One nano mole of humor, please!

I'm pretty sure that biology shouldn't be amusing me so much right now, at least not in this sense. People who deal with these sort of things are dead serious in the way that an enzyme that they spent three years purifying will all die off in two hours if they leave it sit at room temperature type serious. Wait, that's what makes it so funny. Never mind.

Anyway, for those of you who remember the purse-DNA comparison I've made over a year ago (whereas normal girls email each other to borrow a purse to match their dress on their special night out, we get plant bio people emailing each other to borrow a bit of powdered crystallized Arabidopsis DNA), I've just received what I think might be the biologist's equivalent of "go and clean up your room!"

Subject: Smell in room 2110
To: plb-fac@ucdavis.edu, plbpostdocs@ucdavis.edu, plbgradstudents@ucdavis.edu, plbundergrads@ucdavis.edu

Please remove your bacteria waste from the autoclave in common room 2110. There is a very bad smell affecting the whole area.

(FYI: plb = plant biology)

Then of course, one of my professors came in the other day and showed us the mail catalogue that she got in the - well - mail. Of antibodies. I mean yes, I know a lot of the lab things are mail-ordered, but just imaging - among the loads of catalogues you get at home from places like Ikea and JC Penny you get one on - antibodies! Mailed home! I also thought that the catalogue for these type of things would resemble something like the Flinn, or maybe the Jepson Manual, and not something that's in full-colored glossy print so that it resembled something from Macy's. Though come to think of it, if they did sell antibodies in the store, the store would probably resemble a giant Safeway deli counter, rather than Macy's. Afterall, everything needs to be kept at four degrees Celsius for storage and when customers come they can walk right up to the counter, smile, and say, "I'd like half a micro mole of immunoglobin #A302, please!" And then they can get some of the florescent dye markers, go home, and have their own in situ hybridization and all the genes can be all glowy and pretty.

I am obviously writing nonsense at this point. I want to mail-order a microscope with phase-contrast lenses some day.

Anyway, the recycle bin is beginning to look normal again. Last weekend, when people are still moving out and moving back home, the entire place was packed with boxes and things. There was even an entire table-chair set (one table, four chairs, matching) sitting there. It made getting to the actual trash bin difficult.

I had a short-ordered epiphany that I'd probably end up as one of those crazy ladies with a house full of cats and then I realized that I'm there already.
Hippo, Simba, say 'hi'.

A second comeback

Wanting to work in labs means that you get interviewed a lot. First there's the interview to let the person know you know that there is a spot open and that you're interested. Then it's a return interview for the person to actually explain to you what the project is going to be and see if you're still interested. Usually the bit where you actually work out a schedule and find out how many hours you need to put in at the lab per week is kept for the third interview, where you may or may not meet the others who are involved in the same project.

I don't think I like interviews. They are sometimes just like a politer form of interrogation where I'm surprised no one asks me for my fingerprints at the end (though working for the UC does mean that I end up filling out loads of forms on social security and citizenship and promising that, should I discover anything while working there, it's to be considered property of the university, like my soul is - joking- sort of- so I guess it ends about the same as a fingerprint). Other times they are a blatant opportunity to self-advertise, which generally makes me stutter a lot and feel horribly self-conscious and embarrassed. Mostly I smile a lot and hope that I came across as less inane than I felt. (Plants? That's a great! 'cause, you see, I happen to major in plant bio and I actually know what a cotyledon is!)

We're still doing water potential calculations in plant physio, where I've went over the special properties of water with the rest of the class, AGAIN (well over ten times now in ten different classes). I got to learn loads of large, new words and am quite happy since none of my professors insisted on me learning the spelling of those words (it may have something to do with the fact that I do have professors who mixed up "here" with "hear" on their power point). I've already started raiding Annie's bookshelf and took a Terry Pratchett book with me today on the account that all the Greek letters in physics was starting to make me depressed. It helped, though now there're probably a few people who thinks I'm insane since I was wandering through the library grinning like a maniac because a certain line that I've just read in the book had popped up in my head. Pratchett's books do that to you.

