I like New Yorkers/so you wanna be Super Mario, eh? A double feature.

I have to say that I really do like New Yorkers. They shoot straight from the hip, they're brutally honest, they aren't (usually) arrogant assholes, and they are funny! Jamin has become my New Yorker benchmark since he's from Manhattan and he embodies all of the aforementioned qualities. And he's one of my favorite people to boot. So far at Wayne State, I have encountered two professors who are from New York. The one I've had for the last couple of days in molecular biology is Dr. N. He looks like your standard middle-aged professor, with a slightly larger than average (for the profs I've encountered, anyway) paunch. Yesterday, he got to class early and had to come out into the hallway to say that resistance was futile and that we might as well come into the room. This was almost 10 minutes before lecture was scheduled to start. I know that words on a page (or email or text message, etc.) can't really convey the tone of the dialogue or the spirit in which it was intended, but immediately I could tell that 1) he wasn't trying to be a jerk, and 2) he had a New York accent. Yesss! This should be a fun lecture! And it was. Today was even better. Again, he was there early - waiting for students to show up and kind of pacing at the front of the room. I was the third student to walk in and I asked where everyone was. He wondered the same thing aloud and said that he was instituting a new rule just then: he would lecture 5 minutes for every student who was present when lecture was scheduled to begin. Class is supposed to start at 9:30 and I came in at 9:25. There are about 27 students in the class, so I wondered how exactly this was going to play out. Everyone finally showed up right at 9:30, so it turned out to be okay. I sit in the front row, which makes me an easy target for professors. I really don't like being an easy mark for anyone, but I'm getting old and can't see or hear so good anymore, so it is whatever it is. I may as well have painted a bright red bullseye on my forehead this morning because I have an iPad that I use in class to see the PowerPoint slides, rather than printing out hundreds of pages of them per week. I convert ppt files to pdfs and I have an app that lets me mark them up. I explained this in one of my early posts. Dr. N didn't miss a beat - as soon as I pulled the thing out of my bag, he was asking all kinds of questions about it. What kind of reader is it? What do you use it for? What app lets you take notes on the pdfs? Again, he wasn't being jerky at all - he just couldn't conceal his curiosity about it. I'm weird - I really love people who are my relative opposites. It's funny. If you're outgoing, have no internal filter, and have a good sense of humor, I'm in love. I do have what I think is a good sense of humor - maybe a bit twisted, but still good - but I am certainly not outgoing or filter-less in normal situations. The exact combination of qualities varies from person to person, but those things seem to be a common thread most of the time. Anyhow, lecture gets started and today we're talking about DNA manipulation techniques. PCR, restriction enzymes, cloning, sequencing - that kind of stuff. Amazingly, I seemed to be the only student who knew that EcoRI doesn't cut E. coli DNA because E. coli DNA is methylated (thanks, Jim!!). A cancer biology student, thinking eukaryotically of course, hypothesized that the enzyme or the DNA assumed a different conformation, so no cleavage occurred. Nope! We aren't talking about G-protein coupled receptors! Try again! Ha ha! For a split second, I felt knowledgeable like I did when I taught micro. Then some other student said something about the DNA being "different" and that was a good enough answer, I guess. So the funny part of class was when we were talking about PCR. Referring to Kary Mullis (who won a Nobel Prize for PCR, even though it wasn't really his invention), he said that Mullis was a jerk before dropping acid and coming up with Taq polymerase for PCR and he's still a jerk. He also said that Kary Mullis just goes to show that you can have the brain of a rodent and still win a Nobel Prize. It doesn't sound nearly as funny in print now as it did when he said it - I guess you really had to have been there. It was hilarious!

