oops

Somehow, mid-experiment, I forgot about it. I'm a little bit peeved with myself, so I am taking a break and drinking coffee. Apparently my brain stopped functioning earlier and needs a pick me up. yum. so, I found a shoe, another much needed pick me up.



Shakeup by Steve Madden $59.99 at stevemadden.com

i loathe gloves

There are many experiments I do that require I wear gloves. I must protect my hands from carcinogens and radioactivity, 'wear the proper PPE' as crazy-safety-lady would say. I hate gloves. They have this amazing ability of instantly making my core body temperature rise what feels like 1000 degrees. Now, really, I know my body temperature cannot rise that much, but regardless, I'm instantly hot when I put on gloves. But that's not all. As soon as the gloves are donned, my skin itches. Whether it is my face, my arm, my back, or my foot, I desperately need to scratch and cannot because I am in PPE. By the way, I cannot remember what PPE stands for, but just know it changes depending on the experiment and for almost everything I do PPE is gloves, closed toed shoes, and long pants, sometimes a lab coat is required, but usually not, thank goodness, lab coat makes body temp rise another 200 degrees. I digress.

Gloves make me hot and make my skin itch. And, as if I wasn't becoming crazy enough as it is, at this point my hair starts to tickle my face. Or my ear. Curly hair = problem of a curl going in my ear and tickle crazy, kind of like a dry willie (not a wet willie, the only thing worse). Needless to say, gloves are the root of my evil problem. And I don't wear them for extended periods of time, only an hour, tops. I cannot imagine Adam - in surgery he must wear two pairs of gloves, scrubs, sterile gown, sterile hat, and sometimes even a lead vest. I would explode. Adam does great. Is hotter than blazes, but he does great.

house hunt!

tomorrow Adam and I will be looking at 9 houses in Indy. I'm pretty excited to be looking at houses, even though my mom thinks this is a bad idea. This is the market to buy a house, and I don't have to sell, so why not buy?? Granted I might not be in Indianapolis forever, but I want to be. And if we have to sell in a couple of years because we're moving to a different city for my real job, we will have to deal with that when we come to that point. We will make money I'm sure of it. Even if we have to sell for a lower amount that we bought, we won't have thrown our money at a bad landlord. After my mom saying this might not be a good idea, I am feeling icky. She just doesn't want anyone to spend any money, but we have to live somewhere, for crying out loud.

On another note, I had a super productive week in the lab (hopefully the productivity will transfer to the house hunt). I finished some experiments this week that my lab was contracted to do by a company, and they paid us $22,000 to do it. So pumped to be done with that forever. They will probably send more compounds and more money in the future, but I won't be doing those experiments! And I made membranes of 4 different yeast strains today. The most I've ever done before is 3 and that was super tough, but 4 today! WHOO OOO! And I did it in 6 hours (normally it takes 4 hours for me to do 1 or 2). So I had a great week and now I'm going to take a long weekend by house hunting and going to visit parents, brother, sisterinlaw, and baby!

scientists are weird

So, I went to a conference this weekend. It was a free conference (which doesn't really happen in science, $250 is usually how much it costs to walk in the door), but I have a poster, I thought I should go and present it. I brought a labmate with me so that I didn't have to go alone. We both wore nice clothes, business casual. Half the people there were also in business casual, the other half were in jeans. So, scientists wear jeans to a conference. Odd. I knew that probably half the people there would be in jeans, but that doesn't mean that I could ever do such a thing. It's a conference. Probably only scientists would ever wear jeans for a conference.

So, My labmate and I were standing next to my poster. One of my boss's collaborators was at the conference, but he is not a collaborator on my project and I have never spoken to him before. He came up to me at my poster and stood there for about 20 minutes, basically trying to decide if there was anything else that he could possibly say. Labmate and I weren't really able to leave the poster, and professor couldn't figure out if there was anything else to say but for some reason couldn't leave. And as if it wasn't awkward enough, here comes another professor who I've never heard of and is obnoxious enough to think he has more imporant things to say than anyone else on earth. So, obnoxious prof broke up the strained conversation with awkward prof, and then obnoxious prof walked away and left us with awkward prof. It's kind of like these professors are already socially awkard and then they try to talk to women and it's worse. At least they gave us free heineken.

