Weekend Update

I road today! Finally. Very long overdo, really. If I'd remembered how great I look in spandex I would have ridden a lot sooner.

So I road my real bike into the lab around noon, so I could leave from here. Today was freeze cracking day, which is fairly cool because I get to play with liquid nitrogen. So basically I'm checking for S phase entry after a heat shock, so yesterday I heat shocked my worms, and then today I switched them to plates containing BRDU (bromodeoxyuridine, will be incorporated into new DNA in the place of Thymine, and can then label with antibodies). In a little bit, I will then take the worms and palce them on slides, and then dip my worms into liquid nitrogen. Sweet. This fixes them to the slide for the later staining, and also permeabilizes the worms. I then will soak the slides overnight at -20 degress C in Coranoy's fix. Monday will be a lot of work.

Anyway, I'm feeling much better since tuesday, when I gave without a doubt the worst presentation of my entire life. It has deffinitely given me some good motivation though. Interestingly, I'm also looking forward to being able to resume classes. I'm finally getting into the good upper level ones. It's kinda wierd that I'm doing hardcore genetics and biochem stuff, and haven't taken a course in either.

With less than 2 months before I fly home, I finally feel like I'm in the home stretch. I'm trying to really produce some solid results, which I'm actually fairly confident about getting. I'll be going to London for halloween, and that might very well be my last trip. We'll see.

I also need to start looking for housing. That's annoying.

And finally, I can't wait to return to Tallahassee and see my good friends there and go riding with them and celebrate my birthday and all that good stuff.

More later, I should go prepare for freezing worms.

super busy

I have 2 months left before I fly home. I'm a little split on how I feel about it. I like the lab here and the research I'm doing, but I think being away from everyone is taking it's toll. Fighting that feeling of isolation can be a bit difficult. I'm also beginning to find motivating myself very difficult. That's not good, because in the 2 months left, I need to do a crap load of BRDU stainings and examine heat shocked lines of neuronal, muscle, and intestinal promoters with gfp tagged histones. I need to do this so that I can hopefully show that my targetted worm cells are entering S phase or perhaps completing mitosis but not cytokinesis after a heat shock. It would hopefully get me into Jerome's paper and show that my 8 months here weren't for nothing.

I have to present a journal article to the group tomorrow, and I'm finding I have a hard time concentrating on the powerpoint presentation I'm doing. That's why I decided to take a break and write this blog. I don't know whats wrong with me. Perhaps my brain is just shutting down because I've had to give myself a crash course on the Wnt signalling pathway and genetics of drosophila in 2 days in order to understand the paper. And perhaps its because I don't like the author's style of prose...a sentence should not be 6 lines long. This isn't latin poetry.

oh, and in case you're interested, here is the article: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7212/full/nature07310.html

I also haven't touched the bike in quite sometime. I only have time to ride on the weekends now, and for some reason I never got around to it this past weekend. I've been running a bit though. Still, I'm annoyed. I think mainly I'm bored with riding by myself. I feel like I used to be a lot better at going on long rides by myself. Perhaps because it's so hard to let the mind wander when you ride here. There's no such thing as a road in the middle of no where where you can kind of not pay attention. Always gotta concentrate so you don't hit other riders, and always an intersection to cross.

Anyway, Mike and Inga, two doctors in the lab, each just won a grant (yay $$), and so we're having a celebration in a little bit. I'm gonna go try to make some more slides now. I'm hoping I'll do a decent job tomorrow.

Link to the pics I've uploaded so far from Camille's visit

http://picasaweb.google.com/I3rfry/CamilleComesToHolland#

Apologies to Camille.

Pictures from Camille's trip!

So Chelsea arrived today, and is bumming at my place until she goes to Amsterdam this weekend. I might go on Saturday and help celebrate Emily's bday there.

I finally have sorted through all off the 1300 pictures that Camille and I managed to take during 10 days (wooo tourists) and when I'm back to my computer (on the lab one now) and not entertaining guests, I will post a few. A lot of them came out really well.

Speaking of pictures, funny story that happened to us while we were in Antwerpen. A dutch family (dad an sisters? idk) asked us to take a photo of them in front of this famous building with flags. There's also a statue in front. I attempted to get them and all of the really cool scenery in the pic. However, when they reviewed it, they told me they wanted the picture to be of them close up. So I obliged and took a picture of them. You can't really tell where they are or whats behind them. Like, you can get a close up picture of yourself anywhere, right? The whole thing was a bit baffling. Anyway, we made the mistake of asking them to take a photo of us as well, and so there is a ncie close up of the two of us with some random metal behind us. Not the greatest picture. I'll point it out when I update this post with pics.

So I'm doing some quality lab work for the next few weeks, and then my parents are coming. After that I think Chelsea and I will visit Steve in London. We also might go to Dublin during the same trip. Who knows.

Oh, and yay for a new semester starting this week. It's odd not to be taking classes. Hmm.

Where have I been?

On vacation!

