Fun words
Today I have relatively very little lab work to do. I mean, I have so much that I’m going to be at school til Monday late morning/lunchtime, but I’m in a 5 hour lull right now. I went to the grocery store, I ate lunch, I hung out on the deserted third floor of the library and printed out articles that I can read over break, and now I’m back in lab. I have 1.5 hours left. I have no new email. I am bored.
This is a common theme. I blame it on experiments with several hours of incubation time. Well, if this ligation works, it’s worth it. I look forward to the day when I can do something other than subcloning.
So on to the theme for the blog: fun words to say
John was nice enough to walk me through the necessary calculations for ligations. You want to end up with approximately 30 fmoles of vector/insert for the ligation. The “f” in fmoles stands for femto. Femtomoles. That’s an interesting one (it’s 10^-15 moles. That’s not a whole lot of moles)
Malhotra. This is a dude that works on actin. This is his last name, I just think it’s really cool. MalHOTra. (no offense, I’ve read work from your lab and think it’s very interesting)

Ok that’s all the fun words I can think of.
I’m going home Monday. My parents need my help to get the Christmas tree up. Hopefully they’ll already have bought it by the time I get home, because otherwise we’ll get all the leftovers from Chris’s or Mark’s or whatever the guy’s name is that sells Christmas trees in Elmwood just past Bally’s and the railroad bridge overpass thingy. Last year we got one with a hole in the back. Actually, if I had a rack I’d bring one home from here. I mean a rack on my car, as Ann so graciously pointed out, I…. Never mind.

One hour and 25 min to go. Man this is the longest Friday ever.

- posted by Catherine @ 3:01 PM

 
So fake, it's real! or so real it's fake.
So I took a half snow day, told my lab peeps I would not be in til I felt i couldget down Wolf Rd. Well when I left it wasn't ideal, but I doubt they planned to do more on it. The snow was above where the car door starts, I literally had to dig my car out of the snow. Very traumatizing, but a nice (male) neighbor helped me.
So during my happy happy half day off, I decided to organize my place to make it look more like a home than a disaster area. Then I put my Christmas tree up. It's a happy little 4' fake tree from Joann's that's actually I guess fairly old now, maybe 8 years? 9? I know I had it in high school. So anyway, I put it up, I straighten the branches,and before I put the Christmas tree skirt down, I notice that my happy little fake tree is shedding happy little fake needles. What a good imitation! I feel like I should strap it to the top of my car and drive around (that'd be interesting, with the little plastic feet that attach to it to hold it up. Too bad I don't have any sort of rack on the top of my car).
I was insanely productive yesterday. I cleaned my old apartment (stepped into the old apartment. this is where iused to live), and all that's left is to finish cleaning the oven, and vacuum and mop. Then I have to shell out $75 for pro carpet cleaning, and $10 or so to fill up all the nail holes. I hope someone rents it soon. Do any ofyou readers need a nice, clean apartment in Lebanon? The rent went up though- it's $750 now (yay now I really am saving money by paying mortgage instead of rent! a whole $13 a month!) Yes so I cleaned and then unpacked the new place. The bedroom's lookin good. My agenda tonight includes finishing cleaning the old place, and working on my Christmas cards. Hopefully I will buy stamps tomorrow morning, stamp and address them all otmorrow night, and send them out Wednesday.
Happy winter!

