Fun in the Lab

Just a few pictures to illustrate how we entertain ourselves at work. In case you were wondering, the abundance of penguins is due to our holiday party, for which my lab did a skit about the magical land of science, where all grad students receive funding, experiments always work, and all papers are published in high profile journals. The bitter post-doc of the lab goes on a rampage, and puts the princess of the lab into a deep sleep by having her prick her finger on a poison Apple iPad. To cut an involved story short, the hipster undergraduate eventually rescues the princess with Linux…and the lab data was safe the whole time because it’s backed up nightly on an off-site server!

Yup. We’re nerds. Through and through.

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

An Odom Lab Christmas

“The N Days of Science”

On the 12^th day of Science, my P.I. gave to me:

12 flasks rotating,
11 pipettes piping,
10 Westerns blotting,
9 films exposing,
8 plates a’reading,
7 probes a’binding,
6 cultures synching,
5 Giemsa’d rings!
4 trophozoites,
3 schizonts,
2 merozoites,
and a project with ample funding!

And because science is nothing without replicates & controls, we have the non-malarial version:

On the 12^th day of Science, my P.I. gave to me:

12 IC50s
11 tight ANOVAs
10 sample buffers
9 R² values
8 incubations
7 double-blind trials
6 good transfections
5 First Authors!
4 papers in Cell
3 Nobels
2 seminars
and a project with ample funding!

 

Secondaries

Well, it certainly has been awhile. Happy Turkey Day, everyone! This is going to be a short post, since I have a puppy asleep in my lap and he’s monopolizing my dominant typing hand. The quick update on everything is that I’m still working 50 hrs a week in the lab, we’re prepping my last ten-months’ worth of data for publication (it is SO COOL), my Fulbright proposal is in, and I’m about 1/3 of the way through MSTP secondaries. Also, MEPI is now in full swing, so I have sixteen new medical ESL students. One of them wants to be a sci-fi writer after graduation (you gotta have something to fill in all that spare time when you’re serving 21,000 patients), and boy, did he come to the right instructor for that! I sense good times ahead.

 

Overcoming Writer’s Block

Oh, lords of all writer’s block, what have I done
that my paper lies blank and your ire is won?
This should be complete, or at least halfway through.
Not an outline at midnight – make this untrue!
The deadline approaches, so where is my muse?
Well, drat. This note here says she’s off on some cruise.
You wanna play dirty? Alright, chew on this:
I’ll set this damn paper alight, blow a kiss
farewell to literature, there’s always mime!
Guaranteed: in a week you’ll all be in line
to beg for my mercy, a halt, will I cease?
NO! Not till you bring me five muses apiece.
That’s the deal, place your bid, so what’ll it be?
Hell for you, or one measly essay for me?

I think we all know the answer to that question. One of those offers you can’t refuse, style of thing. Anyway, I wrote it after actually finishing a personal statement for med school applications. I must say, only AMCAS would give you not a page limit or a word limit, but a character limit. And of course they count spaces.

Oh, and this is not intended to make any mimes feel bad. The skilled mime is a wonderful sight. The unskilled, however…

 

Mariachi

As those of you who have to put up with me regularly already know (as for those of you who don’t, cherish your bliss), I am in the midst of maaaaaaany projects. A sampling, if you will:

• full-time job as a medical researcher
• 4-year part-time contract as a medical ESL teacher
• volunteer chef for several local homeless shelters
• volunteer maintenance/remodeling for a battered women’s sanctuary
• applying to MD/PhD programs on the side
• failing to have any further social life

It keeps one on one’s toes. Then my labmate waltzes in last week to say: “Hey, so mariachi band practice at 8. We need violin. Be there.” And I couldn’t very well refuse, now, could I? After all, the first scientific principle arose from the music of pipes.

The long and the short of it is that in the space of 3 days, I’ve found myself in performance and the proud wearer of a quite stylish red sash, with the more dubious prospects of moño, sombrero, and full charro looming. Still, what’s a party if you don’t dress for it, eh?

