Agave americana

Pittsburgh

I went to Pittsburgh last week with the family to see my brother. It was pretty chill and nice to not be at work. My brother is not so good at doing tourist-y things so we didn't do as much as I wanted. We did go to the Phipps Conservatory, which is really cool. Their Agave americana is blooming right now. It actually grows about a foot a day and is growing through the roof of the glass house. We also went on the Monongahela incline, which is one of two surviving inclines. It's a neat mode of transit that was built to transport workers who lived on top of Mount Washington to their jobs at the steel mills at the river. Super cool. I'll post pictures later.

Star Ocean

I was in a weird mood this past week in that I wanted to play a super long epic RPG game, so I started over my Star Ocean: Til The End of Time game. I had gotten to almost the end of the first disc a couple of years ago, found myself way under-leveled, got bored, and stop playing. I started over because I couldn't remember exactly what I was doing. Anyway, I'm rapidly approaching the place where I left off last time, and I think I'm in a slightly better position now. At least enemies that I remember having lots of trouble with aren't an issue, and I still have a lot of extra places to complete before having to go back to the Urssa Lava caves where I was stuck last time.
Anyway, it's a good game. I enjoy it. I play with the voice acting off, though. VA annoys me in general. Some of the cut scenes are unbearably long too. I know they were trying for a big sweeping story, but when I need to eat dinner/go somewhere/etc, the last thing I want is a 15 minute cut scene. But whatever, I can live with it.
I'm really going to try and finish the game this time. Then I might check out the other installments in the Star Ocean universe, if I can get my hands on them and if I have the system to play them on.

Body Type and Why Shopping is Annoying

I went to JC Penney today in hopes of getting some shirts, because I feel like I've been wearing the same 5 shirts to work.
What a pain in the ass. Why are all the summer tops made for women that have no breasts? I saw lots of shirts in cute styles, but they were all sheer and required a camisole underneath. That's great, except for the fact that DD-breasted women can't wear just a camisole to support their breasts. I can't, anyway. I need something that I can wear an actual bra under without showing it to the world, and apparently no one makes much of that.
What was frustrating and disheartening about this was that I know it's not something I can easily fix. It's easier to look at clothes and think, "I'll be able to wear that when I hit my weight loss goal." But when I look at clothes and think, "I might be able to wear that after a $7000 breast reduction, and even that it might look damn silly," it just pisses me off. My body type means I'll always have sizable breasts, even with a reduction, so to some extent I'm stuck. Which is annoying, because some of these clothes are cute!
tl;dr Hey clothes companies: most women aren't prepubescent! Make clothes that fit people with boobs too!

World Cup

This year is the first year I've actually paid attention to the World Cup. It's not for lack of interest; I played soccer for seven years and enjoy the sport, and I did watch the totally awesome 1999 women's World Cup, but for some reason I've never paid attention to the men. But this year I am, because for no other reason than I'm bored at work sometimes. And I've got to say that so far it's been entertaining. The US-Algeria game today was some excellent soccer to watch, and everyone in the lab started cheering when the US made that last-minute goal. I'm thrilled to pieces that France went home, since they shouldn't have even been there in the first place; and somewhat distraught that South Africa didn't make it out of their group, although they really played their best and should be proud.
I wish soccer had more of a following in the US. It seems like every kid plays soccer, but that doesn't translate to anyone watching it or following teams. There is a pro soccer league, but it's probably rather small. I know Detroit had a team for a while, but they moved because there wasn't enough support(hell, we can't even keep a WNBA team here. I think soccer's much more interesting than American football, whose mystique I still fail to comprehend. I just don't get it.

What the heck do I do at my job anyway?

I've worked at Karmanos Cancer Institute for almost nine months now as a research assistant in one of the breast cancer research labs. I got the job in a roundabout way that involved my step-aunt's best friend, the CFO of Karmanos, passing my resume to my now-boss who called me because I was apparently well-qualified. The upshot being that I work as a research assistant now, which means I do most of the work without getting much of the glory. Oh well. It's not forever.
At the moment, I am in the midst of a rather large experiment involving a panel of genes that are candidates as either oncogenes or genes that are regulated by an oncogene. What I do with these candidate genes is make an shRNA against each one and infect my target cells with said shRNA to knock down the gene's expression. Then I wait and measure growth and viability with a luciferase assay to determine the effect of knocking down the gene. In this experiment I have 20 genes and 148 shRNA constructs. That means I spent all of last week making 148 viruses to infect my target cells with. It was unpleasant. This week I get to infect my target cells, which are MCF10A and SUM225 lines. I do the infection in triplicate, which worked out to 444 wells, or four and a half 96-well plates. It's also unpleasant, mostly because I have to add the virus one at a time and can't use a multichannel pipettor. After that, I wait and see what happens. Our constructs have a GFP tag in them so after 24-48 hours I should be able to see some of my infected cells glowing green, and that's how I know that the infection worked.
Anyway, that's what I'm doing at the moment. Previously I did some work on PHGDH knockdown and insulin independence, which was mostly growth assays, Western Blots, and qPCR. I'm not fond of Western Blots. I'll complain about them another time. I've actually learned a lot in the nine months I've been working, and I feel a lot more confident that I can do science and could have a career as a research somewhere. Although I feel my leanings are toward some part of microbiology, the time I've served in cancer research will definitely benefit me.