Enough school crap and on to Halloween costume crap. Elliot decided that he wants to be Super Mario (as in Nintendo video game Super Mario) for Halloween. Mary said that she could give me a Mario costume that her son had, and I told Elliot this, but he said he wanted me to make one because it would be more special. This kid is freaking smart and he knows exactly which buttons to push to get what he wants. Dammit! Mario wears blue overalls with big yellow buttons, a red long-sleeved T-shirt, a red newsboy-type cap, white gloves, and a big bushy mustache. Apparently, the American sewing pattern companies only make like 5 patterns for boy shit, and none of them happen to be patterns for overalls. American sewing pattern companies (McCall's, Butterick, Simplicity, and Vogue) suck balls. Since I'm weird, I like the German pattern company, Burda. Even the paper they print their patterns on is better quality. Burda was the only company that had more than a couple of patterns for little boys. The problem was that their pattern for overalls looked to be too complex for what I wanted - pockets all over the damn place, decorative seams everywhere - just too technically difficult for me to work with in a short time frame. I did, however, almost (almost!) buy the pattern they had for lederhosen. Could you imagine Elliot's reaction if I told him I decided that he would be a brown German for Halloween instead of Super Mario? He actually IS a brown German, but that's beside the point. Every time I tell Chris that I'm black Irish he just laughs at me until I tell him that my mitochondrial DNA comes directly from County Cork, Ireland. Then I must start sounding like the mom from Charlie Brown, because he totally tunes out everything I say after that. Alright, so the point of this part of the post was to say that I think I succeeded in drafting most of a pattern this afternoon:

Super Mario pattern pieces I drafted today. Ignore the attention-whore Siamese. He goes wherever I go and I can't stop him.

I kind of half ripped apart last winter's bib overall snow pants and drew these pattern pieces according to how they were constructed. I think I'll try to slap together a muslin prototype to make sure the pieces work as they should and so I can fit them to Elliot directly before cutting into the fleece I bought for the project. This should be an interesting process. I'm waiting to draft a pattern for the straps until I can figure out how long they need to be, since they won't be adjustable. Is it wrong that the part I'm most excited about is finding a fake mustache? (Sigh) It probably is.

Instructors on the Jerkism Spectrum

Yeah, I know I said in my last post that I would get up to date on this year's Halloween costume stuff in this post. But I haven't made any more progress on it, and furthermore, I just don't feel like talking about it. So there.

For the last week or so in my cell biology class, we've been assaulted with signal transduction crap. The instructor for this module or whatever is Dr. Jerkbag (name changed to protect my own ass). He's British. He's not terribly fun to look at. Didn't get a real good line on how bad his teeth were, but I was able to see at least one crooked incisor. And today my assessment of his overall disposition has plucked him from the "mildly arrogant" bin and dropped him squarely onto the "jerkism spectrum". In plain English, he's a passive-aggressive dick. The man couldn't put together a coherent PowerPoint slide if his life depended on it. Thankfully for him at least, it doesn't seem to. Most of his slides are just words. Lots of big fancy words. And some of the words are purple. It still isn't really clear to me if purple words are supposed to be important somehow or if he just likes the way certain words look in purple typeface. The thing he did that changed my opinion of him for the worse was what he said at the end of lecture today. He'd been talking about MAP kinase pathways and came to the last slide, which had a figure listing all the different signal transduction pathways. It showed the Toll receptor signaling family directly beneath MAP kinases. He pointed to the Toll signaling pathway and asked what big headline news story had just come out about it. I'm usually really good about keeping up with the news, science news in particular, but I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. He asked, "doesn't anyone listen to NPR in the morning on their way in?" and I literally had to bite my tongue to keep from blurting out, "I prefer to stay awake for my commute, so I avoid NPR in the morning at all costs." He was clearly exasperated that no one said anything, and I really think he mistook our silence for ignorance rather than anything else (if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all). Then he explains, with the most condescending tone possible, that the discovery of this signaling pathway won a Nobel Prize. Oh gee, sorry, I was more interested in the story of Dr. Ralph Steinman, who died of pancreatic cancer three days before it was announced that he had won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. This guy used his Nobel Prize-winning science to help extend his life enough to win the award, but not long enough to be told that he won it. The Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously, but the decision to award it to him had been made in good faith that he was still alive at the time, so he was allowed to keep it. I'm so sorry, Mr. jerkbag professor, that I found THAT story slightly more compelling than Toll receptor signaling, especially since it was the story that vastly overshadowed any mention of the other two scientists sharing the award. It was these other two guys that discovered Toll signaling. Steinman worked on dendritic cells. To top it off, since it was the last lecture of his module, he said to the class, "Well, it's been fun..." then muttered under his breath, "sort of." He really made me wistful for Winning's cell biology class.

Tomorrow, we get to be lulled into somnolence by a new professor with fantastical tales of nuclear receptor signaling. Just shoot me.

