Enter the Matt

Kelly has convinced me that posting every now and then might be a good idea – so Hello, Internet! As I write this, Zelda is being her usual rambunctious self, rooting around the living room and finding new things to chew. I’m a little surprised, actually, as she’s usually sleepy enough at this point to keep her mostly stationary. Then again, normally I’m able to give her a walk in the evening, but tonight was a little too rainy for that. Eh, she’ll conk out soon enough.

Work has been going reasonably well. I’m still at the point where most of the day is taken up by fly work, but hopefully, the stock I’m making will prove to be healthy, and I can start spending more time in other parts of the lab. Spending hours on the scope is pretty mind-numbing, so to make up for it, I’ve been listening to more podcasts than I otherwise would. One of my favorites is the Penny Arcade/PvP Dungeons & Dragons podcast, but the most recent series ended a couple weeks ago, and I’ve been looking for something else to fill the void. It’s been harder than I expected – I’ve found a couple of good D&D podcasts, but none have that Jim Darkmagic…magic.

This week has been pretty ordinary, but I have something pretty interesting coming up on Friday. I’ll be going to the GlaxoSmithKline campus in RTP for a drug development simulation game with other young professional types. They haven’t told us much about what that’ll entail, but I’m eager to find out. I’ll try and post later to let everyone know how it goes.

Potty training success!

Its something we don't really have yet. But not for lack of trying. She did use her potty twice today all by herself, which is pretty impressive considering she's only been at it for two days. I think Zelda is getting more adorable by the day. Pretty soon she's going to be a cute overload. She's such a little cuddle bug too. We had her first vet appointment this morning. Our vet came with high recommendations from some of our friends, and they were right, he's awesome. Zelda appears to be in good health, we set up a schedule to finish her vaccines and take care of flea and heartworm medicines. He took a moment to weigh her for the records...she came in at a whopping 4lbs. Oh yeah! She's a big girl.

My defense is looming on the horizon. Less than 48hours are between me and what I hope will be victory. I went over my slides with Mark this afternoon and he said it looked really good. He changed a few things, told me to add some other stuff, but the overview was good. He also told me not to freak out (lol) that he knows I'm going to do great. Its weird when he says that, I'm not used to that many words of encouragement from him. I'm still super nervous, which is dumb because I know this material, its my work. Steph, Linda, and Matt are going to play the audience tomorrow night for a trial talk. I'm going to be home most of tomorrow practicing so hopefully I'll have it down by the evening.

**Matt says that someone might have accidentaly taught Zelda that when you make kissy noises near her head its time to roll over for someone to rub her belly. I'm sure it was completely inadvertant. It does remind of another doxie I know that still loves to be kissed on the side of his head the way he did when he was little. Maybe we shouldn't encourage it...but she has such a lovely tummy...

We're sending out, a major love, and this is our message to you

Oh Michael.  Last week was a long one.  Matt was gone to a conference in Boone, NC, I finished up my thesis, and one of my childhood heroes died.  I know for people who weren't big Michael fans think its kind of weird that some of us are so upset by his death.  Matt doesn't understand it either.  I know he was weird but I still love the MJ I knew growing up.  His music was a huge part of my childhood.  I still remember when the music video for Thriller came out and I was not allowed to watch it but I hid behind the door and saw part of it and got freaked out.  (sometimes parents do know what they're talking about)  I had a red leather jacket when I was five or six that had all the zippers on it, I thought it was so cool.  I had a sweatshirt that had him on it in a yellow sweater vest and had matching clip on earrings.  I can't even tell you how many time I've seen Captain Eo.  I was incredibly upset when they decided to replace it at Disneyland.  It just feels like a part of my childhood died.  I always had this hope that Michael would make a comeback and be who he was when I was a kid.  Thats the Michael I'm going to remember anyways. 

Like I said, Matt is back which is wonderful.  I hate it when he's gone.  Its so boring and lonely.  We did a lot of cleaning/tidying yesterday.  I washed all of his clothes that he brought back from the conference while he went to do the grocery shopping.  I finally got around to vacuuming the living room.  I also put all of Zelda's things away in her very own drawer, hung up her clothes and set out her bed.  I think the closer it gets to her coming home the more nervous Matt and I get.  I'm sure there will be lots of pictures on Sunday of her first day at home.  I don't know how I'm going to make it through the week until then.

