I'm making mutants, beware!!!

I don't know how many times I can say it before it becomes too many, but I love my job. Seriously. This summer has been a million times better than my previous summers, especially last summer. I know we tried to get some work done last summer, but I spent too much time doing nothing. Here, I wish I were working shorter days, or at least that I didn't feel so bad for needing to take a break from the 'scopes. I'm having so much fun. I know I whine a bit about having to get up early (as if 7:30 is really that awful) and not having time to hang out with my new friends, but once I'm in lab I mostly forget about it.
So today we had someone new join our lab. Rhiannon. I think she's a high schooler, but I'm not sure. I feel like she's younger than me but I'm older than I think I am sometimes. haha. I don't really know anything about her, except I'm glad that I'm not the newest person in the lab. :) I think I'm getting better at stuff in the lab, but it's nice to not feel like the lab idiot all the time. (not that I actually am, I just feel like an idiot on occasion)
Today was another new experience. I actually seriously feel like the people here think I'm capable for the first time. Not that anyone talks down to me or anything. Everyone is super nice and I think they're all great. But today I was entirely on my own. D was back, but she was busy working with Rhiannon most of the day. The only person who was watching what I was doing was BC, but even then not really. But I'll get back to that.
I got to lab and I was the first person on my half of the lab so I opened the lab up and started to get everything set up. I put a couple of plates of worms on ice for a bit (it slows them down and makes it easier to look at them on the scope) and got the scope all set up. I spent about an hour scoring worms on the small microscope until I couldn't stand looking into the microscope anymore. Then I went and worked on my presentation for tonight's journal club and read one of B's former grad student's master thesis and another book for a bit. After lunch, I started setting up to use the large microscope but BC wanted me to do something with her. So she showed me how to set up a mutagenation reaction. I spent an hour or so picking L4s. I did significantly better today than yesterday. Actually, BC said I did a pretty good job, which made me feel better about it all. I got mostly L4s and fewer others. We washed the worms off the plates and suspended them in a few mL of buffer. I centrifuged them down and decanted off most of the supernatant and then added the worms to another tube containing the mutagen and more buffer. They're rocking at 20 degrees for a couple hours. BC is super awesome and she's gonna go back in at 8 to take them off and wash them for me. I'm not exactly certain what the point of mutagenizing the worms is yet, but when I figure it out, I'll let you know. I do know that EMS (ethyl methane sulfonate) induces point mutations and that's somehow important. haha. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to ask. I'll be doing another mutagenization on Thursday when BC gets back to the lab.
Tomorrow I'll really be on my own since B will be home with her two year-old son. D will probably still be working with Rhiannon. I have a bunch of stuff I need to do though. Probably one of the coolest things I'll be doing is looking at one of my strains of mutants that are lacking a vulva for the eggs to pass through. The embryos still develop, even though they develop inside the hermaphrodite instead of on the plate. They hatch and the larvae actually eat the mother as they grow. They can't break through the cuticle though, so they're trapped inside. They call this the bag-of-worms phenotype. It's really kind of cool, even though it's kind of gross.
I'm not exactly sure what to expect, but I'll be sure to let you know.
Tonight is journal club and AB is bringing dinner. I'm looking forward to the free food. :) I get to present a quick snippet of my research and I'm pretty excited. I know that no one will really care, but I think it's super cool. :)
Yes, I am a nerd.