Science Monkey

Gosh, how has it been a week since I’ve written? The time, she does fly by. Current mood: pretty good; could certainly be worse. Current music: the hum of my box fan (stupid A/C).

Life has been pretty hectic this past couple of weeks. I finally got over that nasty virus on Tuesday, so I’ve been trying to put a bunch of hours in at the lab since then. I’m moving a little more slowly than I might like but I feel like I’m making deliberate, forward progress.

I can’t remember if I blogged it or not, but I finally got some radioactivity in at the end of the previous week, so I got to do some Southern experiments this past week. At this point it looks like either my probes or my membranes are shitty. I labeled a probe of mine and a probe from our former postdoc (who graciously took time away from his work to supervise me and make sure I wasn’t doing anything obviously stupid), then hybed my probe to a test strip that I made and the postdoc’s probe to a membrane he provided. Mine came back all black and nasty and smeared, but his was lovely, a single, clear line well above the background noise. After seeing that, I decided to throw out all of my probes and re-create them from the original PCR. I could spend a month trying to reisolate a single clone from each of the probes (and be sure that it’s right), or I can take a week and generate them fresh. Progress.

Ah, work. Enough work typing. I’ve been doing a few things to keep my sane outside of work. Sleeping, mostly, but not exclusively. While looking for some old test scores in my office closet, I came across a bunch of pictures of me that came from my Grandma Henderson. I was at work late one night and borrowed the scanner between experiments, then posted a bunch of them on Facebook. That link should work, even if you’re not a member. There are a couple of particularly cute ones, including one of me all bundled up in a snowsuit from about 1978, and one of me in front of the Golden Gate Bridge from about 1983. Hee! I plan to keep expanding the album as I find more pictures and get them scanned.

I’m still knitting, too. I’ve moved on to the Next Project, which I think I’ve written about before. At least I think I’ve written about the concept behind the Next Project. I’ve ordered a “stitch dictionary” and am going to make a bunch of little dishtowels (or whatever, but about that size) and learn as many stitch patterns as I can. Well, maybe not learn, but practice and get used to manipulating the yarn and the needles with the clubs that I call hands.

The colors are pretty good, right? And I think they’ll all work together with each other. The yarn is thin enough that the cool ladies at our favorite yarn store — who must think I’m nuts…I made this quick, quick stop earlier to look at a couple of the 4″ square pieces that they have hanging on the walls and are very similar to the dishcloth project, and must have spent all of 90 seconds in the store because I had to get the groceries home — suggested using two at a time so I tried to pick colors that would look nice paired. Clearly the two blues look decent together and the two pinks, but I think that either of the pinks will be decent with either of the blues. We’ll see. Worst case I hate it, and I don’t do that one any more.

I’m also still playing WoW, of course. The weekly adventures are over on Wara’s blog, but in summary I’m still having a lot of fun. I left my old guild which had become too raid-focused for my tastes, and have found another guild that is pretty fun so far. A friend of mine is an officer and I’m looking forward to getting to play with her a little bit (if she ever come back online…hint, hint). They’re pretty cool and casual and mature, which is basically all I want. I don’t need to be (or have time for) doing the real hard-core endgame raids right now, and that’s not their focus at the moment. Maybe eventually, but not right now, and that works well for me.

Enough for now. Time to go wake up the wife so she can take a shower and get to work, the poor kid. My hero. Seriously.

I spent almost the entire weekend in bed sick, so I have little of interest to share. So why am I posting? ‘Cause it’s my blog and I’ll post if I want to! Heh.

Actually, I do have some fun news to report. I was feeling better on Sunday afternoon, so I went over to our favorite local yarn store and Sharon helped me finish my scarf! Woo! She showed me how to sew the remaining lengths of yarn back into the scarf, so it doesn’t have those dangly bits any more. Hurray! Emma says she doesn’t block her scarves, so I’m declaring this one done. I updated its progress over on tha Rav and am ready to move on to the next project!

Well, after I get some more sleep, ’cause I’m still pretty tired. I made it to work but am not expecting to get much done beyond that. Type to you later, my friends.

Emma and I had a lot of fun knitting this weekend. She is taking a sock knitting class at our favorite local yarn shop, and seeing her working diligently on her homework inspired me to get back at my scarf.

I finished my first skein of yarn but had a small problem. Although I had used half of my yarn, I didn’t have half of a scarf. I didn’t even really have a third of a scarf. Hmm…what to do? Head to Hanks, of course!

My original intent was to just buy one or two more skeins of the same yarn that I was using. It’s this nice, semi-chunky yarn that has great texture to it. The yarn was spun with alternating stress (technique? pressure? however the hell you spin yarn) so there are regions where it’s wide and regions where it’s narrow. Emma made a scarf for her dad with it and the end effect is really cool. The scarf looks like she used a really complicated knitting pattern when she actually just used the knit stitch and hit a nice resonance with the yarn.