- posted by Catherine @ 5:14 PM

 
Everything will always be all right when we go shopping
Road trip! I decided yesterday, since I needed to get out of the Upper Valley area, that I would take a little day trip to Burlington to shop. I brought "the boys" with me (my new BNL cd) and a pb&j, 2 rice krispie treat,s and a nalgene full of water. And my credit card. And I shopped. I did fairly well, although ran into a few snags. First I got lost ont he way to the Magic Hat Brewery, then when I got in there, it was packed! I think they wre having some sort of promotional thing, they had all free beer so of course that draws quite a crowd. Then when I went into downtown Burlington, I passed a big traffic-holding-up accident (2 damaged cars but no ambulences around, so I think the people weren't too badly hurt), and then a street fight, which was surreal. So I step out of this store on the corner of a pedestrian-only street adn a normal street, and there were these guys arguing loudly with many people looking on. Then one guy starts running away becuase the other guy is trying to grab at him, and the other chases him adn starts yelling for someone to call a cop. It was very odd, it seemed like maybe the running guy stole something, but wouldn't you think he'd run away if he did? All he did was try to get the chaser off his back. I dunno. They were running over near \me, so I crossed over to the other row of stores, adn when I looked back, they had run around the corner. And then all the bystanders ran after them to watch. I hopesomeone called a cop. Maybe I should have, but I didn't quite understand what was going on.
And then I shopped more, bought soap and then got the Victoria's Secret credit card. After this,no more store cards for me, 2 is enough for now. I don't want to go nuts and have millions of credit cards and not be able to close my wallet.
Then onthe way home, I saw a shooting star! Yay!
Oh and update for last weekend: I moved. The lovely nor'easter came on Saturday, so I tried to move Saturday night but carrying big boxes through 8 inches of unshoveled snow is difficult. Then people got snowed in, but Rich, Dave, Susie and myparents came and it went very well. Except the couch wouldn't fit inthe door, so we had to take it down through the pool area and up the hill and up my deck stairs to go in the back door. Through 16 inches of snow. Luckily the couch isn't heavy, so it was more of a nuisance than very difficult work, and was thereofre somewhat amusing to watch.
And now I am moved in to a condo that I own. :) The french door is now all finished, the moulding is painted, I am infested with ants but the door guy might have fixed that, the kitchen sink has like zero water pressure and the water's full of air, the light switch in my bedroom is broken, and the former owner left 10 holes in the one place inthe living where I do not plan to put a picture. So I have lots to fix. And the old place to clean.
Now I am patiently waiting for this next nor'easter to come, and hoping I can finish my lab work before it starts.
:)

- posted by Catherine @ 11:44 AM

 
A
A is for....
Adultery
Ann
Alvin
A*s
Arrrr
(And still in choir mode), Ahline shAhpping

I just spend $78 on sephorA.com. YeAh thAt hAs nothing to do with A, but I just clicked [submit order], so it's on my mind.
News:
LAb sucks- nothing works! And now my bAd luck hAs spreAd to Andres And I feel bAd.
Boys suck- my Peet's Boy sAgA pArt the second hAs fAiled miserAbly. I decided I need A new hobby or something, becAuse obviously I'm just so bored thAt I'm going loony.
I'm going to go pAck up stuff- the officiAl moving dAy is sundAy. Ack, lots to get together!
Love, lipgloss, And singleton-hAppiness
- posted by Catherine @ 9:00 PM

 
Post-TG events
OK happy belated TG to all, mine was great, glad yours was too.
I actually hada few mishaps over the long weekend: mainly that the guy who was going to take over my lease backed out at the very last minute (ARRRRRRG) and so now I have to pay the rent til June 30, when my lease is up, unless we can find someone else (which I'm not too worried about, actually, since these places usually never even make it to the "for rent" column in the paper). I also am existing sans car. My baby needs a new head gasket (again) and something's wrong with the water pump. So, I took the bus this morning.
The bus was actually a very pleasant experience. I walked down the hill in the snow (it was cold but pretty), and the driver said "good morning" when I boarded, and we jsut drove towards Hanover, and I was dropped off at the 3rd floor entrance (yay only 1 flight of stairs to go up!).
Also on my mind is yet another Peet's boy-like ordeal. This one involves a string bass player in the orchestra. The only problem is I'll never see this guy again after tonight (concert tonight), so we'd better pass eye contact and smiles and get to small talk fast.
I also painted my fingernails last night, something I have not done since Dave adn Jenn's wedding. They're fairly long (for me, anyway), and everyone else in the soprano section painted their nails since last week, so I decided to join in,too. I used mulberry.
That's all. Life is fairly boring when I'm not in choir+orchestra rehearsal.
Love, hot musicians and snow

- posted by Catherine @ 11:23 AM