Finally, I finished writing my thesis.  Mark has okay'd it and I'm going to pass it out to my committee today.  Scarey!  Which means that I need to put together my talk this week.  I have my defense a week from Thursday, which is July 8th at 2pm.  Thats a scarey thought too.  I just want it to be over.  Its going to be a stressful week and a half.  Matt has to give joint lab meeting the day before my defense and he always gets stressed out before he has to do that.  Hopefully we won't start throwing things at each other before the end, lol. 

This is the end...

Or more like a beginning of the end and the soon the beginning of a new beginning. Or something like that, Mark and I looked over my figures today and we'll do it again tomorrow in detail. He actually liked the pictures that I chose which is crazy. We're still not sure about a date yet but we're emailing my committee tomorrow to see when they can meet. He also said I could stay until the end of the last summer session if I wanted to incase I didn't have something planned or lined-up or something. It was and continues to be a lot of thinking and I'm going to have to figure it out soon. *bleh* Being a grown-up sucks sometimes.
On a happier note, Matt and I decided on a date...for the puppy to come home. Yay! We're going to pick her up on July 5th. I even confirmed it with the breeder this morning. She also said, "She is the most loving little girl. I cannot seem to put her down. It's hard to resist all that lovin." teehee! She's going to be such a little cuddle bug, I can hardly wait. We also finalized her name and we ordered her tags today. Zelda. I think it'll be perfect. She already has a little pile of things waiting for her here. Most of them are essentials but there are a few frivolous things. We made her first vet appointment this morning. We have to make sure she's healthy when we bring her home. EEEEP! I'm getting a little nervous.
Finally, if you try to reach me I won't be able to answer as I lost my phone and am still in the process of getting a new one. email me or call Matt if you need something.

A bit dusty around here

Its been quite some time since I last posted.  So much has happened since then.  I'll post all the fun pictures from my birthday bowling, Steph and Linda's wine party, and our lovely picnic at Duke gardens.  Once again I am sitting in the dark taking pictures of fly embryos.  They look really nice though.  The arm stripes are nearly perfect.  Mark has ok'ed the Roc1b wing discs and almost signed off on the brains too.  If I could just finish up the embryos I can begin to forget about them.  Of course I need to finish up the Roc2 pictures too but that is a story for another day. 
Matt and I celebrated our 30 monthaversary yesterday.  We had a lovely dinner at Maggiano's where we had a sort of uncomfortable conversation about the future.  Don't misunderstand, it was a good conversation.  Its hard to be an adult and figure out what you want to be when you grow up.  The whole grown up thing is pressing in on us with me graduating and Matt graduating in another year and a half or two.  He's not sure what he wants to do next, I don't blame him, I don't really know what I want to do either.  But it was very good to talk about.  Matt has a couple of ideas on what he likes and some people that he can talk to about future possibilities and ideas.  I had gnocchi and it was divine!  Matt had a chicken spaghetti with a pesto alfredo sauce.  We both decided on the larger portion since its only few dollars more and now we both have dinner for a couple of nights.  As a poor graduate students making a meal stretch is always an awesome thing.  Plus, now we don't have to think about what to make to dinner tonight, double bonus!  It was a really lovely evening. 

I just wanted to send a big hug and kiss to all my super supportive parents and brother and Moe.  You guys have been really great lately and it means a lot to me.  

Week three--Start!

I didn't mention it in my previous post but in an attempt to be more healthy, and since all of the rest of our exercise comes from walking to and from the bus, Matt and I have started working out.  Our apartment complex has a gym and its only a five minute walk from our apartment.  So far we've been doing a pretty good job of going, even when we don't really feel like it.  Its only the third week but already we're starting to see changes.  Matt is building muscle and I don't pass out after running for five minutes.  Yay us!  As an added bonus, our health insurance offers and incentive program for working out and eating well. 
We had a relatively quiet weekend.  Nathan had a birthday party on Friday night so we hung out with everyone to celebrate for a while.  I made bruschetta that had way too much garlic, as if that is possible.  I also put some roasted tomatillos in it to mix things up.  It seemed to go over well.  Besides that though, not much happening.  I was feeling under the weather on Saturday and Matt is in the middle of writing a paper so things were pretty quiet. 
On the science front, I managed to complete an experiment last week.  I having been planning to do a northern for a couple of months and with Paul, the tech from the Searles lab, I finally did it.  I even got it done without getting an radiation on myself for any place else that wasn't supposed to have it.  Bonus!  I also got it done right the first time.  Now I just need to repeat it one more time and I can check that off my long list of to dos.
Matt and I are super excited because our newest family member will be delivered tomorrow.  After nine days of waiting and over a year of saving, it will arrive tomorrow!!!  Maybe we'll take a picture of the three of us and post it later this week.  I can't really think of anything beyond that. *sigh*

