Ergo

25 things meme is done over at lj. Meanwhile I've finally given in and ordered a set of imp-ears from Black Phoenix Alchemy lab (sorry Annie, let me know if you want to order together still and we can try the next time you remember). They came and I had some fun trying out the scents because, wonder of wonders, they are not the overly-sweet / musky stuff you'd find in the stores that'd make me sneeze. My favorite scent so far is "Shattered", which is a kind of mint + citrus type thing and smells fresh and not at all over-powering, like most of the smells that involve citrus I've run across. Unfortunately it doesn't last on my skin at all. The runner up is "Undertow", which (and I've tried again last night after my shower just to confirm), seems to actually make me sleep better. By which I meant I felt so well rested that I woke up at 7:07 on a Sunday morning with no alarm clock and felt ready to go out and face the day (it was almost the same the first time I tried it, too). Just for this I think it might be worth the investment.

I liked how "Loup Garou" smelled in the bottle better than "Undertow", but it does something on my skin that I'm not entirely sure about and ends up smelling almost acrid, so now I keep it tucked in the bag with my spare linens because the smell reminds me of every single hiking trip that I've ever enjoyed. (Considering that my scent association outside of chemical labs is usually pretty bad, this is fairly impressive.)

Oh and the Black Phoenix people did two random swaps for my order, and I got "Dance of Death", which I liked more than I thought I would and will most likely end up being the scent I wear on dates, should I ever go on dates (dunno, it's that kind of smell, I can't really explain it). The other one is Tiger Lily, which is far girlier than anything I'd ever pick for myself, but there's something very sweet and innocent about it that makes me think of sunshine and puppies. I put one dab on in the morning before my two hour discussion the day after I first tried it because I want the sunshine and puppies kind of feeling. Though I probably should never try to describe myself as sweet or innocent, in scents or otherwise.

That sums up my excitement of the week. Lab proceeds as usual, ditto for the papers. (OMG the load of papers.) My lab rotation ends next week and I have to give a talk on Wednesday in between the papers and there is so much stuff that I need to do next weekend that I've actually managed to convince my parents to not come and visit that weekend. I may need more chocolate.

Cheers.

That guy isn't a HeLa cell...

I went to a joint lab meeting / seminar / science swap at the Salk Institute today. Liz, a postdoc in my lab, is presenting, so I went to cheer her on. It was my first time at Salk (oddly enough, our orientation involved commuting to places like the aquarium, and the Burnham, but not the Salk) and the bus driver helpfully told me when we got there so I didn't end up somewhere in, say, Del Mar, by accident.

Also lab-related is the end of the Olde Schoole prep that I spent almost all of Wednesday and part of yesterday on. And also an hours this morning. It involves me attempting to pierce a vial containing cryogens, carcinogens, and heavy metal with a surgical syringe in the dark. (Well, there was UV. Of strong enough wattage to warrant a very uncomfortable face shield but unfortunately it's a lab-grade UV which means there's a lot of UV and not a lot of light.) (Er. And it also requires two points of penetration -- one to release the pressure and the other to actually draw something out.) The yield is kind of abysmal, leading me to wonder why the PI prefers this method so much. Admittedly the poor yield might be entirely because of my lack of skill (first time around with the cesium chloride, after all), but personally, I think there's a reason why all the postdocs as well as the lab tech prefer to use the Qiagen kit. In fact the only person who prefers the other method is the PI so....

For those of you who are / will be doing lab work. Zap brand pippet tips suck. Or they don't, which is more of the problem. Specifically it's the 0.1 to 10 uL, filtered and aerosol proof type. It doesn't seem to seal to the micropippet correctly so the volume distributed is very inaccurate, not to mention sometimes you just cannot get the fluid out of the tip which is ultimately very frustrating. I got to use the nanodrop spectrophotometer though, which was cool. (Oh oh did I mention I got to run my own sequencing reactions the other day? Our lab has its own sequencing machine. Way cool.)

Eight papers and a presentation next week. I'm sleeping in tomorrow morning.

Cheers.