Change in Blog

So I decided to make this my sole blog and do both photo posts and 'normal' posts for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I don't take enough photos to really fulfill the original purpose of this blog, which was to post loads of photographs. Secondly, I'd like a space on the internet to discuss topics that aren't necessarily of importance to any of my friends, and this avoids me spamming people on facebook or other sites.
Mostly I'll talk about my job, my research, my writing, and random things like video games or books. I'll still post pictures too, when I have some to upload. I'm hoping to avoid this becoming an angry ranty blog about everything stupid in my life or anything too adult content(although I've got a bit of a mouth and the occasional *swear* might slip out). Anyway, that's the plan. We'll see how it goes.

Lilies

These are some red lilies that my grandmother gave me years ago. We ended up dividing them and put some of them on one side of the house and some on the other.
These yellow lilies are the more wild variety that spread out everywhere. My ex-boyfriend gave me the plant; at least he had taste at some point. Anyway, I like the wild-looking ones and apparently they spread out everywhere if you let them.

Plant?

This is a bush we have in our backyard. For some reason I've spent my entire life calling it a hummingbird bush, but it's called something else that I can't remember instead. My mum bought it at Eastern Market years ago. It does actually attract hummingbirds, but it's not a hummingbird bush.

Bunny!

This big fat bunny lives in our yard. I think it's the mom because there's at least one little tiny baby bunny hopping around too. Memo tries to talk to the bunnies, but they never talk back. I think he's confused by them.

Relay for Life

I did Relay for Life last month with my church team. I chopped my hair off and donated it to Locks of Love.

Foodchain Friends!

They're friends. They eat each other. It's a complicated relationship. I bought them from ThinkGeek.

Memo's Birthday Present

I got Memo a window perch for his third birthday. He loves looking out the window but the sill is too small for him to fit on when they're closed. He loves the perch and hasn't done anything except sit on it since I gave it to him.

Cherry Tree

Here's a zoom in on the cherry tree. It's just starting to bloom.

Tulips and Cherry Tree

The tulips were just finishing up and the cherry tree is just starting to bloom!

Proof that I really do have a job

My name is on the sign outside the lab door!

Maple tree

The maple tree finally got some leaves on it!

Tulips

The first tulips bloomed!

Powwow

So back on the tenth my Mum and I went to a powwow in Saline, MI. It's pronounced like Celine Dion, not like saline solution. Anyway, one of the things about powwows is that you have to be very careful who you take pictures of, because it's incredibly disrespectful to just take photos of the dancers in their regalia without permission. And I feel weird as a Native American asking to take a picture with a dancer like they're a tourist attraction, so I took no pictures of the dancing. I did buy this sweet hair tie thing though, so you get a picture of it instead.

Oh Plushy

Uh...I clearly didn't take this picture, but I like Evgeni Plushenko and feel the need to say so.

Easter

Just me on Easter after church.

Oops, March

That's Memo, the blob in the blanket. He really has a thing about polar fleece blankets.

I'm not sure what he was doing standing on my pillow, but it was funny.
Eventually he laid down on it and looked extra silly.
He was sleeping and looked extra cute with his paw hanging down.

New Room Arrangment

So way back in August I posted pictures of my room and then said I needed to take new ones because I had re-arranged it and then never did. Well, I finally did. The one above is my dresser with my plants on it.
I'm sitting at my desk, that's a bookcase, the top of the desk, and one wall.
My other bookcases, the television, my calendar and bed.
The last bookcase and the small one that contains games and DVDs. That's pretty much it.

Kitty Bed

I got Memo a kitty bed for Christmas. He likes to sit in it.

Moon

The moon was huge this one evening. It was only 6PM when I took the photo.

Cats

For some reason Memo thought that my collapsible file thing was good to sit in. He loves it. I don't know why.
Wisp was all wedged in between my pillows and looked ultra-sleepy and cute, so I took her picture before she woke up and got all grumpy.

Christmas Cookies

So I'm way behind, because of Christmas, and then working, and then just being lazy, so I have to finish out my 2009 pictures. So I'll make a bunch of posts in a row here to get them all done.
Clearly these are Christmas cookies that we made. Yes, there are dinosaurs in there. Christmas dinosaurs.

Pony!!!!

So this lady had brought a pony to the tree farm and kids could get pony rides for four dollars. I was clearly way too big to get a pony ride, so I got a picture and pet the pony for one dollar instead. Isn't he cute?

Christmas Tree

This is the Christmas tree we cut down. That's my Mom holding onto it. It's pretty sweet.

Baby Christmas Trees

These are some of the baby Christmas trees growing at Broadview Tree Farm. We go there every year to cut down a Christmas tree. It's in Milford.

First Snow

The first snow of the year, early in the morning.

Pets

Memo and Miss Demeanor being friendly. Actually they were both sleeping and I woke them up.
I had the camera out so Mischief wanted me to take her picture too. She's a pretty girl!

Christmas Lights

So I was really bad about taking pictures and updating this during November because it was NaNoWriMo and I wrote a novel during all my spare time. I'm also having issues finding things to take pictures of. Hopefully the holiday season will change that. Anyway, these are the view from my window of our Christmas lights. They're probably blurry since it's dark.

Halloween 2009

Wow, I am so slow. NaNoWriMo is this month so I've spent most of my time frantically writing. Anyway, here are some Halloween pictures. I was Tom Baker-era Doctor Who. My dad made the K-9 for me out of foam board.

Maple Tree

The maple tree outside my window has finally changed colours!

First Day of Work

This is me, at extremely early in the morning, on my first day of work at Karmanos.

Apple Orchard

This is me at Long's apple orchard in Commerce. I saw these baby apple trees with their first crop of apples and thought they were really cute!