The grand re-opening of Mama's Halloween Sweatshop

It's that time of year again. The only time of year that my tiny shred of domesticity comes to the surface. It's Halloween costume making time. Every year since I began grad school (except for last year), I set aside a month or two to sew Elliot a Halloween costume. I get to feel like I'm not a totally delinquent mom, and he gets a cool costume. I've always liked sewing - I think I mostly learned how to do it from watching my mom make stuff for me when I was little. It's a useful skill, and one that many people are surprised to find out that I have. I remember how exciting it was as a kid to try on things in various stages of completion and knowing that my mom put so much time and work into making something special just for me. I guess I just wanted to share those experiences with Elliot.

I still use the same sewing machine that stitched little clothes for a much smaller and younger me. It's almost 50 years old, but it's built like a Sherman tank:

There's really only three things I dislike about this machine: one is that it won't take a double needle for top stitching, it weighs a freaking ton because it's enameled cast iron, and the last thing is that it doesn't have a free arm. A free arm is a feature that makes it much easier to hem sleeves or any other small tubular opening without sewing the opening shut. The lack of a free arm makes sewing tiny children's sleeves almost impossible to get right on the first try.

I sewed my first Halloween costume for Chris (many many years ago) to wear to a Halloween party. He had long hair at the time and we found a plastic crown of thorns, so the obvious choice was to go as Jesus. The bonus was that he could carry around a big jug of wine to complete the look. He'd probably murder me if he knew what I was doing right now, but this picture is too good not to post:

Chris as Jesus. His dad (an elder at his Missouri Synod Lutheran church) was NOT happy about this.

I guess part of my reason for wanting to make Elliot's Halloween costumes is to avoid what every kid who lives in Michigan dreads when being readied for trick or treating. Behold the horror:

If it weren't for the cheap vinyl smock they called a costume in the early 80's, you'd think I was going sledding. My mom did make the cool Wonder Woman headband, but she would not let me wear my Wonder Woman Underoos as a costume. Boo.

Fortunately for Elliot, my traumatic memories of cold Halloweens have spared him much heartache and humiliation. I'll show you the costumes I've made for him so far, and tomorrow I'll finish with what I've been asked to make this year. I'll just say that this year will be different in that I am starting very late, just found out that he's been invited to a Halloween party in less than 2 weeks, and I have to draft my own pattern this time.

Batman 2007. Elliot was 3 years old. The cape was cut on the bias, so even the slightest breeze made it billow out fantastically. If it was socially acceptable for adults to wear capes, I totally would've stolen this from him.

Spiderman 2008. I made this using an awesome vintage pattern I found on eBay and lots of spandex. Thank God it wasn't cold that year! All of the webs were hand drawn with Sharpies. I went through a bunch of them. Elliot was 4 years old.

Scary T-rex 2009. This would've been a lot easier if he hadn't wanted to be "scary". I ended up using special automotive spray paint that actually sticks to the green fake reptile skin vinyl to make the belly a lighter color. Elliot also demanded that his costume have two-fingered gloves, since real T-rexes only have two fingers on each hand. Not sure where he gets his perfectionistic streak from. I ended up making "claws" out of Sculpey clay, and securing them (at least enough for pictures) with glue and tacking stitches. The head is paper mache. He was 5 years old, and this is the most recent costume I've made.

One catastrophe unexpectedly (and miraculously?) averted...

The grades from my "catastrophic" molecular biology test have been posted, and I'm apparently not as dumb as I look because I didn't fail it. Scores were posted by student ID number and I must have checked and double-checked the spreadsheet against my ID card a dozen times. I got an 83%, which is passing (there is no grading scale anywhere that I can find, so I'm going by the one I found in the graduate nursing bulletin). I had expected to see maybe a 50%, and certainly nothing above a 70%. I'm still half-expecting to be told that someone made a mistake and that the poor sap who scored a 52% was actually me. I feel a little bit relieved that I didn't fail horribly. Now I have to wait and see how I did on the cell exam.

Tomorrow is Graduate Student Research Day (sort of like EMU's Graduate Research Fair, but bigger), so my usual classes have been cancelled so that everyone can go to the talks and poster presentations. The associate dean of the med school's graduate programs made a personal appearance at the end of lecture this morning and said that he expected to see all of us there tomorrow. I can't get out of it because he knows who I am, plus most of the other Immuno & Micro students are presenting, and they'll expect to see me there too. This thing is an all day event, and I don't know how long I'm expected to be there. I really don't want to be there from 8 to 5, but I didn't want to ask because it implies that I don't want to go. This would be true to a point, but I think it would be bad form to admit it outright.