Hope your dad gets better soon, Lucy. Words aren't quite adequate when these sort of things happen, but it's the best I can do at the moment. Don't worry about visiting and be sure to let us (meaning the your friends - yes, all of them) know how the surgery went.

Schrodinger's kitty

Where as Rose, once upon a time, harbored an odd attachment to my chemistry book (general chemistry, quite possibly over 500 pages long), Simba seemed to have developed an attachment for my physics stuff. He's so far slept on my physics notes, on my physics homework, and on my physics class notes (the 7 series' equivalent of a textbook). He sheds all over it which, I understand, if you're a medium - long haired kitty is the same thing as marking your territory.

He also threw up a hairball in my room yesterday, completely with stains, but that's probably something else entirely. There was much scrubbing with Lysol.

Classes have been pretty busy so far, summer session meaning that all the material must be wrapped up in around five weeks instead of the usual ten (finals week, I'm guessing, doesn't count "exactly"). There are loads of people on campus who are not UCD grad or undergrad students. Yesterday I was waylaid by a girl while biking (okay, so I wasn't going that fast, but it's impressive nevertheless) to give directions to Walker's and Roessler's. Today another lady didn't know where the Silo was and I was amused to hear the science lab building described as the tall building with the green house on top (both true, by the way. The roof-top green house is pretty awesome.) I had to order my books online because otherwise my two books would've cost me over two hundred dollars (ah yes, the beauty of hard-covered science texts) and there is nothing quite so relieving as going through problems thinking that you have no idea what you're doing but checking the answers and finding out that you've got the calculations right, anyhow. There is a rather lot more math than I'd expected (plant physiology opened up with calculations on water potential and osmotic pressure), and some more Greek letters (capitalized phi in physics means total phase while lower case phi is the phase-change constant). There are going to be loads of negative signs and so, of course, I'm feeling a bit apprehensive.

I opened the balcony door this morning (leaving the screen door in place this morning), turned to the two cats watching me, and said, very cheerfully, "Look, there's a beautiful day outside!" The cats gave me their best "what-the hell" looks until a bug on the other side of the screen door distracted them and I was abandoned in favor of a member of the Drosophila melanogaster.

But, so it goes.

Halloween theme in feline

Here I am again, back in Davis, feeling slightly apprehensive about tomorrow's classes. Cell signaling would've sounded intimidating if it didn't give me the mental image of cells (amoeba-shaped in my mind, if you must know) waiting at traffic lights. I'm not exactly sure how much money I'll be spending on books this time around, exactly, but I do know that online shopping's not an option this time since the entire session is not that long and the pace of the classes are going to be such that waiting for shipping (and possible handling, though from my past experience I think I prefer as little of handling as possible) would be highly impractical. We'll see. If there's an over 100 dollars book again I might just have to go online anyway and stick it out at the book reserves while J. Doe from New Jersey goes to get the book packaged and stamped.

Simba came this afternoon, and being an orange, medium haired boy kitty with an over active sense of curiosity I started off my acquaintance with him by squirting him with copious amount of water to get him off of tables, counters, and out of the kitchen. There were a few tense moments between Hippo and him, and I might have witnessed what might be the foster kitty's equivalent of alpha male display, complete with hissing. Fortunately it seemed to have sorted itself out and the two kissed and established truce. (Note to self: will need to make sure cats are not plotting against self.)

Meanwhile, I did two loads of laundry, load one being my stuff and load two being cat laundry. (I finally washed the things piled up on the dryer, yes!) I wasn't entirely sure what to do with the fuzzy blanket that was on the couch afterwards, since the couch cover's pretty much shredded at this point, and thoroughly cat territory, not to mention that it's possibly ninety-something outside and blankets aren't of much use right now. So? I stuck it in the cabinet. With other stuff. We have lots of stuff in the cabinets. Morgan said that she didn't THINK Simba can open cabinets.

There is an ancient container full of cranberry sauce, dating possibly back from Thanksgiving of year 2006. Would someone like to claim it or should I put up an adoption sign?

