In which there should be more tea

Today is a very sci-fi sort of day.

I made the bullets for the gene gun this morning, the actual practice of which is nowhere near as cool as it sounds, though it did involve giant tanks of compressed nitrogen and desiccant pellets. Then for our discussion (which was supposed to be Monday and so got moved to today, all hail the mighty power of the instructor) we went to a classroom in the pharmaceutical sciences building (PSB -- we also have a BSB and a NSB; occasionally us first years get a little confused in the conversations). It has a special projector. We got to use uber-cool 3-D glasses, of the sort that came with a tiny chip in the frame that you use to calibrate to the projected image at the beginning of class, so that the structures you see will be 3-D while everything else remained firmly 2-D without any sort of weird overlay.

There was a weird moment while the instructor was showing us the structure of a protein where it looked like we were going to get brained by an alpha helix. Slightly nervous giggling ensued. (None of us are actual structural biologists -- if we were, we would be majoring in pharmaceutical sciences and not biomedical sciences-- so death by secondary protein structure struck us as being slightly hysterical.)

(It was a G-protein coupled receptor, if you must know. 50% of the drugs on the market target some form of that, so it's not just this random unrelated thing we have to do each week.) (Though I wouldn't mind playing with those glasses even if it's unrelated.)

(Did I mention that it was awesome? Even though I despise structural biology?)

Tossing away all my cells today made me sad, but I had to do it since no one else would take care of them otherwise and then they'd die and possibly cause contamination and then the world would end. (All the cell culture people firmly believe that contamination == end of the world.) Waiting by the bus stop in the dark and the rain was very lonely, and then I ran out of the un-caffeinated lemon tea but there was chocolate, so all was well at the end.

I'm taking the opportunity, while switching labs, to have Monday off. Parents are coming over to visit this weekend to prove, as my mom put it just now, "that we still care about you."

Cheers.

[edit 21:43]
You can apparently light nail polish on fire. Have checked.