Happy Halloween!!!

Well, Halloween started a couple of weeks ago for me….and my labmates….with the planning of our Halloween costume. I shouldn’t really say “labmates”, because in truth, they all just did what Toni (the Post Doc in the lab next door) and I told them to do and they’re from 3 labs – although I’m not sure whether the Serre lab counts as a “lab” because Hadley bailed on our costume to dissect mice and Jim has probably never worn a lab coat in his life…….

We DID have one of the world’s geekiest costumes – it’s a molecular biology joke and I don’t expect too many of you to “get” it. All you really need to know is that yes, it was funny and yes, I was VERY excited about it!!! As were a couple of other members of our “team” – Jim???……well I suspect he was just doing as he was told.

We were PCR! That’s “polymerase chain reaction” to those of you who don’t know – it’s how we amplify DNA (or RNA) to manipulate it (clone it, sequence it, mutate it, I’m running out of ideas…..but you get the picture). People used to say that E.coli was the workhorse of molecular biology. I’m here to tell you PCR is the workhorse of molecular biology!!!! And it is!!!

So, we were real-time PCR and there are 5 components to the reaction – the enzyme, Taq (said tack), dNTPs (which are the nucleotides used to synthesise the PCR product – which is just lots of copies of the DNA/RNA of interest), oligonucleotides or primers (the sequences that determine which bit/gene you are targeting for amplification), the DNA or RNA (RNA would be in the form of cDNA – which makes in double stranded) and because this is real-time, we need a means of “seeing” our PCR product, which is where the enzyme SYBR green comes in (I’m not sure whether it’s technically an enzyme though (????) – it binds to the double-stranded PCR product and fluoresces at a certain wavelength). Technically, you need salt, normally MgCl2, but in most reactions, it’s in a mastermix with the Taq.

So here we are:

From left to right: Phyllis is the Taq (with the picture of the thumb “tack” pinning the DNA down), Toni and Jeannie are double-stranded DNA and their shirtsleeves velcro together (the hydrogen bonds), Debbie is our dNTPs, I’m SYBR green, with my flashing LED lights (my fluorescence) and Jim, who is at least smiling in this picture, is our primers.

Those of you who know the department we work in will get a kick out of knowing that we “embraced the complexity” and Jim’s primers are indeed real-time primers I designed to span the Exon5-6 boundary of none other than our favourite gene…..PTEN. And if you didn’t get that, don’t worry, 1000’s wouldn’t!!!

So, we had a pot-luck lunch at work on Friday and everyone bought a dish to share. I bought jalapeno poppers:

But, the piece-de-resistance in my humble opinion was Phyllis’ Kitty Litter cake………..

And if you’re gagging right now, let me assure you that the kitty litter tray and the scoop had only been lightly used prior to this and the cake was delicious – especially those tootsie roll poops!!!!!

So……on to cuter things. This is Meredith, all dressed up as Thumbelina for trick-or-treating:

You’ll notice that Thumbelina has practical shoes on and not the sandals her mother suggested she wear and oh……about 10 layers of clothes. It was cold!!!!!!!!

And some more cuteness, while Thumbelina and I waited rather impatiently for 6pm and the start of trick-or-treating:

I didn’t go trick-or-treating this year! I hung out eating candy, and giving it out, instead. We counted and guesstimate that I gave out well over 800 pieces of candy last night.

I hope you had a Happy, Spooky, Halloween!!!!!

Off for a Sunday stroll….

Craig and I went for a walk this morning to the local lakes, Shaker Lakes and the nature centre. We took the camera because we were hoping to capture all the fall foliage…..but the trees really haven’t turned that much up there. Maybe we’ll go back next weekend. That’s OK though. We wandered around for nearly two hours, got really muddy (Craig never fell but had mud right up his back) and had a blast taking pictures of each other. Oh……..and Craig was attacked by an albino spider…..pictures to follow.

This is the big lake – we took off in brilliant sunshine, but by the time we had walked to the lake the clouds had rolled in. Oh well….we still had fun.

See the black splotches on the leaves of that tree? All the maple trees in our area have been affected by something, a fungus perhaps (????), that is doing that to the leaves – it looks even worse on a tree with green leaves. There’s something else I want to show you……this shot of Craig doesn’t quite show you it, but this next one does……..

