Festivus 2012!

I did science... It was fun. Festivus time!

Tradition # 1

Throughout the year the grad students have worked hard as any scientist should, but sometimes bad things happen. Those bad things usually take the form of frustratingly terrible data. Just because it can't be published doesn't mean that it's useless, though! At the end of the year we put that data to use as ornaments for our tacky Bad Data Tree! One of the many amazingly whacky and fun traditions of the lab!

Tradition number 2!

Something equally as fun and a lot less silly. Every person who is in the lab is required to make a stocking and decorate it! The decorations are holiday season themed and every year we hang up the stockings of everyone who has ever gone through the lab and everyone in the lab. As stockings went up, our PI recounted various experiences she had with the former labbies and explained to us what they were doing now. And since this was my first year... I decorated my stocking! 

Decor! 

I didn't really include this as a tradition per say because we decorate the lab for pretty much every holiday/season. This is one of our sexy-science freezers  with amazing decor. Nothing goes untouched. We hang up lights, decorate the door, every window.




We also do a potluck with another lab every year as well! It was super fun and it was my first time meeting the other lab, which we have meetings with every other week. I haven't been attending lab meetings because my schedule didn't allow me to, but I will start officially attending next semester! Yay science!

Surprise!


I'll start this off by saying that I was so excited and surprised that I didn't think about taking a picture until after most of them were gone. And I'll follow that by expressing how thankful I am for the labbies that I have, especially my grad-student boss who made me these cupcakes. I'm a vegan, so instead of buying cupcakes, she found a recipe and made them for me and they were absolutely amazing.

Holiday Party
Lastly, we have a holiday party where everyone brings their spouses/children at the end of the year. At the party there is a gag gift exchange where we each go out and buy gifts for the others and then take turns opening them or stealing from others. After that, steal/trade for a maximum of 3 times per gift. Below are the spoils.

 
There were also chocolates in my bag. But I gave them away. Someone stole my first massage-thingy, but I won in the end by getting a bag with a lovely Marilyn Monroe thermus, a bottle of sparkling juice, pack of reinforcements (great for the lab notebook) and my great massage thingy. I won't be back in action until early-mid January, so hold tight. Happy holidays and happy science-ing!

Yay Science! Yay Traffic!

School is out! Well, school has been out for exactly a week now. Finals went well, but were unnecessarily stressful because my professors thought it would be hilarious to change the dates of my finals the day before (it wasn't). But since then, life has been good. I've actually been working mostly-full days at the lab since Monday and it's been nice being able to not have class and just do science and hang out with the labbies.  But that also means driving the should-be 30 minutes there and back and the lovely experience of rush-hour traffic that doubles that driving time. The best part about it is after you're out of the right-out-of-city traffic and you think "this isn't too bad, nothing to complain about." and then 2.5 minutes later BAM no one is moving and you have to wonder how traffic just magically stopped. And those occasions when the truck in front of you changes lanes and then there is a whole new world in front of you free of vehicles where you can almost drive the speed limit before the sudden realization that it's only a 15 second experience.

 <==== Bad data tree. Stay tuned to learn more... Until the next blog.

Timer!!!

With a few people trying to write with a dead-line(self-imposed or otherwise), sometimes last minute experiments need to be conducted and things need to be re-conducted and things get a little chaotic. Not like fires burning, beakers breaking chaotic, but timer going off about every 2.5 minutes chaotic. It gets fun too because after about 5 seconds, you hear a cacophony of labbies yelling "Timer!!!!" and the actual timers.

<== My Timer

While we're on the subject, timers are useful, especially when you set them to the right time. A few weeks ago I was setting up westerns and put them on the hotplate for 5 times as much as I was supposed to... they evaporated. The end.  

Le Google Chromebook

This break has been absolutely lovely. I've had little school work, no stressful studying, and I've gotten to see a lot of my friends from High School. The only source of mild discontent would by my inability to get my hands on a Google Chromebook. I do a lot of walking on Campus, especially between the dorms/dining halls and the lab which is 1.2miles round trip that I make quite often. It's not particularly hard to do unless you have your stupidly heavy laptop strapped to your back along with books and other fun heavy stuff. 

