We love our land and take a lot of pride in doing everything we can to make it as bird-friendly as possible. We slave away for those little guys and it pays off in a booming and diverse bird population. Sadly, though, the hill country exploded in popularity and is disappearing rapidly to development. It’s that Austin problem: everybody moves there and drives out the natives, who want to stay close, so they radiate outward. Anyone who wants to move here better do it quick before the average home price is unaffordable. Although I think the drought and heat will eventually chill all this out. Hard to want to move somewhere where there’s no municipal water and all the wells have dried up. We are developing a plan B for when we eventually get forced out by fire or lack of water.
Battle of the Bands coming up soon!!! I have just under 12 hours until it starts…
I wanted a bit on the discord server, but to summarise: everybody really really disliked the judges’ ratings. I agree with them.
This is my best friend’s cat Doctor. I just had to share the ridiculous range of expressions Doctor exhibits:
“Hey Ladies…” (look at that gracefully cocked paw…his grumpy uncle Ozzie looks on “what is this, Tindegram?”)
Then we have
ULTRA-DERP
Got through a long lab, so I can just be an eepie meepie cozy little meowmeow at home. End of the week is in short reach. That’s the good news.
I found it very embarrassing how frequently people commented on my writing by hand in the lab. (We had about two hours of sit around and wait time while the gels were loaded on the rocking table.) Like, three different people were shocked, somewhat curious, but also treated it like a bit of a zoo to gawk at and one just watched me write in dead silence for a very long time (about five minutes) because she found it ‘so satisfying’ to ‘watch how smoothly you wrote,’ which was kind of nice but also, felt a bit odd, to be under such intense scrutiny.
This was with a gel pen, too. I had used my fountain pen briefly before noticing it’d clogged, sadly, so I’ll need to wash my collection tonight except for my Preppy- which has taken to the shimmer inks like an angel, and it got even more stares. A few mentioned they hadn’t written in forever because it hurt their hands/they could ‘only think of the carpal tunnel you must have!’ and went on and on about how bizarre and strange it was that ‘you like, write, like an author??? You just write for fun??’ and I felt like a total freak.
I don’t think they meant it badly, though. And it was kind of sweet how interested they were. But it was very, very odd.
Oh! There was another nice thing, though, in lab. The little tupperware lids that the TA handed out had a small heart embossed into the front, and I pointed out that it was very cute, and also that wasn’t it nice that she was letting us leave instead of holding us here to wait for an hour past the actual ending of lab because of an issue with the machines?
And my lab partner just kind of chuckled and said in an exasperated sort of way that she ‘appreciated my looking on the bright side of things.’ She was very tired and a bit worn out from a long day, but we did speak for a bit, and it seemed to cheer her up a little, before she went about working on more flowcharts (that I had finished in advance already) and I sat down to write.
What are y’all running in lab? Standard DNA gels? Gonna blot them? I spent so many years doing Northern, Southern, and Western blots that I swear I could still make any gel or buffer without looking at a recipe.
I have exterminated about 500 baby cedars, maybe 100 green briar vines, and pulled up a little bit of early sticky weed. And this was on only about one acre. Should give you a sense of how explosive cedars are-- I only found about 5 baby live oaks in the same area and culled one of those that was growing too close to the parent tree. Also disturbed a very disgruntled bunny. I’ve got weeks and weeks of cedar management left; I dropped the ball last year and I’m paying for it now. I am SORE.
Yes, mucking around with E. coli and electrophoresis and nothing too fun. Lots of hurry up and wait. Next time we’re in lab we’re going to be running a Western blot. Mostly we just sat around and did nothing for two out of the three hours, and since I had finished my lab flowchart prep for the semester in the first week of classes, I just wrote some more of one of my IF wips while I waited to be dismissed.
The bunny sounds very cute. Sorry for it being disgruntled and disturbed from whatever bunnies get up to, and the horror of the cedars. At least hopefully the weather holds, for all the gardening.
O_O
I don’t consider wise “mucking around” with a nasty bacteria…
Perplexed regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
It’s a molecular biology* lab course, so it’s a situation that’s very under control, haha. I am very meticulous about bleaching down the bench and any take home items, plus we’re all wearing lab coats and goggles and such. And lots of handwashing. But it’s nothing extremely dangerous, since it’s only a level two access lab.
We all had to take mandatory biohazard safety training, and when we get to the experiments where aerosols might be of concern, that’s what the safety cabinet is for. But for now it’s mostly just pippettes and centrifuges and careful measuring of teeny tiny aliquots and heat blocks and trying not to nap in lab while waiting for a hour in between steps…
There’s only ever been one super notable contamination incident from that lab course while I’ve been at the school. In comparison to the advanced biochemistry labs, where people semi regularly are set on fire, burn themselves, huff weird fumes, splash acid on themselves, greasily drop glass, and so on. It’s pretty tame. Just don’t lick the bench top.
*Edited to correct the course. I am very sleepy today.
I was a bench molecular biologist for many years, and lab E. coli (and 99% of the bacteria used in standard research labs) is very safe. We used to mouth pipet our bacteria, no problem. The gels can be very nasty, though. The Western blot Sophia will do soon involves making gel with polyacrylamide, which is very, very nasty stuff.
I did some work on phages of Yersinia pestis (how many of you besides Sophia know what that is without Googling?), and the strain we used was attenuated and theoretically safe as houses, but we did not mouth pipet that.
Running gels is dull, indeed. Blotting them is far more fun.
It probably helps that the plague is called la peste in my other language.
I ďonț rècoģniz an ènoŕkoùs nùmbeŕ of bacþerial namès on sìghť, buț thè Blàck Ďeațh iś oñe òf thèm. Irònìclý, I fìnd thè phàgèwòrk mòre intèrèsțnğ, givèn tè quìețlý lòomìng añţìbacťèŕiàl-ŕeśiśtàñcê cŕîsiš makìng iť danğéroúš tò bè in ahòspiťal fòr ańy ŕeasoñn.
Phages are the most interesting things on Earth, IMO. I absolutely adored the years I spent with them.
I don’t think we’re even remotely close to using them clinically, in the US at least. Eastern European countries have had phage therapy forever, but just try to convince Americans to use a virus as a treatment. This is a country that thinks viral mRNA is a dangerous substance that will turn them into mutants, so just imagine the reaction to a whole live virus, never mind that you’re crawling with bacteriophages and there is no way they could ever harm you.
After spraying inky water in my face, up the walls, over the bathroom tiles, sloshing around the faucet hardware, and dousing my glasses and tinting my nailpolish blue and pink: I have finally cleared all of my fountain pens of clogs from shimmers, and reinked them impatiently so they write true to tone immediately. Very messy process, but fairly satisfying. I will have colourful hands for days. The blue really lingers.
Most of mine are probably going to be about food… but in that vain I saw this morning that the building next door to our studio is about to open a New York Deli style sandwich shop and I’m very excited for a bunch of new lunch options! They’re doing a free sandwich day for their opening next week and I’m EXCITED.
Transcribed all of the writing I’d done in the lab while waiting for the shaker table, and it comes out to 1,759 words over roughly two hours. I did pause occasionally to chat to the lab bench, so roughly more like one hour and a half.
I always love it when something I know randomly becomes super handy or useful, whether that’s for me, or for somemeowdy else. And always delighted to be a helpful kittywizard when it comes to love- I’ve got a soft spot for romance. Pleased to have shared some useful nail polish and nail art tips on Neo tonight. :3