Check out that bald spot!!!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! He’s decided he has big ears in all these photos too. I’ve honestly never noticed, but once he pointed it out…..they’re huge ;-)

Here’s some of the rest of the shots we took – in no particular order and for no particular reason – I just like them!

I chose this scarf to match the leaves – if only I’d known – I would’ve worn green! Why is it so dang cold and why are they predicting snow if the leaves haven’t all turned?

And we saw lots and lots of chipmunks – which is always VERY exciting for Craig and I. Hey, squirrels are still exciting for us!

And there were other scary creatures:

And there was a troll on the bridge:

And a troll under the bridge:

And then just after this picture was taken – literally seconds later a spider climbed down from the roof of this tunnel right in Craig’s face – the spider was see-through!!! And this is Craig’s reaction:

And not to be outdone by a spider….I went for a little hop into the stream for some photos:

And this cute little boy walks past and says “Mum look! That lady’s swimming”. Now, that was obviously my cue to fall over……sorry folks, not today. But I like these shots – because you can see my reflection in the water….

  Oh well, the fall colour’s weren’t as spectacular as they could have been, but we still had a great time!!! Maybe next weekend we’ll actually photograph some leaves instead of each other!

Have a good one y’all!!!

Ohio Renaissance Festival – Sunday October 4

Wow!! I’m finally updating this blog!!!! Let’s not dwell on that though, let’s get on with the action!!!

Last weekend we went down to Wilmington, Ohio to the Ohio Renaissance Festival with our friends Clark & Sarah and their daughter Meredith and Mike & Steph. I know that there were altogether too many “and’s” in that sentence, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me.

So, our friends like to dress up to go to these things, but there was NO WAY Craig was dressing up, he wore jeans. But here’s a shot of everyone on our way into the fair…

I assure you that Meredith was all dressed up under that shawl – you’ll have to forgive her though because it was bloody cold!!!

And here’s my husband and “The Other Woman”……you can read all about that here.

OK, so we had never been to a renaissance festival before – it was an absolute blast! I think we’ll definitely go again – and yes, Craig thinks so too! And not just because of the giant turkey legs!!!!

Did you see his scarlet letter pinned to his chest??? That “L” stands for “lecherous cad”. LOL.

No, we’ll be going back because they have pickle on a stick!!!!
And jousting…….all the animals are rescue animals and they really seem to enjoy themselves! And yes, the jousting is real!!!!

And mud wrestling!!!!

Actually, it wasn’t actually technically mud wrestling – it was Beowulf being re-enacted in the mud – that charming fellow is Grendel. Oh my goodness was this show funny! I actually laughed so hard I nearly peed myself – which had nothing to do with the fact that I tried to go the whole day without using a port-a-loo. American’s call them port-a-potty’s………..weird!

There was sword fighting too, but I can’t find any pictures – so Craig mustn’t have taken any! The thing I was most impressed with were the rides – they were only people powered – there were some HUGE guys, who look just like you imagine Thor would look, very “viking like”, if such a description exists, that used man-power to power the rides. Lots of fun!!!

And, there were handcrafts……..and we all know I’m a good sucked for handcrafts and besides that, I like to spend money. This is a nose goblin…

And this particular nose goblin’s name is “Dobby” and he now lives at my house! And I love him. And he’s mine! And “No”, if we ever have children I will not be sharing! And what’s a nose goblin? Well, I have that covered too!

OK, off to scrap some more and then work on my journal club presentation for next week! Have a good one y’all!!!!

Obama Wan Kenobi

The force is strong with this one.

Hello from our world

We’ve had a lovely slow, relaxing weekend here. Well, at least I have. I wouldn’t be able to tell you about Craig’s weekend – because he slept through the whole bloomin thing!!! I shouldn’t complain….he had his reasons…..he had his wisdom teeth removed under general anaesthetic on Friday morning. Wanna see what he looked like just after he woke up? I know, I know. It’s hideous!!! And I’m a hideous wife for posting it. But quite frankly, if he’s dumb enough to pose for a picture, then I’m gonna put it on our blog. It looks like a really, really bad mug shot! But wait, this one is even better….. You can really appreciate the glazed eyes and the effects of the anaesthetic in this one!!! That’s gauze in his mouth in case you’re wondering. He was still bleeding hours later, so he got to chew on gauze all day.

