Email To My PI

Dear [PI],

Here's is a ppt slide showing my data with the [technical words]. It looks pretty cool! I had done a long day of analysis over the weekend but there seemed to be no difference between the mutant and wild type cells. Needless to say, I have been sulking all week. It just didn't look like there was no difference, so I talked to [chipper engineer post-doc] about it and it turned out I'd made a mistake in calculating the angles - oops. I redid the analysis and it turned out splendidly, so now I am quite pleased again.

The moral of this story is either: Don't do trigonometry on a Sunday or Always double check with the engineeers before crunching lots of numbers. Either way, it worked out in the end.

More beautiful staining is forthcoming, as are the data on the GFP-tagged mutants. (All ready to go but delayed due to tragic contamination plus running out of reagent issues, which are now resolved.)

Regards,

[Joolya]

I Might Be A Gymnast?

Maury Ballstein: What do we do when we fall off the horse?
Derek Zoolander: [thoughtfully looking up and mouthing the words silently] ... fall off the horse...
Maury Ballstein: [looking to supply finish] We... get back on!
Derek Zoolander: Sorry, Maury. I'm not a gymnast.

god i am depressed.
science mocks me.
nature itself mocks me.
damn it all anyway. fucking cells.
fucking statistical significance.
fucking fuck.

String - Protein Interaction Networks

Oh FSM, how did I not know about this site from EMBL until yesterday? I am over the moon with geek joy. (It's interactive! There are many colors! Multiple inputs and different organisms!)

This is so cool and is changing my life. If you are not psyched about this I feel sorry for you because you are totally missing out.

Watched Four Episodes of the New Doctor Who Last Night. Love That Dude From New Doctor Who, Despite His Ears. Billie Piper Has Most Enormous Teeth.

Dude, I cannot concentrate today. Was going to go to lab, but yesterday I managed to leave a plate of cells full of trypsin in the freakin incubator and forget all about it and go home, so I think I'd best not touch anything precious or expensive today (don't think computer counts). I cannot be trusted. I mean, in the six minutes it took to change media in another set of plates I managed to completely forget about the one with the trypsin . . . I remembered in the shower this morning with a big groan and proverbial head smack. Not an irreplaceble loss of cells (I hope), but they'd been in selection media since 2/26, so it's really annoying.

Springy's plane is due to land at 6:40, i.e. in seven of the longest ever hours ever ever ever.

Think I will print out (but not read) pdf's while watching "Extras", which is a fucking hilarious show. I love Scottish chick from Ugly Betty, and Ricky Gervais better than in The Office (evincing more humanity, less smarminess). Also when Kate Winslet is miming phone sex, that is some good comedy.

Bachelor days are over once again, if I can just get through today!

(I just want to say, for the record, that I have been hyperproductive the last 2.5 months and that this week is an aberration, and that next week I have some really potentially exciting experiments planned for which cells are growing, if I can manage not to accidentally kill them before that time.)

Hm.

Chilling post about how in Sweden in 1997, a woman had to be 2.5 times more productive than a man to get the same comptency score on a grant application as her male colleagues.

Apparently, in Europe at least, not much has changed.

You know, I keep thinking, "Nah, this isn't really such a thing. I don't feel any handicap being a woman in science; everyone's quite nice!"

That's the problem with unconcious bias, though. It hides behind niceness and is not seen - only felt.

Sheesh.

Role Modelles of the Patriarchy, Options A and B

Paris Hilton and Ann Coulter:

Both similarly horrifying, yet compelling and I can't look away. My lips curl in disgust but my eyes widen at the sight of their long, scrawny necks and curtains of blond hair while my ears prick to hear what inanity will spew forth from their vapid mouths.

Rain and More Rain

Rain rain rain rain rain rain rain.

I hate Laundry Day. I could not hate it more even if it meant walking down to the dirty nasty river and banging my sheets against a rock.

Actually, that sounds kind of fun.

The Madre is due to arrive (albeit an hour late) this evening for a weekend of ladies' fun! I'm hoping it won't rain all weekend.

Reading the Tiffany Aching series of Discworld novels. I love the Nac Mac Feegles as much as I hate laundry. Also, these ones remind me of good things because Springy grew up near the Chalk and we met in Glasgow.

In the Glasgow we had a washer but no dryer - we had a large rack on a system of pulleys suspended over the kitchen table to dry the clothes. The warm air rose from the kitchen and the wet trousers drip drip dripped on the table and the windows steamed over. Outside the window was a huge fir tree where damp little birds hid from the rain. When the sun came out their invisible chorus would resound between the tenement buildings, a hundred birds sounding like a thousand.

The rain is different here. In Glasgow it started and stopped in shudders all day, fine little sponging sprays that teased and flashed about. American raindrops are fat and bold, they plop and stay put for a while, or lash against the window screens.

Rain rain rain rain rain.

If I didn't have the laundry to haul upstairs I would like to take a long long walk and get as wet as I could get. If only it weren't so cold.

One day in high school, one fine spring showers day, I left school and went for a long long walk and got as wet as I could get, and smelled the damp new leaves and splashed in the fresh gutter streams and sang to myself all afternoon. When the clouds parted and the sun began to suck up the puddles I changed my shirt and got a cup of coffee and walked all the way home. That was a good good day. I was wearing the hat of this boy and it smelled like his shampoo and then the hat and my head got wet and my head smelled like his shampoo.

I hope we will have a proper spring this year. I don't mind the rain so much if it's not cold, and if I don't have to spend all day inside with wet ankles. Wet ankles are the worst.

I need more coffee.