More awake than expected

Originally I'd planned to say up all night on Summer Solstice, which is the 21st this year, but since there was the movie night event I figured I'll just stay up all night then instead. There is, after all, only one day of difference.

Oh yes, so how has the past few days been?

On Thursday Anna, Kate and I (with Anna again being our designated driver, since Kate can't drive and I have nothing to drive) went for a walk at Rancho San Antonia. It was nice, similar in environment to Alum Rock at San Jose except with more animals at the entrance and a scary amount of joggers swarming the trail, en masse, as we were leaving. There were, perhaps, not as many rocks as Kate would've liked and we stayed on the trail and didn't take any short cuts, much to her disappointment. However, Lucy will be most happy to know that Kate did not ingest any part of any mysterious plants for the duration of this trip. Anna and I were vying for the right to pester her, which might have helped. Then again, it might not have. There a lot of little bugs and they were very annoying. Two flew into my ear and squished when I tried to remove them in the speediest manner possible. I took a very LONG shower when I got home.

Yesterday was the movie night (not day anymore, since we met at around six pm, which was already evening). Victoria had to leave early because she had something this morning and Malvina ended up not coming either, so by one o' clock it was only Kate, Anna, Christine, and me. We watched a lot of movies that involved people cackling maniacally, which seemed to have rubbed off on Anna somehow, since she'd cackle randomly throughout the night for no reason afterwards. The alternate theory for the cackling is that Anna is not used to staying up all night (her first time to stay awake for 24 hours straight is yesterday!) and well...sleep deprivation was getting to her. The alternate theory to THAT is that after so many lines that are of the "You. Are. Guilty." (delivered in a growling monotone) and "We're the leeeeeeeeeeeeegion." (creepy breathy monotone)type she felt the urge to make some sort of noise. I think we all did, in fact. GHOST RIDER might have better CGI than HAPPILY NEVER AFTER, but the lines are just as bad. We've concluded, after the movie had ended, that Mr. Blaze's expression operated on a binary system: there is expression one, confusion, which is him being wide-eyed and often doubles as "thoughtful" as well, and expression two, surprised, which is him being wide-eyed and open mouthed and also sometimes double as "horrified." Similarly, when he's the ghost rider there're also only two options: flaming skull with orange flames, or flaming skull with blue flames. Admittedly this is more understandable since skulls, generally, are not inclined to have more than one expression (Death grinned because there's not much of a choice in the matter). Later, while we're microwave mini-pizzas at some other bleary hour of the morning, Kate wondered out loud whether people will all look the same if they're covered with tomato sauce (...this had a rather long lead-in at some point, but you're going to have to ask Kate for it) at which point it was added that there's also Mr. Blaze vs. Mr. Blaze covered in tomato sauce, thereby giving us three sets of binary values for the...um...appearance of the ghost rider. We agreed it was a whole lot better than the number of expression that Christine from THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA has since the number is, well, one.

Went grocery shopping with mom afterwards then slept for two hours when I got home. Most of the packing's done. I've emailed Charleen to see what to do with the cat(s) so I can determined whether or not I can be in Cupertino on the 14th of July. Christine's already in the middle of her classes whereas I leave for them tomorrow. The radishes are already starting to come up in the yard.

A week in the life of

Planting commences as follows: mother is tired of some of the flowers, so I pulled out a bunch of poppies and alysums and planted in some sweet peas, marigolds, and sunflowers. The corn plants are now pollinating themselves quite nicely, which means that every time there's a breeze you can literally SEE clouds of yellow pollen drifting off of the male flowers (corn being monoicious imperfect, I think). The slugs have gotten to half of the turnips, which are mostly done, anyways, so I pulled those out and planted some radishes. Also went in are the lima beans. A second sprig of holy has sprung up in the middle of the corn fields and by my last count I've already tossed over ten snails out of the garden. Also, I think I might be developing an allergy to trichome (plant hair/fuzz) since now whenever my arm brushes against plants with it I get small hives and it itches like mad. My hopes are that it's a combination of dry weather and dry skin, which is likely since using overly harsh soap has given me hives before too. In any case the hope's for a pseudo-allergy because I simply CANNOT be allergic to plants. I'm a plant bio major. It's too ridiculous. So we'll see how that turns out and meanwhile I'll wear long sleeves and try to refrain from scratching myself too much.