Camille, my girlfriend, flew over a week and a half ago to see me, and we had a wonderful time. To say we had greatly missed each other is quite an understatement. I'd forgotten how much fun the two of us have together.

We visited and explored: Utrecht and the surrounding area, Den Haag, Antwerp, Bruges, Maastricht, and Amsterdam. It seems like a dream almost. Camille left today unfortunately, and it's still another 4 months until I return to the US. Not the happiest day of my life, that's for sure. Tomorrow I'll be back in the lab knee deep in experiments, which should help to take my mind off of her absence. I'm still so glad that she was able to come for a visit at all. We both tend to be busy, and her trip was sandwiched between an REU research internship and the start of classes at UF in a few days.

Anyway, I have lots of pics, which I'm uploading, and will soon share. I'm also looking forward to seeing my parents in about a month, as they'll be visiting for a few weeks.

Also, I have had a blog about Paris in the works for quite some time now. Look for it to finally be published.

Paris and the Tour

Looks like I've got a lot to talk about.

Last week I took a train over to Parijs (still don't know why the Dutch insist on changing the names of cities) to see some of the sites, visit friends, and WATCH THE FREAKING TOUR DE FRANCE. It was sort of a mini vacation, as I left on the 24th, and came back on the 28th.

I'll go in chronological order I suppose. Though stream of consciousness could be fun as well.

Thursday I packed, road my bike into central station, and realized that I still needed a ticket to Rotterdam (my highspeed train was Rotterdam to Paris). I didn't have change or a working chip card, so I had to purchase the ticket from a person, who decided to be an ass and not give me a student ticket price because I don't have a European student ID. Screw him.

The train ride was uneventful. I sat next to a nice older French lady who spoke English fluently. Come to find out she works as a translater and is married to an American. We talked some politics and what not. I seem to always be curious what the rest of the world thinks about the US.

I arrived at Paris Nord about 30 mins late, and proceeded to follow people to what I assumed was the main area of the station. It wasn't. After spending a good 35 mins looking for Chelsea, my newly made friend Amanda (from Brussels) called to tell me she had arrived and was in the main area. Oops, I'm slow. I went back upstairs and walked a 100 meters to the main area and met her and then Chelsea.

After dropping our bags off at Chelsea's room in the Italian student house, which I kept calling an embassy because I'm obviously really quick, we went to the Latin Quarter for some dinner. We met up with Sam, who's also from the states, and lives in the American House. He's not only fun to be around, but speaks some pretty good french as well. Very helpful.

Some observations made at dinner:
-The french really like you to know that you're meal used to be alive. Evidence: the fish I ordered was an entire grilled fish, and Sam's meat was so rare that it bled all over his plate.
-Street begger's are annoying. We're spoiled in the states it seems. Over dinner we had people walk into the resteraunt holding flowers or some other knicknack and push it into your face until you said "nee, dank je" or whatever that is in french. There also was this guy "playing" guitar, which means he was worse than some Johny one-note wonder. Couldn't even play a proper chord. Instead he enthusiastically strummed an unever tempo and yelled words in spanish or italian. If I was a character in a movie, I would have smashed his guitar and then given him a few euros.
-Describing wine is hilarious. We ordered a cheap bottle to share, and ended up trying to one-up each other with fanciful and ridiculous despritions of the taste, texture, man-hood increasing powers, etc of the wine. Lots of entertainment. I really can't take wine snobs seriously. Some examples: "It's smooth, but rough enough to hint at the possibility that the grapes lived in soil." "I think that the brightness and crispness is compounded by the distinct slurping sound I make when I drink it." "It's like there is a hint of fruit that plays lightly on my tongue, trying to get my attention but not quite succeeding similar to an abused foster child. I think it's grapes." And so on for about 20 mins.

We then met up with Emily and her friend, and decided we'd go to this fancy bar called, of all things, The Student Bar. We all got different mixed drinks. Not cheap, but my mohito hit the spot.

Then we went back on the metro and tram to Chelsea's place, planned out the rest of the weekend, and got some sleep.

The next day, Friday, we caught the tram to the supermarket to pick up some supplies. The place was huge. I've gotten used to my tiny little POS store near where I live, and this one made me really jealous. Anyway, after that we began our tourist day. It was nicing travelling with Chelsea as she was proficient in the metro system and knew the best ways to get to the sites. We saved a lot of time as a result. Here is our day, in pictures:



Also, I ate the best falafle of my life somewhere in Paris. Chelsea knows, ask her.

We met Gabor, Chelsea's friend who's staying in London for the summer, at Paris Nord at 8:30 pm, and then went to dinner.

Saturday was another tourist day. We went to the supermarket and picked up a ton of food in preperation for Sunday. Then the four of us headed off to see the sights.






That night we went to see the Eifle tower sparkle. Every hour they turn on a bunch of strob lights and try to give foreigners siezures. They retaliated by taking pictures. Basically, the result was that the building and crowd were having a rather frantic conversation using pulses of light. It was really pretty though, particularly because the French had changed the colors to match the EU flag in honor of their president assuming temprary leadership of it. Because of this, some natives had come out to drink from their wine bottles (Perisians don't use glasses apparently) and lay in the grass and murmer to their loved one. It was nice, except that it just looked like a bunch of winos sitting around in nice clothes. We decided that we should blend in better next time and bring our own bottle or three to sip on while we walked around. This would come into play Sunday.

