Thursday, December 16, 2010

Feeling festive


We finally decorated the house for Christmas, and I think it looks pretty darn good. Mostly it's last year's decorations but it still looks nice.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Chiristmas shopping, hello, goodbye.


With my big work project off submitted to the great gods of science (i.e. just waiting over here), it seemed like a good time to finally start my Christmas shopping. So I braved the insane cold, to get my shop on. I don't know if it was the weather (it totally was) but the stores were pretty darn empty. In a mere few hours, I both started and finished my shopping. No denying that my list was short, but it feels good to sit back, relax and huddle under more blankets.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Grown up final exams

Although I'm often confused for a high schooler I'm actually a bona fide, college-graduated, grown-up. So the stress of final exams and getting ready for Christmas should be a thing of my past, right? Hardly. I have 3 major deadlines coming up and that mentality of "just have to survive until next Friday" is kicking in.

So if you'll indulge me in a short rant, and forgive the photo-less post, I'll be sure to make it up to you.

- I have a huge experiment going on. It's the kind where in at 7:00 a.m., mouse-wrangling until 10:00 p.m., and working most of those hours in between. And one of my mice was missing an eye and it was gross. Ugh all around.

- My manuscript resubmission is due by next Friday. I don't have all my results (ahem, see above) and I have boatloads of edits left. And I kind of need this to get published.

- I have to give a big presentation to my department on Wednesday. Who has TIME for this?

Ok done. Thanks. So as of next Friday, I'm on cruise control until Christmas. I just have to survive until then.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

My world is so small...

(from here)

...that I got laughably excited about the newly described bacteria that can utilize arsenic? It's called GFAJ-1 for now, and (sadly) I required Wikipedia to find the original article that went live today in the journal Science. Sadder still, I don't have access to the manuscript from home but from what I can tell - biology just sort of changed here people.

Not to be outdone, Nature has a nice story posted today on the same subject wherein they refer to GFAJ-1 as an "oddball" (probably jealous that Science got the exclusive). But basically, it looks as though arsenic might be taking the place of phosphorus in all of the important molecules: DNA, RNA, cell membranes and ATP. This is different from every other known living organism in the universe. Who wouldn't be excited about that?