Went to see Pirates 3 with Kate, Anna, Victoria, and Malvina yesterday, and it was good to be able to see some friends before I have to go back to Davis. Valco (is that how it's spelled? Shame, I never paid attention) has a nice new AMC place and the food court is still underway. It was still kind of empty, but better than the last time I was there. I think having a movie theatre helped.

Going hiking/walking with Anna tomorrow and movie day...er...event really, since it's over night on Friday. Have not managed to finish a single book yet, but have, as seen above, accomplished a lot in the garden, updated my programs, cleaned up my harddrive, sketched/painted a little, and gotten some writing done.

It's been a good few days so far.

Massive assortments

I've cleaned up my laptop and discovered that I have something close to 300MB of photos, accumulated within the past year. (There're a great deal of cat photos, and a great deal of plant photos. My photos are very telling.) Yardwork commences with my mother sweeping the yard. That always bemuses me: a yard with garden will, inevitably have dirt and a few dead plant leaves here and there. Is it really necessary (even if possible) to sweep the cement portion next to the plants spotlessly clean every week? I have to admit though- yardwork's good exercise- so maybe that's why.

Both of my parents mistook my germinating avocado plant for an egg. I suddenly remembered why I indexed each row of plants in the garden on a three by three post-it.

Which reminds me - I have to take pictures of the giant dill plant that's growing. It's a couple inches taller than me now and flowering (I'm keeping it for seeds). The corn plants have grown past the height where they could fit inside an average sized room, if we could've dug them up and for some reason decided to haul them inside, I mean.

Sketched cat yesterday. May paint tomorrow.

In another moment

I've been home for just over twenty-four hours, and I have already visited the library and worked in the garden (pulling out weeds, cutting off the spent flower heads, planting the amaryllis...). Somehow, despite of the email and the beginning of the long process that'll leave me with a few data CDs and 20GB of space (not to mention the heavy weight of accumulated papers that'll get recycled and remade into some other paper product), it doesn't feel quite real yet. Apparently the process of unwinding take more than twenty-four hours, and all I can think of were the last few days, remembering Annie alternating between lying prone on the floor and banging her head against something in distress, Hippo crying outside of my door as I locked him out again for playing with my notes, and Kate's voice, strained and in that slightly higher timbre that usually came before hysteria (Lucy, you know what I'm talking about, right?). I think of sheaves of paper spread all over my floor and pencils littered everywhere (mechanical, HB .5 lead because I don't have tests that came in scantrons anymore). I start listing amino acids in my head alphabetically then I stop, because I realize that it is summer and I no longer need to know that only one percent of histidine is in acid-resonance form at pH seven. Then I think, No, it can't be over. Except I know it is. And then I think, "It's over," and, "Another year's gone," and, "I don't feel any older OR wiser." Is it silly to keep expecting that? I guess it is.

Oh well.

Books and garden and stories and art. Ten days before I have to wake up early again, feed the cat, and bike off to another biology class.

At least the classes should be interesting.

Rhymes with lavender

I woke up this morning with my pillows around me instead of under me and a truly awful crick in my neck. I still have it you know, the crick. I'm having trouble tilting my head back and it is annoying because I get a twinge every time I look up at something. It's a small thing, a crick in the neck.

There were amaryllis bulbs in genetics today, and since I was one of the last ones out I got two. They're the pink ones, commonly known as "naked ladies". I was told that if I plant them around now they should flower this October. I think my mom will like them. She loves bright, warm colors. If given the chance she'd prefer a garden with splashes of red and golds in neat squares, and a pragmatic little vegetable plot with a symmetrically trimmed dwarf fruit tree tucked in the far corner. We've compromised with the vegetable plot but I gave her splashes of red and golds crowding into yellows and creams, spilling into each other and onto the pavement. It's another little thing. Leave the plants where they may thrive. I promise to take care for them and trim them so they don't get too out of hand.

