My First RIP Went a Little Like This

First thing. Name change again. I like how it rolls off the tongue and I don't actually talk about girls or cars... In other blog concerning things, there's no shortage of ridiculousness going on and I have a backlog of awesomeness to tell everyone about! So next week I'm going to post about the Experimental Biology conference I went to in San Diego a few weeks ago and the hell I had to go through for that to work out (preview: It was an absolutely amazing experience).

The picture above is from just before my first RIP... Every month someone from either my lab or the lab we meet with every-other Monday presents all of his/her research and it ends up everyone presents all of their research ever once a year. We call this our Research In Progress or RIP. When I first saw it listed out with Name: RIP and date, it seemed like my boss was planning the death of my labbies... I didn't have much to present last year so this year was my first RIP. 

The hardest part of the whole thing was learning how to tie a bow tie of course. It is ridiculousness. I spent 3 or 4 hours the night before trying to make it look decent and when I finally got it down, I wanted to sleep in it so I didn't have to try again in the morning. It was also pretty unfortunate that it was on memorial day because everyone else was enjoying their day-off-goodness. So after a week and a half of practicing in front of my boss and making a reasonable presentation and 3 hours of learning to tie a bow tie, I was ready. I do this thing when I'm nervous where I speak really really really fast so I started to do that at the beginning my PI looked at me and told me to calm down so I did and the presentation was comfortable from then on out. It was also a nice ego-booster for the PI of the other lab we meet with to tell me that one of my diagrams really helped her understand a concept that she had trouble with in the past. All-in-all it was a good presentation and there were also really tasty cookies that my PI brought. Actually, she's been bringing cookies to pretty much every lab meeting and I have no self control around cookies. It's a bit unfortunate. 

In other lab news: We got these really cool conductive beads that replace our water baths and they're pretty magical. Now when I take my media out of the water-bath it's not wet! They're also really shiny. I'd definitely recommend them. They also seem a bit cleaner than water obviously because, well, gross things can't grow well on solid things.

I'm actually on a deadline to take down the spring decorations before weeks end and put up summer decorations so I should probably go do that. 

 I also just wanted to share this picture. No real reason, actually.