Cat
First, Callie rubbed her butt in my face to wake me up.
Then, she meowed pathetically until the achingly sweet arms of morpheus were no longer enough to hold me.
Now... she sits on her perch...waiting patiently...guilting my subconscious mind into rousting my conscious body. How she changes tactics so adroitly? Pshaw...the feline brain is beyond my limited ken.
Skiing.
On the first day, I wanted to sit down in the snow and pout. I wanted to be an insignificant, pathetic red dot in a sea of unforgiving white. I wanted to cry until the tears froze on my wind-blasted face. I wanted to give up (and go DOWN the moutain). In the words of those Disney Dalmation pups, "my nose is froze, and my ears are froze, and my TOES are froze."
That night I dreamt of skiing. I felt the ease with which I could shift my weight and flow into a turn. Swoosh! swoosh! I saw the snow leaping triumphantly into the sky as I scoured the virgin powder, rejoicing with me in my new-found freedom.
The next day, my body knew. It just KNEW. I attempted and completed turns I never imagined possible the day before. "Take that, Mountain!" my heels shouted. Snow, meet your new master, Ms. Samantha Grace.
I went from small green. to BIG green. to short bit of blue, then to a longer section of blu...oh wait. Crap - this is really steep. What did I get myself into!? I can't even SEE the bottom! I got slower, and my turns grew more forced. My muscles forgot everything my dreams had so carefully taught them the night before. I fell. A ski flew from under me, and by sheer force of will, I convinced it to traverse the steep incline rather than flying down the slope to its likely demise. After a highly undignified (harrumphing, scooting, sobbing) journey to retrieve it, I latched back in.... and braked ALL the way down the mountain, feeling suitably sorry for myself.
I had forgotten. My left turns were still there... my right turns were crouching up in the trees, jeering at my misfortune. I could not turn to the right. (this of course meant down a lot - left a bit - down a lot - left a bit - down a lot - left a bit).
I went down the greens again, somewhat less successfully than I had previously, but those pesky rights eluded me...as they continued to elude me that night in my dreams. I had no further chance to ski. No further chance to hunt those elusive right turns...
but I found them. In my dreams the following night...I found them. Or perhaps I should say, they found me.
Bring me that ski lift!
In the Lab
I don't think anyone else in the lab enjoys the smell of fly food wafting down the hallway, but I love the days when "unlucky" undergrad techs have to brave the world of hot nutrient fly broth. I inhale deeply, savoring the intriguingly alien, yet strangely comforting aroma of drosophila fodder.
Otherwise, while not sniffing fly food, I am doing lab dishes, making agarose gels, refilling aliquots of chemicals, running PCRs, and otherwise pretending to be a budding scientist. I listen to the intelligent rapport of the post-docs and grad students. We all listen for the tell-tale shuffle of the all-knowing master-man. We talk about political events (and no, not all scientists are liberal), and the conversation is notorious for plummeting straight into Laker Nation...and the undergrads talk under their breaths about MCATs and med schools a lot.
I'll never forget the day I first convinced a few disgruntled bacteria colonies to grow. Ahhhh! The elation I felt upon being greeted by their smiling faces when I walked into the lab in the morning (i bet bacteria have faces if you look hard enough).
"I did it," I think. "I created life!" Well, sort of. I guess I really just gave a bunch of rapidly dividing cells an excess of gourmet food.
I'm working on a big project right now. Really big (at least my lab professor says so). It's ironic (or, maybe just jarringly literal), because the DNA construct I'm making is Gigantor. It's the Godzilla of plasmids. But, it'll work, he assures me.
Otherwise, I sit, stand, shuffle...and look for odd jobs. Today I refilled a small bottle of bleach, made 70% ethanol from 100% ethanol, refilled a huge multi-liter jug of distilled water, fixed a quasi-broken pipette pump, and ran an abysmally unsuccessful PCR. AND I WENT ON FACEBOOK ABOUT 20 TIMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