Fortunately, as it turned out, they were out of the same blue color. What to do? They had the same yarn in a couple of different colors — a lilac and a deeper purple — so Emma suggested that I do four big stripes of color. The more I thought about it, the more I loved this idea. I bought one each of the lilac and purple and am really excited to see how the scarf is going to turn out. I mean, I was pleased that I was doing it before, but now I’m even happier.

I went a little nuts last night and kept grinding away, so by the time I stopped I had the second skein entirely knit into the scarf. I fastened the next yarn and called it a night.

It was really fun, you know? I sat for a little while on the couch last night and just marveled at my scarf. Well, perhaps marveled is a strong word, but felt very pleased with myself. I made that. And it really doesn’t look bad at all.

I’m starting to turn my thoughts now to What Comes Next. The monkey is coming, of course, but I want it to be perfect when I make it. Or at least 98% perfect. My problem is that we live in Florida, a climate ill-suited to the male knittr. I could make more scarves, of course, or a sweater. Eventually I want to make a Norwegian sweater, but that’s not exactly Project Two material. And at least one pair of knucks, naturally (I’m leaning towards “Hold fast”). But it’s far too warm here most of the time to wear scarves and sweaters and gloves and knit hats. I have a couple of friends who are pregnant, so baby blankets would be nice gifts. Emma suggested hand towels, which seemed like a really silly idea until Lorena pointed out that I could use them to learn stitches. She suggested I get a “stitch dictionary” and work my way through it, practicing each stitch one at a time until I had it down cold, making little blocks of a towel (or multiple towels) as I go. Not a bad idea, eh?

N.B.: For those of you on Ravelry, I’ve finally gotten my account up and running, so I’m hip with the fly kids. I joined the Hanks group, naturally, and played around a little. It looks like a really nice resource.

I went out to try and watch the eclipse last night, but it was too overcast to see much from the house. I took a few pictures anyway, to experiment with shutter settings, etc. This was my favorite. I really like how the light reflecting off of the moving clouds creates a shimmery halo around the partial eclipse. It reminds me of pictures of the Northern Lights, which I have yet to see in person.

For reals! So it’s been a while since I’ve rapped at ya, for which I’m sorry. I hope you had a nice long weekend, with perhaps a little marching yesterday? I did not march, for I am not much of an activist, mostly because I’m lazy. I don’t have anything exciting to share, but I’d like to ramble a little and let you know I’m not dead.

Emma had a couple of days off (in a row!) this weekend, so we got to spend some nice time together. Much of the time was spent sleeping, as we were both bitten by a tsetse fly, I guess, but at least it was time together. We also dragged her mom bowling on Sunday morning which was hella-fun. I bowled remarkably well, too, which always makes the time more fun. Well, maybe not remarkably well, but certainly above average. For me. Yay. If you ever want to go bowling with us, let me know. We tend to go Sunday mornings after breakfast, when it’s both cheap and empty. Good times.

I worked some more on my scarf, too, finishing another dozen rows or so. It’ll get done, eventually, but not anytime soon. That’s okay. I’ve got the bag sitting on by the couch, so whenever I sit to watch more than five minutes of TV I make myself do a row or two, which I’m hoping will get me in the habit. I’m supposed to get my camera back from my folks tonight, so I’ll try to get a few pictures up before I go to bed. I’ve made a few mistakes but am pleased with how it’s going. Early in the knitting I somehow added a stitch…I think I went through a particularly thick bit of yarn but can’t figure out where. And yesterday I noticed a screwy edge — it had a little indentation in it — and found a loop that I had evidently dropped. Hee hee. Oh well. These little things give it character, right?

Speaking of character, I wore my hat for my walk to work today. I’ve got this really nice, leather hat that I wish I wore more often (visible in my Happy New Year picture a few posts down), but am too much of a chicken to wear outside. Consequently, I wear it while playing WoW on the computer. It was cold this morning, though, and I couldn’t find my knit hat, so what else is a boy to do? I wore my favorite navy sweater, a scarf that Emma made me a few years ago, and my hat and I think I cut a rather dapper profile, if I do say so myself. I caught a few people smiling at me as I walked, but it was smiling in a friendly manner, not a OMG-what-a-tool manner. Or so I choose to believe.

Back to work. Type to you later.

I started on my second knitting project last night, but the first one that I plan to complete. Emma and I went down to our favorite local yarn shop and bought for me some nice, boy color yarn (a deep, rich blue) and a pair of needles. After some preliminary fumbling last night, I remembered how to cast on and then Emma showed me how to actually knit. Woo! The scarf is probably going to be too wide but I don’t care. Well, not too much. I did about ten rows last night and am starting to get it figured out.

I also broke down and ordered my own pair of bowling shoes this past weekend. They won’t be as hot as Emma’s shoes, of course, but I like the way they look. Emma and I have been bowling pretty regularly and really enjoying it. We stink, of course, but it’s fun. Maybe we’ll even join a league one of these seasons?

