I Hate Microscopes. :(

Another week half over. Another long, long week. And the weekend is going to be crazy busy, so I don't have a time to relax either.

Monday I got up really early (ie: 6am) to do my laundry. By the time I got to work, I'd been up for hours and hours. It was a long day of working for me too. I got in at 9 and spent about an hour working on my captions. I finally finished the captions for my poster and I was pleased. We had lab meeting like every Monday. We had cake and presents for BC because she's pregnant. The baby's due date is August 14th, I think. I'm really excited because I want to be able to see the baby before I leave for home. I love love love babies. The rest of lab meeting was Y presenting a paper on this new gene and mitochondria morphology. It was interesting, but that's not related to the project that I'm working on.
After lunch, SR helped me figure out how to get my poster to print on the lab computer. Then I met with BC to go over my poster. She made a few minor corrections for clarity, but she didn't ask that I make any changes. I'm glad she's letting me do most of my own work. I tried really hard on that poster and it would have been a little devastating if she'd asked me to change it all around. But she didn't, so I'm happy happy happy. :)
Then I spent most of the rest of the afternoon screening worms. My favoritest thing ever. (<----please note sarcasm) I only screened for 90 minutes on Monday, which may have been a mistake, but there's not much I can do about it now. Monday night was GRE class again. yuck. We did a little bit of reading comprehension. That's probably the hardest part for me. Well, and then maybe some of the analogies/antonyms when I don't know what the words are. So we talked about mapping. I hope that helps me out, but I do worry about it taking too much time. Then we talked about how to approach writing the two essays. Did you know that you're more than allowed to make up statistics and stuff. That's *ridiculous*. I don't think I could do it. I'll just have to use lots of real world examples, because I think that making stuff up shouldn't be allowed. I know the point of the essays is to see how well you can form an argument, but I think that people can make up random data to support their argument is just crazy. After GRE class, I totally watched Angel until it was time for bed. Tuesday was the longest Tuesday I've ever had. I got to work at the regular time, took one last look at my poster, then screened worms on the small scope for another 90 minutes. Then I chatted with R for a little bit about choosing a graduate school. She gave me a little bit of advice, most of which I plan to heed, and it was a nice chat. Actually, today while I was waiting, I went to see what kind of program Duke had for its graduate students. Turns out they have both kinds: the direct entry (for people who know exactly what they want to do ((ie: not me))) and an umbrella program, which is now what I'm looking for in a graduate school. So I think she actually gave me pretty sound advice. After lunch, I screened worms for another 2 hours. I am so tired of screening, and I'm not even halfway done. That's the worst part. I love what I'm doing, I am just not cut out for microscope duty. Anna likes 'scopes; I think she'd like what I'm doing better. Then, at the end of the day, Barbara and I had a chat for about 45 minutes about both of my projects, especially the one involving the ced-3 mutation. Apparently that project is going to be harder than BC expected, so I might get to use some molecular techniques....like PCR and gene sequencing. I have to admit, I am super excited about this. This is more along the lines of the lab techniques that I like to do. I also love gel electrophoresis and Western blotting. I'd take blots over scopes anyday. :) I chunked a few plates to prepare for a possible heat shock today. We'll see if I get to do it or not. Last night was journal club. We were presenting our posters. I ended up going in the middle of the group, even though I prefer to go second or third. I think I did an okay job. I talked for about 7 minutes, but I could have taken my time, collected my thoughts and talked forever. Hahahaha. I left out a few things that I probably would have liked to put in and, conversely, talked about things that I probably didn't need too. Oh well. All in all, I think it went well. Everyone took ages, so we ran over by an hour. I was so tired when I got out of journal club, so I didn't go to Murphy's with all the people who went. Instead I watched an episode of Angel and then Monday's Secret Life before heading off to bed.

Today has been crazy busy too. I've spent a good 4 hours at the microscope screening worms today. I headed straight for the scope when I got here this morning and screened until 11:15. I had to meet AB to print my poster at noon today, so I spent a little time double-checking my poster before attempting to find someone to walk to find the Evans Map Room with me. I met AH on the way out of the building and we met up with N once we were inside the library. And so my poster is being printed now. I get to go pick it up in a little bit. I'm excited about it. :D :D Next was lunch. Nearly everyone from the program ate at the Novack cafe today. I walked back to Vail with R today so I could follow her to her lab and pick up my second check. I'm rich now!!! hahahah. As if. But I'm richer than I was yesterday. When I got back from that, I headed right back to the scope. I scored for another 2 hours. While I was chilling my worms, I went through a couple boxes of my worms and took out the contaminated plates for disposal. After doing all my screening, I still have nearly 200 worms left to screen. I pitched an entire box of 20 degrees Celcius plates that should have been pitched ages ago. I'm not going to be able to get two whole boxes scored tomorrow. I'll probably stay late, but I'm not that good. I guess I'll just have to get as many done as I can...and maybe BC will help me out if need be. She's been gone all day. She just got back and gave me a bunch of things to do. rawr. It'd have been nicer if she'd told me to do all this earlier. I was hoping to run to get my poster in just a little bit. Now I have to go and turn the stupid GFP scope back on to look for weakly GFP+ males. And if there aren't any, weakly GFP+ hermaphrodites. But the scope has to be off for half an hour. It's not quite been off that long yet. Maybe shortly I'll go back and turn it on again and do this.
Until later!