We have spent close to ninety dollars on three thousand bags in the greenhouses, where we harvest and bag the plants for further analysis. Stripping the lavender of their leaves was a pain because they have so many leaves, and the stem breaks easily at the tips. There will be more loquats and coral trees and what is called Rhus lancea scientifically, but I don't know the common name to. Mike the caffeine addict went and got us drinks from Starbucks. I sipped iced-tea lemonade and contemplated the plot that I had to take care of for the club. A potato has germinated and promptly got all of its leaves gnawed off. The speed of the pest in that general area is astounding.

Hippo sprawled over my leg while I translated Latin, and the poppies I've brought back in the vase's dying, because poppies don't make good cut flowers, they do best on wild sunny hillsides in California. I've two more classes and four more meetings and I've lost another eraser. I'm tired and there's still a crick in my neck.

It's all in the little things today, for these moments in time.

A hybrid of moods

Two more days of class before finals officially start on Friday. I have a final on Friday, one on Saturday, a paper due on Sunday, the final that was on Monday thankfully was one that I don't have to take, which then gives me 24 hours to prep for the final on Tuesday, another 24 hours free on Wednesday and the final test on Thursday.

Stressed? Who, me?

Goodness YES.

Though (I can't make up my mind if this is comforting or not) most people are at the same mental stage that I am at right now. Which is to say that Annie has been quoting her bio text in her Latin essay on Epicurean (sp?) philosophy, Kate's stolen Hippo's toy to play in her Medieval Studies class, and I've spent two hours trying to translate Latin to realize that I kept getting the chem calculation wrong because I got millimolar mixed up with millimoles. Annie, Hippo and I had just spent up to fifteen minutes lying on the living room floor, and now Annie and Kate are laughing hysterically in the livingroom. We've concluded that Annie'd be the sort of ghost who'd come back to haunt people by giggling hysterically and Kate's connecting her being compared to a bulldog to the fact that her rabbit can behave in a rather bulldog-like fashion.

But we have cookies. That makes everything better. Except for when it doesn't, of course.

A case involving disgruntled barbers

Slept in until 8:30 this morning and felt SO strange that there are no cats about. Went to get food with parents and was spoilt rotten as parents picked out a whole bunch of things that I like that I generally try not to indulge in too often since they're all very unhealthy. (Finals = binge eating? Check.) Got a hair cut afterwards where a...somewhat annoyed barber attempted to amend for the fact that my hair had tendencies to stick up in certain places but not others. Not to mention ever since I've gotten it cropped it seemed to have decided to be shaggy just on principle, regardless of length. In the end the poor barber rubbed some white stuff into my hair and called it a day, and I went home and promptly rinsed off all the white stuff and allowed my hair to revert back to its natural state. If it wants to stick up, it can stick up. That's what hats are for, afterall.

Checked in with the garden and everything is doing surprisingly well. The sad pot of mint that I've rescued from the green house in September had "recovered" to the point that it's now above my knees in term of height, and the corn plants are well above my height. I think the columbines are FINALLY germinating, or at least that's what I hope they are. The current puzzles of the garden is a four-o-clock that'd came up 12 feet away from the parent plant, when I know for a fact that I haven't any seeds or have planted any non-existing seeds. The other puzzle is a sprig of holly that'd sprung up besides the turnips, fa la la. I have NO idea where it came from.

More plant trimming's in order, after biochem.

[EDIT 20:38]
I've lost two daffodils, as in I can't locate them in the yard anymore. I think the geranium ate them. Frankly, I wouldn't be too surprised if it did - it's growth has been exuberant, verging on invasive.

And smell the pumpkin pie

Another busy week. Another busy, SHORT, week, and I'm currently waiting for my dad to arrive so I can go home so yes, I'm going home and it's going to be an extremely BUSY week.

I should stop abusing caplocks at this point, except I don't think that's likely to happen. You see, I'm typing under the "edit html" tap of blog posts, so it's either type in caplock or type the extra seven characters to get italics. Toggle keys are much simpler. It's Friday and, as mentioned above, it's been a busy week. I'm allowed to be lazy (except that doesn't seem like something that's likely to be allowed to happen for very long).