Okay, time to work. Type to you later.

Can I tell you how much of a sucker I am at the seed and feed? I went by on Saturday morning to get some more chicken feed. Before I know it, I’m walking around with a tray of beautiful seedlings, just begging to get planted in our garden. *sigh* They must see me coming from a mile away…”Here’s one of them city boys who wants to play farmer. If he were a real farmer, he’d be growing the seedlings himself. Sucker.” Whatever. It cost me a whopping $30 for the 50-pound back of chicken feed, two trays of broccoli seedlings (12 plants), one trays of brussels sprouts (6 plants), two trays of cauliflower (15 plants), and a tray of lettuce. I got the beds mostly cleared out this weekend and about half of the new stuff planted. I’m going to try and finish planting tonight (assuming it doesn’t rain), and I’ll get some pictures up. Woo!

As you can probably guess from my lack of posts, this has been a busy week with little significant information to share. Work has been plodding along reasonably well which is a nice change. Waradwen got a new pet this morning (two actually, details below). Uncle Dave and aunt Martha were in Florida this past weekend to celebrate Dave’s birthday, so we got to have dinner with them on Monday. Emma had a day off on Wednesday and spent it with Susy at Epcot (pictures to come). Overall, I’d give the week a solid B.

As I mentioned above, work has been decent this week. My last two sets of mouse preps are looking good so far, so we might be able to actually generate some data in the next week, which would be terribly nice. These experiments are just confirmation of what a previous grad student saw (but never repeated and her probe was poorly located) and what a postdoc saw years and years ago (but was never followed up on). Assuming all goes well, we should be able to get a manuscript together pretty quickly, on which I may or may not be first author. Tom said I would months ago, but I haven’t been involved at all in the writing process. The former grad student has written a couple of drafts but Tom says they’re nowhere close to what we want, so he’s declining to share them with me. I don’t quite get it. The first author does the bulk of the experiments and the writing, right? We’ll see how it goes, but I’m expecting that I’ll be second on this paper. Not something to quit over, but yet another time where Tom has said one thing and then done something else.

Tiger is getting increasingly confident in her ball. She ran down the hallway last night, then came back to us. I don’t think that she’s just running blindly around, either, because she’ll go towards specific objects. Or cats. Heh. Last night we had the front door open because the weather was so nice and poor Rory was sitting, looking out through the screen, when Tiger charged at him. I’m actually a little happy about that…I’d prefer it if the cats had a healthy fear of Tiger, because I think they could eat her in about three bites if they decided to.

We also figured out a good way to give Tiger her baths. Chinchillas take sand baths, where they roll around in the dirt to get clean. Nifty, eh? We bought her a chinchilla-shaped ceramic…well…bathtub but she never seemed to really like it. This week we went lower tech. We bought a large tupperware container and found a place online selling large quantities of the sand. What we’re doing now is putting a nice layer of sand on the bottom, then putting her in with the lid on upside down (so she can, you know, breathe, but not run away). She freaking loves it. Yay! She digs down into the dirt then flops over and rolls around, then repeats herself. Very cute to watch. The container we bought has clear sides so we can watch her and one of these times I’ll remember to set up the video camera.

Much of my free time this week has been subsumed by Warcraft. For those of you sane enough to avoid the game, it’s Brewfest, which has been a heck of a lot of fun. There are racing games you can play for tickets and when you earn enough tickets, you can buy an epic mount that’s only available during the fest. The quests are repeatable, but only once or twice a day, so it’s taken a while to earn all of the tickets. I averaged about 70 a day, I think, so it took me ten days to earn the 600 tickets. I totally borked up the beer run last night and was six tickets short, so of course I had to get online early this morning and finish. I’ve been saving money from my arcanite transmutes (10g a pop, minus about 2.5 for the mats, so that’s not bad) and bought both the epic mount and the regular mount. I can’t use the epic mount until level 60 (and after I improve my riding skill which costs another bomb) and the regular mount was only 10g (compared to the 100g for the epic), so I went ahead and bought it. I realize it’ll live in my bank after about a month or so, but that’s okay. I’ll have fun with it until then. Plus, I had the money. Just barely, but I had it.

Now poor Wara’s flat broke. I sold some redundant junk in my bank to make a little money and I have the mats for more arcanite transmutes, but for the moment I’m basically penniless. Oh well. I can always bum money if I really need to, or I can just earn it again. Plus, as I understand it, money is easier to come by as you get higher up, which will be nice. At least I’m pretty set with gear and weapons for a while so not having money won’t be a huge inconvenience. Pretty soon I’ll be able to cross into Outland, whence the easy money, as far as I can tell. Well, easier. Until then I’ve got some reputation grinds to work on (Argent Dawn and the Cenarion Circle, to be specific, so I’ll be alternating between opposite corners of the world).

Enough nerding out. The sooner I get back to work, the sooner I’ll be done. The sooner I’m done, the sooner I can go home and get playing. Yay!