 

The Cake Song

In the midst of applications, there is always time for my friend Mroo’s fabulous flourless chocolate cake. There is also always time for singing, even when the neighbors would really prefer that we didn’t. Inevitably, cake and singing led to songs about cake, and I wrote this one to the melody of the infamously bawdy Moose Song. Feel free to sing this next time you’re baking; I know I will!

ODE TO A CAKE

When I was a young lad, I used to like tarts.
I’d munch all the crunchies and pick them apart,
but the sugar, it burned til my glaze went opaque.
You’d never taste failure like that with a cake.

Chorus:
Cake, cake, I likes a cake
I’ve never had anything tasted so great.
I’ve had lots of sugar in all that I make
but I’ve never had anything quite like a cake.

I tried many recipes, baked every bun
with cinnamon, filbert, or coconut rum,
but nothing I buy and nothing I make
compares to a flour-less chocolate cake!

Chorus

Meringues are a treat for a Saturday night,
and even cannoli or mousse is alright,
but cake is so simple, delicious and moist
It’s something on me that you won’t have to foist.

Chorus

There’s artery clogging sweet treats on each shelf
in my pantry I just say, “to heck with good health!”
I cook so gourmet that my oven might break,
but I’ve never baked anything quite like a cake.

Chorus

So in my old age I am quite satisfied,
though my waistline now measures a hundred feet wide.
I’ve never once tasted a sugar that’s fake.
Die before diet! Let’s have some more cake!

 

MCAT

I’ve been absent for a while for a number of reasons (moving, starting full-time at the hospital), but the least pleasant is that I’m in the final stretch of studying to take America’s most notorious exam. I’d been hoping to take it at the end of June. However, I overestimated the availability of testing sites, and wasn’t able to find a testing center within 3 hours drive of Saint Louis, a city where 10% of our metro area population is college/university/graduate/medical students and there are two major medical schools, that provided tests on the weekends (or even, on the earlier dates, on weekdays).

After checking out as many test dates as I could, I finally settled on a Thursday in late July in Springfield, IL. It means I’ll have to miss work (which will go on record as “unconfirmed sick day: migraine”) but, if I wanted to take the test on a Saturday, my site options were Oklahoma, Texas, Alaska, or Kuala Lampur. I think Sydney and Hong Kong may have been offered on one of the earlier dates, as well. Apparently the rest of the world hasn’t caught on to the idea of the full-time job.

At any rate, regular posting likely will not resume until after the test. In the meantime, here’s a mad science-y image to distract you:

NextGen

If this doesn’t make much sense, google “next generation sequencing” or check it out on wikipedia. It’s pretty crazy stuff. Dead useful, too.

 

Ding Dong

With the most wealthy and intelligent force behind the Wahabi dead, this is a beautiful, beautiful day.

 

Inside Jokes

I need to apologize for two things:

1) I’ve been out of commission for several weeks due to mad science, and have neglected my update “schedule.”

2) Now that I am finally posting an update, it’s an inside joke.

Just kidding. I have to say that I drew this as a bit of personal amusement at how confoundingly simple and idiosyncratic humor can be. This is actually just one panel from a comic I was going to do about infuriating inside jokes, but since crazy science has been keeping me at work until the grand hours of the evening, it’s just isn’t going to get done. Here’s the gist of the comic, however:

How many times do you find yourself surfing the net, reading blogs/comics/facebook, when you come across an impenetrable run of comments all based on some inside joke that you couldn’t possibly have heard? You poke around for a bit (if you’re really dedicated) and perhaps ask someone to explain, but they’re usually to busy tittering to tell you what the hell is going on. Sooner or later you get pissed off and leave the site. Familiar, yes?

For my first several weeks at the lab, all one had to do to make the other techs crack up was keep a straight face and growl “Tarrrrrrrr.” I had no idea what was going on. After another few days of people laughing at my blank stares, Dana took pity and had Chris explain what was going on.

Believe me, you don’t want to know, either.

Chris' Tarr

 

Lovelace & Babbage

So I was cruising Kate Beaton’s website, and suddenly there was a hole in my life of which I was hitherto unaware. It has now been filled, mightily.