MMmmm, caffeine!

I think it was divine intervention that the soda machine guy showed up on the very day we ran out of diet pepsi. Thank the soda gods I need not go one day without it. I need it too. . I was up till 1:30 last night, and then woke up at 8AM this morning with little princess curled up at my feet and under the blanket. SLEEEEPYYY.

Finally talked with Ned today. For those that did not know, Ned is in fact Ned Ruby, head of the lab I'm working in. Cheryl had pushed for us to talk at some point about my project and pick his brain about what to do in the next steps--Ned is well-known for being out and about alot, and being sometimes I bit hard to find when you want to talk. But finally, yes, we got to chat! I'm very proud of myself for remaining calm and alert, putting out suggestions and answers that were intelligent and showed a good grasp of biochemistry and bioinformatics (Thanks Prudy! Thanks Brad!). So I am very pleased. That, and I got some good suggestions for fixing one of my projects, and also some good ideas for where to take my potential mutants after they are finally finished. We talked a little bit about my plans after graduation; I basically said "Definitely grad school"

I'm really quite sure now that it's what I want to do. I've been having so much fun here, and learning cool tricks and techniques. .. and we haven't even started on microscopy yet! I had begun to forget why I chose this field of work in the first place. Now I'm starting to remember! I love the people for one thing: the wide-eyed student workers and the fun-yet-stressed grad students and the veteran-like post-docs, and the lab heads, with their eyes on the big picture--bringing everything together. There's the day-to-day activities like making media, pouring plates and gels, setting up pcr's. .. . and then there are all the interesting questions being answered, little by little. Oh yeah.

I don't know, I think you'd have to be there and be sciencey to get excited about this kind of stuff. Sometimes I pretend that I'm showing a friend what I do, so that it becomes more interesting and amazing to me when I realize all that I have learned. And there's so much left, as there will always be.