Craig actually looks a lot better now – well, he did, he’s currently joed out on the bed. He went to work thinking he’d work half a day but stayed the entire day, so he’s exhausted. Mind you, that might have something to do with the fact his diet consists of nothing but jelly (Jello) at the moment!!! I’ve had to make him jelly about 4 times now and I’m making 3 or 4 packets at a time. I don’t get it, the stuff has absolutely no flavour and no nutritional value!!!

So, this is what he looked like on Saturday evening when I dragged his butt out of the house and we went for ice cream at Dewey’s in Shaker Square.

And because I told him he looked like a chipmunk with that swollen jaw and those jowls….

And….because it wouldn’t be a blog post unless I snuck a picture of my own beautiful self in there as well……I had all my hair lopped off on Thursday night. I asked Craig to take pictures on Saturday and there weren’t very many in focus, but here you go….

I hope everyone’s having a great life! Leave us some love!

I’d update this blog…..

…..it’s just that I feel I’m so FAR BEHIND!!! And Craig is no help, because he never helps. If you’ve seen my scrapping blog, you’ll know that hot weather=crotchety wife=Craig is no help. It’s pretty darn logical to me!!!

Anyway, for those of you who have asked. The Millenium Falcon is finished and I did blog about it here. If I recall correctly it was finished a week or two after we got back from New York.

Now, I know I haven’t blogged about our trip to San Antonio in June, but I promise those posts will come. I have to finish our trip to New York too. Good things take time and we’re not going anywhere, so we have all the time in the world!

We haven’t been up to anything too exciting lately. I had my tooth removed and a filling done the other week. See – I told you we weren’t exciting. Wanna see pictures? Good, because I wanna show you them too!

This is me getting my filling done. Hey!! Have iPhone will travel – I love taking dumb pictures and sharing them with people.

And this is my tooth – it still has all the blood and guts attached to it. See you know, the thing is I know I’ve grossed some of you out, but you’ll still come back for more. LOL. See you next time!!!!!

Faces of the American Museum of Natural History

OK, I’ll admit it, Craig and I are not exactly “cultured”. What does this mean?? Well it means that in Florence in 2003, we COULD have stood in line with 20 million other people and queued to get into the Uffizi art museum where there are literally 100’s of paintings by Italian artists, Michelangelo, Raffaello, Boticelli, all the classical Florentine painters, words by Leonardo and Donatello and you name it, they have it. But we didn’t. Instead, we snuck around the corner to a little known place, a place that only we would be interested in. The Institute and Museum of the History of Science. And we had a blast!!!! They have the actual apparatus that Galileo Galilei and Leonardo da Vinci used in their experiments, there’s a huge anatomy collection, scientific and medical instruments from the last 2000 years of history and did I mention Galileo yet????? I felt a little guilty at the time, like we weren’t broadening our horizons, but great artwork in Italy is a dime a dozen (we saw more Michelangelo than we can remember – it all pales in comparison to David, The Sistine Chapel and the outfits the Swiss Guard wears), but we had an absolute blast at the Science museum!!! So………….you might be able to imagine that we not only missed MoMA in New York, we skipped the Met too!!! And I felt a little guilty, but only for an instant, because we spent an entire day (from 10am to closing at 5.45pm) here:

That’s right folks, the geeks spent the whole day at the American Museum of Natural History and we even have the t-shirts to prove it!!! Oh my goodness, we had such a blast, what a great museum – you could spend days there and still not see it all!!! But as we only had a single day, it was the dinosaurs and the planetarium that we concentrated on. Oh and we went to the Extreme Mammals exhibit, but only because the world’s latest “missing link” was unveiled the week before we went and I’m a geneticist, I had to see what the furore was about!!!

So here they are, the faces of the American Museum of Natural History as seen through Craig’s camera lens:

Count those chins!!!! LOL!

But these are my personal favourites – especially after all those chins you saw in that previous picture!!!! LOL!