School is going to start picking up steam in October. My first rotation is scheduled to begin Oct. 10th in Dr. N's lab, possibly either working on capsule production in Group B Strep or looking at lantibiotic production in Group A Strep. Each rotation is about 8 weeks long, so this first one will end the first week of December. My next rotation, beginning January 9th through March 2nd, will be in Dr. W's lab. Here's the funny thing about that: Jim will be doing his sabbatical next semester in Dr. D's lab, working on cholera toxin regulation. At the same time, I'll be doing my second rotation in the lab of Dr. D's former post-doc, Dr. W, also likely working on cholera toxin regulation. Weirdness. My last rotation is March 5th to April 27th with an immunologist/virologist, Dr. R. He studies proteins that may be involved in helping HIV replicate in host cells. I'm nervous, but kind of excited about doing rotations. I'm not really sure what to expect.

Our departmental seminars begin on October 11th (and occur every Tuesday for the rest of the term) and go from 12-1. The PhD students, not faculty members, are responsible for making arrangements for seminar speakers, so this should be interesting. Also, journal club (called RDP for research data presentation) starts on October 19th (Wednesdays), also from 12-1. Everyone has been assigned a date to present something, and my day of reckoning is March 14th.

Gotta get to bed so I can get up super early for Graduate Student Research Day. But more importantly, I need to rest up to go the Corner Brewery tomorrow afternoon.

Meltdown showdown

As much as I'd love to write about my life being all rainbows and puppies and butterflies, I just can't. One reason is because it isn't. And let's be honest - who wants to read about someone whose life is "perfect"? I don't. And apparently neither do you, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this sentence right now.

Yesterday I stayed at school all day trying to cram for my cell biology test. Overall, I don't think that test was quite as catastrophic as my molecular biology test was. Still not great though. This time, I gave up about two hours in, instead of taking the entire three hours. That's progress, right? I really need to start studying for this stuff. So after I got home yesterday evening, I actually did what I should have been doing for a month now - I cracked open my textbooks and read ahead. Yes, you read that right. I read ahead! I'm not sure I've ever really truly done that. And I'm doing it again today too. Yay, me.

Today hasn't been the greatest day. This morning got off to a rotten start when I hear whining and crying coming from the living room. This is at 7:45. Chris takes him to school and he's not out of the shower yet. I think the first bell rings at 8:05, so there's not much time for them to wrap everything up and leave the house. Elliot's crying because he can't build a Ninjago Lego guy. I am not a morning person, nor am I a very patient person even under the best of circumstances. I am especially cranky and impatient in the morning, particulary in response to whining and crying. I tell Elliot to put the Legos away and finish getting ready for school. He's got about 1000 (I'm not exaggerating this figure) Lego bricks spread out all over the floor. Have you ever stepped on a Lego brick? On a hardwood floor? In bare feet? IT HURTS. He cops an attitude with me, so I raise my voice. Chris finally comes out of the bathroom, Elliot's still bitching and whining and generally acting like a brat. I'm annoyed with Chris because he's running late, therefore I'm now running late too. I don't remember the straw that finally broke the camel's back. All I remember is being very pissed off and yelling at both of them and storming out of the room. Elliot and I both had temper tantrums this morning.

Later in the day, I have to pick Elliot up from school so Chris can go to the store. I don't know what the fuck took him so long or why he wanted to be the exalted shopper, but he ultimately didn't get home until almost 8:30. All we had in the house to eat was stuff to make a grilled cheese. So at 7:00, I'm about to make one for Elliot for his dinner and see that the unopened (yet somehow expired) loaf of bread is slightly furry. I try calling Chris, but he doesn't answer and his voicemail isn't set up, so the call automatically disconnects. I am not happy. I end up driving to McDonald's to buy Elliot and myself dinner. I am still not happy, and I'm intensely unhappy enough that I haven't attempted to talk to Chris because, well, it just wouldn't be prudent. Maybe tomorrow. And that's all I have to say about that.

I had intended to talk about more academic type stuff, but this is what poured out of me instead. I'm exhausted and still feeling kind of upset. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day to talk shop. Let's hope tomorrow is a better day period.

