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!

Hilarious, Amazing Wedding Processional

I will not be doing this, but this is freaking AWESOME!

friends are the BEST

I miss my old lab. I miss the people I worked with, I miss my boss, and I miss my project. I am going to visit them tonight for a night of ridiculous before I go visit my family tomorrow for a day of fun in the sun (or as much sun as we can get - it's supposed to be cold). It is amazing how good those kids that I worked with make me feel! They are so excited to see me, and every time I talk to them they tell me they miss me. We've been emailing back and forth and the new Mrs AL uses so many exclamation points and lots of YAYs in each email (she is quite a bit like me in how she expresses her excitement). She really just makes me so glad I met such great people, and it's hard to find people you like that much, especially at work.

I'll also say that putting together a list of friends to invite to the wedding is tough. I would like to invite every friend I've ever known, even though we haven't been in touch for a while. I'm fortunate enough that some friends I was unable to put on my list are coming as other friend's date, so I will still get to share our special day with them. But, the neat thing about making the guest list, is the realization that we get to claim so many wonderful people as our friends. Making the guest list really made me feel so blessed to have so many great friends. And when they are so excited to see me, it makes me feel even more blessed!

2 weeks and 1 day until I'm Mrs. S. H-M, PhD... so so many years in the making!

reunion

It's been 10 years since I graduated from high school. A LOT has changed in the past ten years, a lot has stayed the same. Luckily I'm still a redhead (though these gosh darn white hairs keep poking up out of nowhere, jerks) and I've actually learned how to manage my hair much better than I did back then, and it's long again (too long... sis-in-law will be chopping it back to grazing my shoulders on Aug 2). I'm glad I chopped my hair off right before junior year of high school, it gave me confidence that I never had before that. And I have been able to keep that confidence and run with it. I finally finished school, just 6 months shy of our reunion, but I am a Dr now (even if it's only a Dr of Philosophy, I'm still a doctor!). Having not stopped going to school since HS graduation (and I still feel like I'm in school, even though I'm not taking classes-I don't have a real job yet). I have always been on the fence about whether or not I would attend the reunion (depending on whether or not I was actually done with school, cause I did not want to entertain the line of "you're STILL in school?" questions), but now I cannot go (San Francisco will be on my mind, or maybe something else honeymoon related). I am slightly disappointed, but, at the same time, facebook has provided me with being able to find out what people are doing now, so I don't need to go! I miss some of my friends from high school and wish we'd stayed in touch better. But I would rather have a mini-reunion of those wonderful people who helped make those awkward years go faster.

What else amazes me is how little I remember about what happened in high school. A close friend once told me your brain starts leaking when you're 25. When she told me that I was not yet 25 and convinced it happened before 25. Now that I'm beyond 25, I cannot pinpoint when my brain began leaking, but it sure does drip a lot. Info just falls into the abyss and even when I'm reminded of events later, I still don't remember when those things happened.

And the little 20 yr old boy that is following me around trying to learn biochemistry and confusing everything I say said "Whoa" when I told him my 10 yr reunion was this year. Cruising for a bruisin, he is.

public v. scientists

The bloggers over at The Intersection, who have just announced they've moved their blog, Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, have just released a new book called Unscientific America.  It is about the "two cultures" that exist, scientists and the public, and what has cause this disconnect between the two. I have not yet read the book, but I plan on it (as soon as I get my rear in gear and open an account at the library).  They blog often about their book and I feel like I have learned a lot since starting to read their blog.  But, just released (amazingly good timing for Mooney and Kirshenbaum), is a study by The Pew Research Center, in conjunction with the American Association for the Advancement of Science,  in which they polled the public and scientists and compared their answers of the same questions. Now, this article is rather long, and does get confusing at times (there are a LOT of percentages), but the main message is very clear: the public and scientists view the world and the sciences very differently.  One question that displayed a huge difference was the comparison with science in the US vs. the rest of the world.  49% of scientists say that US scientific advancements are the best in the world (which I tend to agree, but it is stiff competition) while only 17% of the public says that the US is the best in science.  Combine the 'best in the world' category with 'above average' and 94% of scientists polled have put the US scientific advancments in the top tiers while only 75% of the public has done so.  This then makes me wonder, what is the public using to come to this conclusion? And what can be done to better inform the public of how awesome science and scientists in this country are? Rhetorical questions that I cannot answer but I really would like to be able to because answering these questions could be the first step in solving the problem.

I was entertained by the GQ ad posing rock stars with scientists, but that ad did nothing for informing the public about what scientists actually do (not to mention the lack of scientific diversity was extremely disappointing).  The campaign is to convince the next generation to go into science, but the ad is more focused on the rock stars instead of the scientists.  Maybe future ads will focus on what the incredible research is. If they weren't planning on it, maybe they should reconsider. 

I went to visit Adam's work this week and one of his coworkers asked what I do. I responded, "I work in the med school in a lab." One of Adam's other coworkers chimed in, "She's trying to cure cancer, no joke." It was really neat for me to have someone else brag about what I do, I know I don't.  I recently heard that only one in ten people knows a scientist. I find this sad, but I'm glad I can be a scientist for people to know. 

P.S. My attack dog is on a mission to kill the fly in our house - she's such a good girl, and absolutely hilarious.

P.P.S. you can always tell when I'm working on writing a paper cause I tend to blog instead.  :)