Sunday! The day of all days. Le tour was here! We managed to arrive to the spot we scoped out around 10 in the morning. THe rest of the day was spent talking to those around us, holding the spot while others went to the bathroom or bought t-shirts, and eating and talking.

Eventually the caravan came by. It was absurd. Hilariously absurd. Here are some pics of it. Now just imagine all of those vehicles that you see honking. Non stop. Yaa....

And then the race! Really neat. THe pelaton was smaller than I thought it'd be. Maybe that's because they were going pretty fast. Anyway, I was able to pick out a few of the riders, like Hushovd and Hincapie. And of course the jersey winners. It was nice to see them come by 7 times. We were at the top of the only slight rise on the course, so often times there were attacks launched where we could see them. However, the 180 right by the Arch de Triumph followed by a long downhill usually destroyed the breaks.

We didn't even attempt to watch the finish. We walked down and saw some of the award ceremony, but then we missed the victory lap. The cops were being real dicks, not letting anyone close to the award stage except VIPs. Oh well.

After the race, we randomly met up with some of Chelsea's friends and invited them to eat with us. Only Sam ended up joining us. The food was excellent. II think it was Indian. It all runs together. We also ate with these two cyclists from the states that are living in Europe right now.

We ended the night by playing some frisbee in the dark at the park near Chelsea's place, and after realizing that we were bad at frisbee, particularly when there were no lights, we decided to just drink a bottle of wine and talk instead. All was chill, and then some random 5 year old french kid awkwardly ran over to us with a plastic bottle and proceeded to throw it at us over and over. It was hilarious, particularly because he seemed to always hit Chelsea in the head. Sam encouraged him a lot too. It was sorta like having a dog that threw things at you. Throw the bottle far away, kid runs over and gets it, runs back until he's 2 feet from you, and then throws it at your face with all his might.

Eventually (after 1/2 hour or so) his parents came and got him. Pretty good parenting I think.

The next day I woke up early and caught a train back to Utrecht. I realized that I had really missed Utrecht and the Netherlands. Everything is so much cleaner and everyone is so much nicer it seems.

Today I slept in rather late in the morning, and then headed into the lab to take care of a few experiments. I decided I'd do a training ride from my lab, so instead of taking this bike:


I road in on this guy (amazing photo, I know):


My midiprep went well, as I got quite nice concentrations of DNA from the final two constructs I needed. Now I will inject a few more lines of worms, and then work on optimizing extra cell divisions.

As luck would have it, the torrential rain stopped shortly before I was finished with my experiments, and so I changed and started out on a training ride. I've recently become inspired to train again after I went on a group ride last Wednesday and discovered how unfun a lack of fitness is. I did two 10 minute lactate threshold efforts, with ten minutes rest in between. I forgot how much I missed pushing my body to the limit. It's quite fun, you should try it. About 40 minutes away from the lab (1.5 hr hours into the ride), I discovered that I was bonking. as my thoughts turned to finding somewhere with food, I began to worry. You see, it was already 7:30 pm, and stores close at 8. I road for the next 25 minutes cursing the Dutch and their silly store hours. Luckily I came across a gas station, and quickly consumed two of the best snickers bars of my life. I arrived at the lab with tired legs, and fortunately Suzan was there to let me back in (I forgot my key card....).

Having showered and changed, I decided to wait out the waterfalltastic rain and lightening, and stupidly decided to read bbc.com. The articles about the presidential race in particular were pretty depressing. Story after story focuses on how certain groups perceive the candidates, or what the candidates need to say to trick certain classes of narrow minded fools into voting for them. There was no substance. No critical examination of issues. Nothing, just garbage.

So ya, I got home ok, and decided to write this blog. Which means I'm publishing it Monday....2 days later.

I thought you guys might enjoy some of these photos I finally uploaded:

This is at a bar downtown during Holland's blowout of France in the Eurocup. Unfortunately, all the orange shirts were soon put away following the embarrassing loss to Russia.
And the movie:



Next up we have the music machine. This computer has been turned into the lab radio, and we have it hooked up to hundreds of different online radio stations. It's located behind a vacuum pump too...Oh, and there are two main lab areas for our group. Ours has the computer and is always loud. The other one is called "the whisper lab". Guess which one is more fun?

Here is myself and Sander apparently looking at a moldy worm plate in the dissecting-scope area. It's quite an everyday occurrence, really...

And here is Vincent, the lab tech. Really cool guy, though he just cut the crap out of his arm when he slipped carrying a bunch of glass beakers. But he's a champ, and already back in action.


Ok, that's all for now. I'll leave you with the only picture that I managed to take before my batteries died when I was in Bruges. Maybe UF can use it in it's advertising campaign....