No rest for the wicked

I was all super motivated to write a few minutes ago, but now I'm just not. I'll do a quick recap of events since last Wednesday, and perhaps elaborate (or not) tomorrow.

Wednesday in a word SUCKED. I had my first molecular biology exam. Some of it went okay, I guess, but the last section (which counted the most towards my grade, of course) was catastrophic. Like, I'm going down in flames and no one is gonna survive this wreckage kind of catastrophic. I was COMPLETELY unprepared for the shit that got lobbed at me on this part of the test. Fucking enzyme kinetics, and math, and equations, and mechanisms, and the stupid pushing electron arrows, and bonds flying all over the place. Oh and the regulation! Can't forget enzyme regulation! You know, if I really wanted to draw pointless arrows around a bunch of dumb ball and stick molecules, and if I was just fascinated by Km and Vmax and half Vmax, and half equilibrium arrows - I would've been a fucking chemist!!! But I'm not, and do you know why? Aside from the fact that I'm a biologist, it's BECAUSE I FUCKING HATE CHEMISTRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I HATE IT, I HATE IT, I HATE IT (jumping up and down and screaming now)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And I'm sure the feeling is mutual.

Thursday wasn't as horrible. There was a new student reception for me and the lone master's student in the Immuno & Micro department. It basically consisted of a meat and cheese tray, lots of potato chips, some fruit, and some veggies that no one touched. Oh yeah, and pop. It was only mildly awkward. There were no formal introductions of the "new students" to anyone. It was basically a game of "The unfamiliar faces must be the new students. Huh. Where's the rest of the food?". Okay, it was mostly me wondering where the rest of the food was. I was hoping for at least some pizza or something. What a let down. So I ate a bunch of cantaloupe that gave me gas and made me feel a little nauseous. This, in turn, made me worry that the low-rent melon I just loaded up on was contaminated with Listeria. The department secretary did give me my first key, though. I think she told me that it opens the office, the lounge, and the library. Woot. Boy, was I happy to go to the Corner that afternoon. I look forward to Thursdays more than I look forward to just about anything else. It's just enough of a pick me up to keep me from going completely batshit crazy. I'm holding steady at just a little batshit crazy, and I think that's as good as it's going to get for now.

Friday. I really don't remember Friday at all. I didn't think I was THAT hungover. Oh well.

Saturday we finally got our new mattress delivered and Chris finished building the frame for it. It's a crazy-expensive TempurPedic and honestly, it was more comfortable in the store. I sleep just as poorly on it as I did on my old mattress, except now I have a hard time flipping over because I have to climb out of the memory foam chasm my body has carved into the bed. I have a hard time turning over and so I wake up 3 or 4 times a night. Then my back still hurts when I get up in the morning and it still takes me a few minutes to limber up before my range of motion extends beyond "shuffle". But the cat is totally in love with this bed, which I really didn't expect:

That night when Zeus (the aforementioned cat) came to bed, he established his cat groove under the covers as usual. And he didn't move an inch until late afternoon Sunday - some 16 hours later. He was just a non-moving lump under the comforter, which I really should have taken a picture of. I was starting to wonder if he was dead, because he NEVER sleeps all day - especially when I'm there for him to yell at and generally harass. I checked on him. Nope, not dead. Just annoyed that I woke him up.

Alright, this was supposed to be a short post, but it isn't. I'm just not very trustworthy. Sorry. More tomorrow.

Word of the day, b*tches!

It's Friday night, I'm studying, I've had a beer, and I feel feisty. So the word of the day today, children, is "Hyperbaton": inversion or transposition of normal sentence structure, often for emphasis and/or dramatic effect. English translation: to talk like Yoda. For example, standard English uses a subject-verb-object sentence structure as in the phrase, "Jim covets Glenn's sheep". The subject is "Jim", the verb is "covets", and the object is "Glenn's sheep". In hyperbaton, the structure might get switched around to object-subject-verb as in, "Glenn's sheep Jim covets". In this case, the emphasis is on Glenn's sheep that Jim is coveting, in contrast to the first sentence where the emphasis is on Jim, who is probably less interesting than the sheep. I tried to find information on the psychology of why people might talk or write like that when it is normally out of character for them, but gave up when all I could find were Star Wars fan sites. Obviously, nobody takes this shit seriously but me. Well, that is all for today. Tune in tomorrow or Sunday for my recap of the last half of this week. The word "catastrophic" features prominently...