Theatre Geek

Now that I’m back in the blogging mood, I would take a moment and thank my wonderful boyfriend for taking me out last night. He surprised me with theatre tickets. As a recovering theatre geek, I still have a very warm place in my heart for live theatre. Don’t Dress for Dinner was a very entertaining show albeit is was jammed pack with some stereotypical comedic theatre themes; the dumb blonde with a squeaky voice, miscommunication that leads to comical misunderstanding, multiple adulterous characters, an over the top French cook, … you get the point. Nevertheless, like a recovering alcoholic’s need for more and more alcohol after falling off the wagon, going to the theatre has unleashed the former theatre addict in me and I just want more and more theatre tickets. Luckily (or maybe unluckily) for me Chicago isn’t hurting for theatre. Mike, you may have created a monster.

Adventures in Sinusitis

I don’t want to make this statement prematurely, but I think I feel almost human. For the few of you out there who don’t know, I’ve been struggling with some serous sinus trouble. Who knew that a pluggy nose could knock you on your ass so badly? With a chronic sinus headache coupled with a case of winter blues, I’ve been in pretty bad shape for probably the past 3-4 weeks. I finally was able to see an ENT specialist this past Monday. After sticking a camera up my nose (yes, it’s as unpleasant as it sounds), he sent me home with corticosteroids, antibiotics, a referral to get allergy tested and an appoint to check back in a month. I think the drugs are working and I can even put up with the TERRIBLE taste in my mouth caused by the antibiotic because today I didn’t feel worthless, haven’t taken any painkillers, and was motivated enough in lab to do a bunch of cleaning that I have been putting off doing. Tomorrow I become a pincushion in the name of determining if the cause of my sinus issues is allergy related. Lets just hope I keep on improving and I can somehow keep this from happening again.

Sew What?

I've been making pretty good use out of my sewing machine. So far I've made 4 pillows including 2 new pillows for our couch to match our new rug (pictures to come, hopefully sometime this week), yesterday I made an apron (I'll hopefully get a picture on here of that too) and I've made a few bags (pictures below). I'm really enjoying the creative outlet that these sewing projects are giving me. My research is pretty continuous with a big focus on the long term, so it's nice to be able to come home, start and finish a project, it gives a sense of closure and completeness that I'm lacking at work. And to top it all off, I think I'm making pretty cool stuff.

Love muffins

Nothing like love muffins and a latte for breakfast!

May you find love everywhere you look....

Happy Valentines!

Dakota Fanning is Cramping My Style

Mike and I watched The Secret Life of Bees tonight. A good movie, although not as good as the book. Is the movie ever as good as the book?

Anyways, I am not sure if I will watch any more movies with Mike that have Dakota Fanning in it because he is convinced that she looks like me and keeps pointing it out. Should I think it's strange that my boyfriend sees me when he looks at a 15 year old girl? Well at least he'll watch movies like Life of Bees with me with out complaining, I guess I shouldn't complain about Ms. Fanning cramping my style.


What do you think? Do we look alike?

Need More Bacon in Your Life?

Let see if the old adage is true, is everything better when you add bacon?

what about Perennially Bellis with a side of bacon?


Google bacon?
Chicago Police?
George Bush Bacon?


Need more bacon in your life? Baconize your web surfing!

Thanks to How About Orange for finding and posting this!

Fiddler Crab

I am a little afraid that the experiments that I’ve been doing in lab lately will turn me in to the little guy pictured above. Not because we do crazy gene mutation in the lab (we don’t) or because I was bitten by a radioactive crab (I wasn’t), it’s because in the past two days I have I pipetted approximately 3637 times. That number isn’t a hyperbole, it’s an actual engineering estimate with an error of plus or minus 8. The experiment I started yesterday has 35 conditions that I deposit in quadruplicate on 5 different 384 well plates followed by seeding cells into each well of each condition, add in the initial reagent dilutions to total of pipetting approximately 1516 times, then today I pipette in to each well of each plate 3 times in order to first induce a signaling pathway and then to image the response, add in a few extra uses of the pipette to dilute the imaging substrates to reach a total of 2121. And BAM you get 3637 times. Luckily, I can use the repeat pipettor 2800 of those times since I am delivering the same thing to each well but since using the normal pipette you have to push the button two times, once to suck up the solution and once to expel, that means that I in the past 2 days I have pushed a pipette button a total of 4474 times. Anyway, I’m going to be repeating similar experiments for a good long time in the foreseeable future and therefore I will either get carpal tunnel or have a really buff right arm.