A new(ish) blog.
I have been toying with the idea of revamping this blog for a little while, but certain things have held me back. It's going to be a FOOD BLOG! Ooh. Cool. Also a perhaps a knitting blog. Hey, let's just say it's a Domestic Goddess blog (although you'll never hear me tell you about my housekeeping skills, because I don't have any).

Ok, great, food and knitting. What does one need to blog about food and knitting?

1. be a halfway decent cook/knitter, and enjoy cooking/knitting.

Check.

2. Be able to photograph all that to show it off and make the blog interesting.

Ch.... wait.

I'm not a stellar photographer. I know some stellar photographers, maybe I can get in cahoots with one of them from time to time, and show you pretty photos.

Another problem with my photography (perhaps the main problem) is that I have terrible lighting in my condo. I can really only get decent pictures of anything during a bright sunny morning/early afternoon, and over near the glass door of my living room. This is as far as one can get from the kitchen, and I'd really prefer to photograph food in the kitchen. However, for the sake of this new blog attempt, I'll try to optimize the photogenecity of items in my home.

For now, I'll leave you with a good recipe for stuffed pork chops.
These are quite delicious and when I make them (which is fairly often in the rotation of meat that I cook), I usually have the following as sides:
polenta with whatever cheese is in my fridge (very easy to make from scratch- and pour the pork chop cream sauce on the polenta, that's really good)
sauteed spinach and mushrooms (saute up some sliced mushrooms with butter and salt until they're soft, then add in fresh spinach, and voila, a lovely, buttery dish)
baked sweet potato "fries" (slice sweet potatoes into steak fry-like wedges, coat in salt and other spices and either oil or citrus juice (I prefer citrus juice, but either is fine) and bake for maybe 30 min or so at 325.)

Note: this is not really something you can whip up when you get home at 8pm or later on a weekday night, which is my normal schedule. I like to make these on weekend nights when I have all afternoon to cook, and then make a huge batch and have leftovers all week. These make really good leftovers.

Yum.
- posted by Catherine @ 12:11 PM

 
Left Behind
I drove the Sunfire on Monday, it had been sitting in its little parking spot at my condo for like 10 days, I felt so bad for it. So I left the Vibe at home and drove the Sunfire.
I feel the same about this blog. It's here, it exists, it's part of who I was last summer. And last year. But now I have the flashier LiveJournal, witha little animated cat, and my blog just sits. And waits.
And omg it's just a website.
anyway. If you want to read, go see the new one, I actualy update that one. Sometimes.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/wamozart12

- posted by Catherine @ 3:59 PM

 
'cuz I'm moving out
I have a new blog at livejournal.com-- http://www.livejournal.com/users/wamozart12
Really the only reason is because at livejournal you can add your mood for the day and I kept seeing Roxanne's,a dn being like, oh I want to do that!! So now I do. My icon is a cat.
:)

- posted by Catherine @ 1:40 PM

 
Everything will be all right, when we go shopping
Yeah long time no post. I was in DC 7/5 adn returned to the land of non-modem internet on 7/13. Then my first thesis committee meeting was Wednesday, 7/14. I won't go into how much that sucked... but I had a fever that day, so that could have been part of it. Or I'm just stupid, who knows.
So last night I realized how very very poor I am. !!! I thought I was doing ok! I mean, I got the damn speeding ticket, and cut back on spending after that. But I also decided to not pay my cable bill that month (and deal with paying double this month, and so I paid the late bill just after I got paid, and now I have this month's real bill sitting on my table at home) and to not pay the new refridgerator monthly installment in June. So here I am with $100 more to pay this month,and I realized, I am so poor!! Again I have to take money from savings (which was negative last month, thank god for my birthday though, but now it's pretty low again) and I still dont' have enough money to pay the stupid cable bill. Aaaah! sigh, no fair. So my idea of going for retail therapy when I am feeling down is a stupid, stupid treatment, because it's making everything worse.
No more shopping for me. Especially since I bought Kate Spade playing cards ($20 for two decks, stupid CT sales tax) on Sunday. Well I mean no more shopping this month. Next month I'l get my $150/month raise. Woohoo!
And after the sucky sucky committee meeting, I was totally not myself. Then Monday I really got back to work, I did a sucrose gradient, which is the most excruciatingly annoying and painful (seriously, it's physically painful to do) experiment I've ever done. Mostly because when you pour the sucrose gradient, you have to do it very slowly and caaaarefully. There are 11 1mL steps and if you agitate the tube, they might mix and then it's useless. I'm using this to separate organelles based on their density, to see if Erv26 has the ER-Golgi localization I think it does. And then later I'll check out if ALP's localization is changed inthe absence of Erv26. Which I think it will be. And even though I was in the lab 11 hours on Monday, I realized that I am so much happier when I'm busy. I guess I just really really hate to be bored. Which I am now, western blots have so much empty time slots.
Good news: I bought 2 cute pairs of shoes in DC, and 2 skirts. I'm going to wear one of the skirts and the red flipflops tomorrow. Just because.
I was at the beach this weekend (incidentally, so were John and Eileen. I was in Westbrook, John was in New Haven with Megan and then went to Westbrook for dinner, and Eileen, I think, was in Old Lyme). And then other people were in CT too. CT's the place to be! So I got a tan (slight burn, I was dumb and decided I would just not be in the sun long so why bother with sunscreen? But it was so relaxing so time passed quite fast...). Then I headed north for Roxanne's party, full of good food and good QODs.
So... such is my life. Jenn is coming up this weekend so I've planned poker/potluck for Saturday. I'll proabbly make quiche and rice krispie treats and tell everyone else to just bring whatever. Sometime I should have a theme potluck.... but not when I have company, too much to do.
Love, money vs shopping, and summer fun
 