On a side note, a 9-point deer is dead by the bow and arrow of my finance. he is thrilled. and i am glad that he won't be gone every weekend hunting for the next two months. and i'm mighty apprehensive about the fact that he wants the head mounted. i guess our new house will have to have a room for him to put a deer head in that i won't have to go into.
UPDATE: To have the whole head mounted is almost $400, so instead the taxidermist is just going to bleach the skull and mount the skull and antlers (British style apparently). That's only $125. Still a ridiculous amount of money, but my munchkin is so proud of himself, I just hope that we can mount is certification test scores on the wall next to the deer head. That is what really counts. And it's coming up on Oct 17.

to blog

as i am attempting to grow up and leave school (after 23 years in school, it's time), I need a forum in which to say whatever i want to for the day.

i am entirely too easily distracted from writing my thesis and doing experiments, but if I can focus my distractions by writing something here, maybe I'll be inspired to write my thesis. Or i hope so! i need something to motivate me.

so, a list of my distractions
1. i am thinking that when adam and i move to indianapolis we should buy a house and quit throwing our money at bad landlords. so, i have talked to a real estate firm and am working on filling out forms to get a mortgage broker to figure out how much we can borrow. and i'm looking through many pictures of houses. there are lots and lots of houses for sale (this market is so sad, another reason why i should buy now) and so i can kill hours looking through houses. so much more fun than writing my thesis.
2. this election. i am paying way too much attention when i already know who i am voting for. i check out several websites every day to see what the electoral vote predictions are for that day. i will say that today was my favorite so far, with obama having 335 electoral votes (including ohio, virginia, and florida) and mccain only 185. it was so pretty. again, so much more fun than writing my thesis (though creates unnecessary anger at times). if you're interested in the websites i like most: electoral-vote.com and perspctv.com
3. my puppy. little spunky munchkin is absolutely hilarious and i would much rather play with her than write my thesis.
4. the bonnie hunt show. i'm not a super huge fan of talk shows, but the bonnie hunt show is hilarious. i have always liked bonnie hunt, and her new show is so entertaining. i really want to watch it every day, and i don't need to do that!
5. countdown with keith olbermann. this is again distracting because of the election, but it is a separate source of distraction. i need to stop watching tv, and yet these shows pull me in and i can't seem to turn them off.
6. the sex and the city movie. i love it. i cannot help it, and since it came out i've watched it twice. retarded, i know, it's been out for a week and 2 days. why do i have such an obsession with movies, i wonder??
7. harry potter. i know, the series is over, it has been for well over a year. and yet i love it and i read it to fall asleep at night. and i read it to help me fall back asleep when i wake up in the middle of the night. and i should be reading scientific papers. they would certainly help me fall asleep faster.
8. waking up in the middle of the night. i have been unable to sleep two nights in a row for a few weeks now. last night i was tossing and turning for a couple of hours. this is not healthy. i'm starting to wonder if i should take nyquill before i go to bed just so that i sleep all night. it's getting old really really fast.
9. the centrifuge destructor. who is me. on monday i was doing an experiment, one that i have done many many times in my 5.5 years at purdue, that ends with a centrifugation step with spinning at 39000 rpm, or 150000 xg for that specific centrifuge. something bad happened (i'll find out tomorrow i hope when the beckman guy comes out to look at it). i think that the centrifuge froze and the rotor kept spinning which resulted in the rotor destroying the inside of the centrifuge and luckily not launching out of the centrifuge and lodging into whatever wall it happened to find first. centrifuges are extremely dangerous, and now that i've used one completely correctly (i balanced my tubes despite the constant questioning if i did, that makes me angrier by the minute) and it still exploded, i don't ever want to use a centrifuge again. and i need to perform that exact same experiment at least 12 more times to graduate (a quick guess). i have been so traumatized by that lovely experience that i haven't been able to work this week. i am so afraid that i will break something else that i have been doing the least amount of work that i have to. i am looking forward to a new week and being able to start over. just to give you an idea of what i destroyed: an ultracentrifuge of this size is $60,000-70,000 and a rotor is probably $5,000-6,000. Both of these pieces of equipment were very old and were working on borrowed time (as my boss put it). I am traumatized for life.

I think that I can end my list there and say that I am going to Chicago tomorrow to see family, and go to the midwest enzyme chemistry conference on saturday. i am pumped for this weekend, especially because i think that i need to have a big bang to separate my this week from the rest of my career at purdue. but i also think that when i need to use an ultracentrifuge, someone else will be pushing the start button for me