Of course this is me giving myself to buy a less than 2.5 lb(1.1kg) Chromebook, which I've wanted for quite a while now. I actually said I would buy myself one if I got the lab job, but I instead bought a Nexus 7 because I just couldn't justify getting the older, more expensive Chromebook. Now that they are at a reasonable price it seems as though everyone had the same inhibitions as I did, as they are now flying off of the shelves. They are sold out in the closest 8 BestBuy stores, the BestBuy website, Amazon, and even the Google Play Store. I will give up my hunt for the Chromebook for the next 2 weeks as the semester is coming to an end. I have a week of classes and then finals (yay!), abd hopefully they will be back in stock in time for me to relax my post-finals brain with a new toy. 

<--- I want it. 

Off the Bench

Sorry about no posts this week, but I've had a ridiculous amount of school work and my grad student took me off of the bench. Next week is also my Thanksgiving break, so again, I won't be posting... at least not about lab. I DID however, get my safety glasses and beaker mug in, so here's a picture of them to keep you occupied.

 <---- Mine

You're an UNDERGRAD?

To start off, for those of you who haven't seen the PhD movie, go and see it. It's a funny independent film based off of the well-known PhD comics. There's this one particular scene where a PhD student appears to be falling for this guy and then he alludes to the fact that he's an undergraduate student and everything stops and she just gives him this "I can't be seen with you" look. Hilarious.

Last week was a really great week for me. Went to a Biology Graduate Student Association (BGSA) town-hall style meeting where they voiced their concerns and whatnot, showing me what I hopefully don't have to look forward to in 3.5 years. It was really helpful in feeling all biology student-y and I felt like a special undergraduate infiltrator in their meeting. The Boss-lady also took us out for drinks(Coke for me) and appetizers for a few hours and it was nice having the whole lab together having fun and talking. In other last week news, I completed my first legitimate  experiment successfully with unexpected results that my grad student is extremely excited about, I bought this sexy beaker mug which will come in later this week, and I had my first Saturday at the lab.

 <---- Not mine... but it will be (I'll take a picture then)

Terrible Gel Day

Some people have bad hair days... not me. I barely have any hair to work with, so it would be pretty difficult. What I do get, however, are horrible gel days. Have you ever been making a gel to run a western, lower gel complete, making the upper gel, and then the lab phone rings? Normally this isn't a problem, but for some reason yesterday, when I returned to the gel, I had completely forgotten what I had and had not already put in. My lower is still solidifying so I make another upper gel. I put everything in except for the TEMED and go to do other work while my lowers finish up. Being the super-intelligent person that I am, after my lowers finished up and I had poured off the water and pipette the upper before realizing that I had totally forgotten the TEMED. Take 3 everything went alright, but I'm not just talking about this awful gel day, I'm going to rant about ALL awful gel days. So if you're a leaky, cob-webbed, awfully formed gel with an upper too small for the combs, and a lower too low to look normal, I hate you.

<-Gel from Hell. Also not mine. (I promise I'll start taking my own pics soon)

Since I'm complaining, I might as well tell my nose how much  I hate it when it decides to get itchy while I'm working in the bio-safety cabinet. It's like "Bro, I know you're working, but can you scratch me?" and it only happens when I'm otherwise occupied doing other things such as working with things that I'd rather not get on my face. Kind of like my jerk immune system that decided to take a break during the weekend where I had the most work to do, like my nose, they see me being busy as an opportunity to go rogue.

In the spirit of what I was taught, it's time to appreciate the little things in life that make your day... like when you have just enough reagent to complete an experiment or just enough loading dye or media so you don't have to make anymore today. Here's to the little things that don't go wrong, the gels that aren't from the pit of hell, the cells that accept the plasmids you transfect, and things that don't explode unless you're around to see it. Also, doing my first legit experiments. It's exciting. Yay science!