Science Monkey

Our Valentine’s day got off to an adrenaline-filled start this morning. At about 5:15 we were awoken to a loud, screeching noise coming from somewhere outside the bedroom. The cats were fine — they were both sleeping in the bedroom with us — so Emma went to her office to look at the chickens. She didn’t see anything, but I threw on some pants and went out to check. The chickens that were in the coop were fine, but only two-thirds of the chickens were there! I looked around for a while but couldn’t find the third. Emma and I assumed the worst, that somehow a raccoon or other animal had gotten into the coop and stolen one of our girls. I managed to get back to sleep after a while and was awoken again at about 6:45 to the sound of loud clucking and squawking outside the bedroom window. It turns out that somehow Dora (we assume) managed to get out of the coop between last night and this morning and spent the night roaming, and then was hungry. I was extremely relieved, although rather frustrated that the stupid chicken had ruined my sleep.

I think I mentioned this the other day, but all three of our chickens are laying eggs now! In fact, we got three eggs today with only two chickens in the coop. How odd, eh? Either we have a superchicken among our brood or Dora laid an egg before taking her runner. The latter seems more likely, although we’ve had seven eggs in the last four days now. Three on Sunday, one yesterday, and three today. Superchicken, perhaps.

Work is…work. I did manage to get a good repeat of yesterday’s RT-PCR data which was a relief. Also, my data jibe pretty well with some previous data from the lab, which made me trust them even more. I still am not sure about my control gene, though…I now have data for three genes in brain and liver. My gene is about 10 times higher in brain if I compare them to beta-actin, which fits well with our previous data (although that data was also in comparison to beta-actin). However, my gene is about 100 times higher in the brain if I compare to 18S rRNA and about three times higher if I compare to Tbp. I need to think and ask around some more. Is beta-actin enough? Or should I use either of the other two? Something else? Cyclophilin? Gapdh? Ponderous, ponderous.

For Valentine’s, Emma and I bought matching shirts. From Thinkgeek:

Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
All my base
Are belong to you

We’re such dorks, but it makes me happy. Who else would humor me this way?

I think last Friday’s LMPCR didn’t work. Sigh. I won’t develop the autorad until tomorrow morning, but the membrane was pretty cold after my washes this morning. WTF, man? At least my RT-PCR looks promising, pending a repeat or two.

Here’s a nice flower to soothe my frustrated soul. Plus, Keegan is sitting on the armrest next to me, being all loving for the time being.

Before I forget (again) to share, I have two upcoming performance dates. On Monday, March 19th, I’ll be performing for the epigenetics joint lab meeting. On Tuesday, March 27th, I’ll be playing the Biochemistry Journal Club. Hopefully I’ll have some data by then. Otherwise, I’d better learn to juggle…fast!

How the hell is it Thursday evening already? Who said that was okay? This week has just flown by for whatever reason.

This has been a decent week, all things considered. Not a great one, not one for the books, but not horrible. I still feel like I’m making progress at work, but I’m tired of getting blank LMPCR autorads. That’s gotta stop right quick. If the new LMPCR is still blank, I’m not sure what I’m going to do, other than pull my hair out.

I took off a little early from work yesterday afternoon and spent a few hours baking. I’ve been reading this fantastic Swedish food blog, Anne’s Food, lately and am feeling a somewhat inspired, bork, bork, bork. I found her blog when looking for a pepparkakor recipe and have been following it pretty regularly for the last month. I haven’t been quite brave enough to try anything, yet, but I think I’m going to try my hand at some sourdough this weekend. In my baking yesterday, I made a fairly disappointing sourdough in the bread machine. I think my starter is pretty decent, but a few more days certainly won’t help. I also made a whole mess of chocolate cookies which have been just fantastic.

I need to stop writing about food…I’m getting hungry again.

The new Survivor is on, but I refuse to get sucked in. Again. Okay, okay, so they got me with the whole battle-of-the-races crap last season, so I’m not going to let it happen again. Unless there’s another Yul, who was really charming and likable…actually, I liked almost all of the last five or six, which made the show more interesting.

Okay, enough rambling. I’m going to go do something productive for the twenty minutes until CSI. Like practice the piano. Or clean the kitchen. Maybe I’ll just eat a few more cookies.

PS: If you like wheat beers, I’d recommend the Samuel Adams seasonal white ale. Pretty decent, IMHO.

I just finished watching the end of the second season of Battlestar Galactica. Holy freaking crap. Wow, just…wow. Gaius Baltar? You’re a bad, bad man.

You know what’s funny? Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

You know who are bad? The Mooninites. No, not those Mooninites. Those Mooninites are pretty sweet. I totally want to make a night writer.

Maybe that’s just the shiraz talking.

I’ve been practicing piano like a motherfucker lately. For whatever reason, I’ve had a decent amount of free time at home — work is a little bit lighter right now, I’m sleeping less, whatever — and have been making myself spend a lot of it at the piano. Last year (last month, even) I would have wasted my time watching mind-numbing TV or dicking around on my computer…this year, not so much. Maybe it’s my resolutions. Maybe I’m actually improving myself. Maybe I’m over interpreting this situation.

That said, practicing scales is boring as all get out. Even with the addition of a few chords at the end of the scale this week, after about ten minutes my mind starts to wander. To force myself to focus, I’ve had to make practicing into a game. The current game is that I have to play five perfect scales (with chords) consecutively before I can progress to the next one. I played the B-flat major scale twenty or thirty times the other night, and last night I feel like I spent half an hour on A-flat major. The game seems to work, though, because this morning I was able to rip through all of the major scales with very few errors. And when I slowed the tempo a little, I think my only mistake was on A-flat. I keep wanting to play G-flat rather than G-natural. Oh well. Practice, practice. Maybe this next week I’ll get to start using my left hand…

In other soul food news, I ordered a bunch of seeds last night from Seeds of Change! I’m so enthused by having chickens (THAT LAY EGGS!) in our backyard that I want to put some time into the garden this spring. I bought the easy-to-grow garden sampler, which seemed like a reasonable first stab. We have a bunch of germinating trays lying around the house, so this weekend I’m going to set a few up. I’m cautiously optimistic. This seems like the right time of year to start germinating seeds in these parts (it may actually be a few weeks late) and we’ve got some good space for our garden. My father-in-law has a tremendous garden in his backyard, so I may need to go pick his brain a little as I progress.

Okay. Back to work. Happy Thursday (and happy February!)