clothes into a dryer when the girl whose sheets I'd moved came to retrieve them. She went nuts: got all red, had the bulging forehead vein going, and stormed about the room, mumbling about how now they needed washed again. Omg, get over it, they're your sheets and HELLO?!? YOU LEFT THEM FOR AT LEAST AN HOUR AND A HALF!

3. Don't waste a washer. A few weeks ago, I opened a long-ago finished washer to discover one towel. ONE TOWEL. That ONE towel was still there the next day, btw. There are no words...

4. Yes, boys, girls wear bras. Please do not gawk while we're washing them. Granted, I live in the Honors College and well, some of these guys have never even talked to a girl... But still, awkward staring only makes me think you're more of a freak than you probably already are.

5. Don't leave dryer sheets on the floor. This is very importants. Why?, you ask. Because clumsy people like me can very easily step on them, helplessly flail about and land in a very painful split. The garbage can is only 2ft away!

Lab Rat

I'm so excited. I met with a biochem professor today about working in her lab. As it turns out, she's just starting a new project with hepatitis C RNA and needed a 4th undergrad in her lab, so my timing was perfect! I'll officially be a lab rat (that's how the faculty refers to the student researchers) on October 19!

Basically what the "problem" is is that hepatitis C RNA dimerizes (eh, the bases get stuck together in pairs and form kink) rather often, leading to lots and lots of mutations. So all that genetic variability means #1: nobody has quite the same form so a vaccine, which would be against only one to a few forms, would be useless and #2: it keeps changing anyhow, so any treatment or vaccine is going to become obsolete. So the project I'll be working on is trying to figure out what causes it to dimerize so then perhaps someone can figure out how to stop that.

Also exciting, she generally keeps people in the lab until they graduate so I'm pretty much set and starting next semester, I should be able to get credits for working there. And even better! She likes to have you work during the summer too but not necessarily through the Undergraduate Research Program, which is very good for me since I don't want to do URP since I wouldn't get the time off for camp. She has no problem giving me that week off, hurrah! And oh yeah, you get paid... a lot.

Out of this world!...Reunion

I went home this weekend for the Camp Quality reunion. I was soooooo excited, but also rather nervous that Ty's mom would go into labor and they wouldn't be able to come. Luckily, she's still about to pop and Jason (his daddy) was able to bring the kids after their soccer games. Unluckily, however, it POURED and was FREEZING. No fun.


Because of the wet and freezing lack o' fun, lots of people didn't show. I'd say maybe 1/4- 1/3 of the kids and companions were there. And they were mostly older kids, so I didn't really know any. We still had plenty of fun though. Inflatables! Hello?! How could those not be fun?! And of course crafts and wood shop stuff, which pretty much sums up the oringinal camp experience.

The bestest part, however, was that Jason told me Ty's last chemo is this week!! Hooray for being off treatment!