Ahh the weekend

It is not really early on a beautiful Saturday morning. Matt and I slept in this morning, until 8am!!! I know it was pretty excited myself. Luckily we still got to campus before the tailgaters arrived. With all the construction that is going on around our building it is nearly impossible to park here on game days. We're not going to the game but if I go to the hallway I can see the stadium and part of the field. I did three hours worth of dissections yesterday and was halfway through adding solutions to them to prepare them for my experiment when I dropped the tube and everything spilled out onto the floor. I decided that was a good time to go home. I guess that means I'll be redoing the dissections today, along with the western that I can't seem to escape.

Hi ho, hi ho, to live at work I go...

Sorry there hasn't been much in the way of updates lately. Our lives have kinda disappeared in a large amount of work. My schedule has been going something like this:
6:30am wake up
7:20am catch the bus
7:40am start work
7:00pm go home (finally)
7:15pm-9:00pm make dinner, eat dinner, clean up
9:00-10 or 10:30pm unpack/organize the house
10:30pm go to bed

I'm kind of exhausted. It also doesn't allow for a lot of time to just hang out with Matt which makes me sad. He gets up at 7am so I get up get ready and eat and we have time for a quick hug before I run to catch the bus and he hops in the shower. This will be the first weekend since we moved in that we have the whole time we can dedicate to unpacking and organizing the apartment. Well, sort of. We both need to work most of Saturday and ND plays on Saturday afternoon. Sadly they aren't broadcasting the game locally so depending on what Matt wants to do we might go to a bar to see the game, if we get done with work on time.

On an even sadder note than the Fighting Irish game not showing here. I found out yesterday why I was having problems with this experiment I've been trying to do forever. I was trying to take pictures of some fly embryos and look at a particular gene pattern in my mutant. I know what the pattern is supposed to look like like but I could never see it. It is supposed to outline all the cells and then show up in some cells so it looks like the animal is striped. I could never see this, for months I've been looking and only gotten meh pictures of it once. I finally sat down with someone else in the lab and we went over a bunch of things I could try. I was about to leave when Jess, the person I was chatting with about it, asked me how far I turned down the laser. The short answer is I don't and was never told that I should and the laser is basically killing the signal of before I can even see it. The laser is used to excite the special tags I put on the proteins I want to look at. At which point they glow different colors. If the laser is on too high, they will bleach and no longer light up. Here is the before and after I fixed the problem. Yay science!

Here comes the last weekend

I'm very sorry that my posts have been erratic lately.  The combination of moving and craziness at work have kept me away.  Steph and  Linda helped us move almost all of the rest of the stuff left in my apartment last night.  We really owe them something nice, I offered to cook them a nice dinner.  Matt and I will get the last few boxen tonight and clean up tomorrow.  I would really like to turn in the keys tomorrow so I don't have to take time off on Monday to do it since the office isn't open on Sundays.  It all depends on how tired we are.  Going full out for a week and a half straight has a way of tiring a body out.  Back in June I won tickets to the first home football game of the season when I gave blood.  I also won a autographed UNC football from Butch Davis.  I called his office last week but they hadn't gotten the tickets yet and I'm hoping that with the game tomorrow they might have my tickets now.  On a kind of down note, I'm having a rough time at work right now.  I feel like I'm floundering.  I had a talk with Mark the other day and he says I need to start working a crazy amount of hours and on the weekends so that we can get this paper done.  I know I'm up to the effort (and so does he) but the implications are that I'm not going to have any down time for many months.  It makes me sad.

Best Western

I've been screwing up the same experiment for nearly two weeks now. I tried everything I could think of to fix it. "It" is a western (an experiment to look for presence/ absence of protein and a rough estimate of levels of protein). You have to make a gel that you put your protein into and then run electricity through the gel causing the protein to move down the gel. Depending on the size of your particular protein, it "run"down the gel at different speeds. Bigger= slower, smaller=faster. Anyways, my problem is that mine keeps running funny. It makes a frowny face and the first lane that has several colors in it scrunches up on the top and then spreads too far out about half way down. I had a new idea on how to fix it so I'm going to try again in about ten minutes. I'll let you know how it goes.

--update--
Catarina just ran a gel independent of all of my reagents and the same thing happened to her. I might hate science today.

--update the second--
It looked fine which makes me annoyed. I guess I can go ahead and do the real experiment. Hopefully my luck will last that long.