- posted by Catherine @ 3:31 PM

 
Fear
Scared, scared, scared. I'm giving my RIP (research in progress seminar) in 4 hours. Basically I'm telling everyone what's I've been doing in the past year in lab, and trying to convince them that's it's worthwhile. And then they will ask me questions which is also scary.
Aaah I'm nervous,and I have to sit and wait 4 hours. Luckily no one else wanted to go buy the post-RIP beer and munchies, so I am in charge of that. Nothing like a 45 min trip to the grocery store to take my mind off it my talk. You know I'll take my time there...
Love, fear, and nervous jitters
- posted by Catherine @ 11:01 AM

 
Procrastination in Progress
Yay birthday weekend! Now I am 24, and the weekend was quite fun. Did some shopping/mother-daughter quality time, and had coffee with Ann, dinner and saw Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (for the 2nd time) with my parents. So, life was good Saturday. Friday and Sunday were also nice.
So now I am starting to get my ass in gear for my RIP (research in progress) seminar, which is July 1, but my advisor wants to go over it with me this week, which means I need a rough draft put together. Arg! First thing is that I don't know what to include for background, second thing is I don't have all the data I want, and one of the experiments I will start after I finish this blog, but the other one I don't know how to do and it's tricky and argargarg. So Iwill have to wait for the people who know how to do it to return from their dumb vacations with their girlfriends...
In other news... not too much. All of a sudden I have a social life, which is freaky- Rob's party Thursday, Eileen's party Friday (although is she still having it?? Have heard no mention of it for a while, but she has been stressed with getting engaged adn needing to find a place to live after she gets kicked out on June 30) adn Katie's party on Saturday. Why can't fun things come gradually, why must they be crammed in in spurts like this? Oh well.
So, back to working or procrastinating on my RIP. argarg
Love, science, and birthday shopping
- posted by Catherine @ 1:24 PM

 
Conundrum
It's Friday, let's ponder.
So. Scenario
There is this protein, Erv29p. Nice little protein, ER/Golgi localization, transmembrane domains, handy-dandy KKXX signal sequence (hence the ER/Golgi loc). It transports alpha-factor in yeast. So you overexpress alpha-factor, whoa it's not transported efficiently, and then CPY gets mucked up too, since that also depends on Erv29p. If you up the expression of Erv29p, you alleviate the transport defect.
Cool, that's all well and good.
Enter Erv26p, my protein. ER/Golgi loc (although not 50/50 like Erv29's, more like 70/30 or so). Transmembrane domains. No KKXX, but an EXE, which binds to the COPII coat of vesicles, so that's how it's going to the Golgi.
Problem- Erv26p is required for efficient transport of ALP. So you would think overexpressing Erv26p would still have nice efficient transport of ALP. Right? wrong, unfortunately. The transport of ALP is not as bad as not having Erv26p at all, but there is definitely a problem there.
So what the hell is Erv26p doing?? It's obviously required for ALP transport, it hangs out between ER adn Golgi, it's binding to the Sec24p subunit of the COPII coat (probably, haven't shown that yet), so why is having excess Erv26p slowing down ALP?
Or is Erv26p binding something that takes care of ALP, so it's like an indirect transporter? Would that work?
Let's think about this for the weekend.
My wrist is still really bothering me. I can use it somewhat now though (with lots of painkillers), being solely left handed is very hard for me!
Love, Erv26p and sleep.
- posted by Catherine @ 4:16 PM