compliments from students

I have been teaching at a small school for 8 weeks now. I am teaching Clinical Chemistry to medical lab tech majors, a lot of which has turned out to be anatomy (and I've never taken anatomy). It is a challenge, but I am learning lots while I go along. And my students like me! How do I know? Below are some quotes direct from their mouths

1. "That makes sense. Why couldn't YOU have been our teacher for [insert course name here]?" They have said this for more than one course. They actually say this a LOT.
2. "I've been taught PCR before, but that was the first time I understood it."

Alright, I'm out. But those two really make me feel good. Especially the PCR one. I know that PCR is tough, and I worry that I will talk over their heads. But for PCR, I didn't! I'm really enjoying teaching, I really think I'm getting the hang of it, and on Thursday I get to talk about Amino Acids and Proteins (my favorite!).

long time no blog

I has been quite a while since I blogged something. Anything. I've been super busy with my postdoc and being adjunct faculty and applying for jobs. Lots of jobs. I had an interview yesterday. It went well (or at least I thought it did), but I haven't heard anything yet and he made it sound like he was going to call me last night if he wanted to schedule a second interview. So now I'm hopeful my phone will ring while constantly checking my email to see if he's sent me a rejection email. I keep going over the interview in my head wondering what I might have said that would make him not want to hire me and I cannot think of anything. Granted, the other people he interviewed may be just a better fit for the position. But I would be great! Sigh. Maybe he'll still call me. No news is good news, right?

my wedding flowers

So, I had an awesome experience planning my wedding. The entire process was super fast and easy (especially considering I only planned it in 5 months), but I am super proud of my flowers. So much so, that even more than two months after the fact, I'm still excited about it and am now finally blogging about it.
I arranged all the flowers myself, and ordered the flowers from SunKing Wholesale Flowers. I ordered 250 assorted white roses for $169. Yes, that works out to about $0.67/rose. Yes, that is an incredible deal and too good for me to pass up. The flowers were delivered on Wednesday for our wedding on Saturday. I put the flowers in three buckets of water and stored them in my parents air conditioned bedroom (which is the coldest air conditioned room in the universe, I swear).
On Thursday evening, my mom and I dethorned the roses (just used a pair of scissors and chopped off the sharp tips of the thorns) and removed most of the leaves.
On Friday morning I arranged my bouquet and bridesmaids bouquets. I just made circles around a center rose, for the bridesmaids bouquets I made two circles around the center rose and three circles for my own bouquet. I wrapped a rubber band around the stems at the base of the flowers, trimmed the stems so that they were all the same length, and wrapped the bottom of the stems with another rubber band. I then wrapped the stems with white ribbon, securing the beginning of the ribbon with the top rubber band and the bottom with a white headed pin.
Photo by Fetcho. Just to add to my secret to saving money, something I had forgotten about but it so obvious in this photo is my hair clip - which is an antique brooch I bought on ebay and used fishing line to attach it to a small comb. Total $12. :)

My mom collected small vases at garage and rummage sales all summer long (she spent less than $30 on all these vases, some more than others, some matched and some didn't), and I had 30 vases to use for centerpieces. Since I ordered SO many roses, I was able to add three roses per vase.
Our ceremony and reception were in the same room, so all the centerpieces were on a single table during the ceremony and my wonderful family placed the flowers on the tables after the caterer arranged the tables for the reception.
This is the table of flowers before the reception (photo by Fetcho):
I also lucked out with our caterer, Classic Cafe, Inc. The food was absolutely fantastic and they were by far the best price I've ever seen for a caterer.

I am still so excited to be married, and I had so much fun planning and making things myself and just being a DIY bride (and I miss being excited about getting those amazing deals and ideas). Now, I just need to get my act together and work on thank you notes!

Free food

I have worked with a couple of undergraduate students this summer. Often, in graduate school and now in my postdoc, there will be vendor shows or other occasions that provide free food. As a graduate student, I learned very quickly not to turn down free food (well, I still wouldn't eat meat, but...). There was a vendor show with free food over the summer and I brought over these undergrads to get the free food. Well, it turned out the free food was cake and donuts. These undergrads did not partake in the free food because they wanted to eat good lunch food. I realized two things: 1. These boys do not understand free food. 2. Mommy and Daddy always gave them money so all food for them is free. And, one of these undergrads eats more food than I think I've ever seen anyone eat in my life. He's 6'6" and I don't think he's even 200 pounds. He's a rail and he eats two meals every time he eats. I really couldn't believe it when he didn't take free dessert. I ate a free donut, and it was my lunch that day. Why am I telling this story? Because, once again, Jorge Cham hit the nail on the head with today's comic from PhD Comics:

monday afternoon hilarity

i am having a major case of the mondays. i am disgruntled about the lab, about the people, and about the fact that way too much equipment was broken while i was gone. and that people don't bother to tell me. so, this may give some explaination why i was so entertained by the following:

i was searching different companies for kits to do baculovirus expression of protein (which i have never done before). companies always include a picture of the product to help sell said product - this works for shoes, this works for biotechnology. imagine my surprise when a kit for expressing protein with baculovirus was accompanied by this:

Apparently, blue feet with French manicured nails are the key to successful baculovirus transfection. what a bummer, my feet aren't blue, and not that talented.

9 days

Well, we've been married for 9 days! We had a wonderful time in San Francisco, very busy but wonderful. We were ready to leave but also were enjoying ourselves so much that we didn't want to leave. We took a boat ride around the bay, under the Golden Gate Bridge, around Alcatraz and back (free with our CityPass). We walked around Aquarium by the Bay and Adam got to touch a few stingrays and baby sharks (free with our CityPass). We went to Muir Woods to see the redwoods (my new favorite smell) and then three wineries (Jacuzzi, Cline, and Homewood) with Extranomical Adventures. We went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA - free with CityPass) where they had a special exhibit comparing the paintings of Georgia O'Keefe and photographs of Ansel Adams that was fantastic (not free, but only $5 each). We went to the de Young Museum (free with CityPass) and saw a special King Tut exhibit ($15 each - too much in my opinion). We went to the California Academy of Sciences (free with CityPass) where they have a fantastic exhibit on evolution in modern times about the evolution that Darwin discovered on the Galapagos islands, as well as the evolution that has occured on Madagascar. How Survival of the Fittest is displayed so well on the different islands - 7 different finches that have evolved to have beaks specifically for eating certain foods whether it be seeds or worms, etc. It was very great. And, of course, we HAD to go to Haight-Ashbury and 710 Ashbury where the Grateful Dead lived in 1966-67. The CityPass was fantastic not only because of the museums we got into for free but because we were able to ride all the public transportation for free, including the cable cars.

And I was going to upload a few pictures but the site wasn't working. Grumble.

Adam's funny wedding dream

Adam had a very funny wedding dream last night (which is so much better than the awful wedding dream I had that someone stole my wedding dress and someone else tried to convince me to wear an orange one).

In Adam's dream, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson impersonators crashed our wedding, and the Owen Wilson impersonator was a shark wearing a blonde wig with a deviated septum.

When Adam told me I laughed so hard I cried. It kinda makes me want someone in a landshark costume to crash our wedding.

3 days!