Let's see...first of all, I should recap what happened last weekend, which is, to say, that I went to Annie's place on Friday and stayed with her until Monday morning. Two and a half days of beach, plants, and no school work. It's probably the best thing that could've happened to me at this point in time. A slightly more detailed version of what's happened will take up the next three paragraphs, travel-journal style. Skip ahead for this week's stuff if you want.

Friday: waited for Annie's mom to arrive. Being warned about Annie's family, or at least various members thereof. While leaving Annie's mom warned me that this was my "last chance" to get out and I couldn't quite stop grinning - Annie's warnings are surprisingly accurate though not for the reasons she thought. We went to her grandma's place at San Rafael first, and Annie gave me a tour of the hill around the house, via deer trails. I discovered that I am, in all honesty, a city-girl bred anb born. Cannot keep track of how many times I've tripped and going downhill is seriously tricky business. We saw deer. Plural. So I hope I managed to get the plural form of deer right. We saw her grandma's cat for all of seven seconds before he realized that a stranger was here and bolted somewhere far, far away. We went out to dinner at a place called, I believe, Hannah's and I learned a different word for squid which might be calamari but then again, may be something else entirely. (Like caviar, I guess sea-food type stuff needs pseudonyms to make them sound more appetizing.) It was late when we arrived at Santa Rosa, and Annie's dad tried to teach me to play Rummy, which I'm afraid I also failed at though I do believe I still remember the rules (or at least a great deal of it). People watching was a lot more interesting though. I don't think I've actually seen Annie smug before.

Saturday: Bodega Bay! Bodega Bay! Where they filmed The Bird, which I don't care about, and where there are a lot of tidepools, which I do care a lot about. There's a UC research station somewhere there too, but I'm not sure where. We saw starfishes and sea anemones (the green kind) and after some trial and error I eventually managed to get around the very rocky regions without falling flat on my face (though I don't think I'll ever make it to hiking places that don't have well-established hiking trails). We saw sea lions also, and got salt-water taffy (and consequently a sugar rush). The day there was actually quite cold and gray and the fog followed us home that evening. Oh, and the backyard has LOADS of plants and is quite awesome.

Sunday: Annie took me to visit Luther Burbank's Home and Gardens and even paid for the tour. My interest, needless to say, remained in the gardens. The man developed spineless cactus (which I honestly didn't know existed) and Idaho potatos that are not used in fries everywehre and I think what might be spelled "shasta" daisies. I also saw wildstrawberries for the first time, and DARK GREEN flowers which is truly, truly spectacular. The guy apparently also bred white black berries (no ethnic puns, PLEASE), and plumcots. I wasted batteries on lots of plant pictures, of course. If I ever burn a CD with all the pictures I've taken this year, would anyone be interested in a copy? We went to Sebasterpol (hopefully spelled something like that) in the afternoon and wandered around the downtown area. All the new age shopes are amusing, and I found the idea of jasmine tea biscuits very inspirational. Annie gave me a (another) lecture on the difference between new world and old world monkey (something about a grasping tail) and I gave her a brief lecture on the mistranslation of Chinese characters the new-age shopes had on some pendantes. It was all very educational. Then we went to the icecream shop called Screaming Mimi's and...no, no screaming was involved. The chocolate mint creme was very good though.

Hippo forgave us for leaving within five minutes of our return on Monday, but has been particularly clingy this week as (I think) a result. The Wednesday was a Monday again which, of course, caused no end of confusion to the part of our brain that's actually rational and KNEW that the Wednesday was a Wednesday, darn it, but that also unfortunately was largely subconscious so people end up going to Wednesday's class subconsciously until they stop themselves and "remembered" that it's actually Monday.

Did that make sense? Yeah, it does work like it sounds.

Yesterday was our last Botany Club meeting of the year and we had pizza and played plant pictionary, which is the most botanically geeky yet enjoyable experience I've had all year (I'll take "physiology and development", please). And I should probably wrap up this supremely long entry at this point because my dad should be coming...

...any...minute...now....