Tentative, Hesitant Dance of Joy

[bronwynrh]

I drove back to Bton this morning, got in around 10ish. Settled in at Mel's place and goofed around for a while before hitting the lab at about 11. Tried to work. Ate a bagel. Tried to work. Failed. Tried to work. Got a little done (started cultures - woo). Tried to work. Gave up.

I got back to Mel's at around 5ish, started up the laptop, tried to work. Made some progress on the lab meeting front. Figured out - sorta - what I want to say. There's too much to think about, so I wind up thinking about nothing at all in any effective way.

Typical.

Mel heated up some yummilicious homemade kielbasa, and some turnips - never eaten turnips before - and brought out some cucumber salad. Yum. We played around on the web and watched random tv for a while, waiting for time to go meet some people I don't know at the Irish Lion. I thought a nice, tall, pint o' Guinness sounded downright fantastic.

Checked my email.

The confocal microscope has been put back together and is back online. DUDE!

No really. DUDE!!

My mind whirred as I re-re-replotted everything I need to do to get the contraption ready for my buggies. Counted the days off on my fingers, once, twice, three times. Called Jeffrey to help me with the counting because he's better at these things.

I think. And I'm still not sure of this, but I think. If I start the peroxide wash tonight (done) I can shoot my buggies into the system on Sunday and be staring into a microscope by monday morning. It's going to require a very, very early Sunday morning commute for me, but I can handle it.

Came back to the lab around 8, loaded up a huge carboy with about 15 liters of water, then doled out that water into 3 flasks and 2 jugs, and shoved it all (except for the peroxide of course) into the autoclave, where I'm leaving it to cook for another 45 minutes.

So Mel went to the Irish Lion to meet her friends without me. I feel badly, because I'm going to be a room mate who keeps very strange hours, but she says it's ok. Lady, let me know if it's not ok, because I can stay with my advisor if I need to.

At 10, I'm going to vent the autoclave and leave it to cool overnight so I can piss off the early birds. Then I'm going to treat myself to Bruester's ice cream and head back to Mel's for some shut-eye.

I guess I'll go back to L'ville (ie, Home) tomorrow, and leave other trained souls to do the next couple of days of washing with all that sterile water and medium. I figure delegation is my prerogative, since I'm the Senior Grad Student and I certainly have better things to do with the rest of my time.

And I'd rather be in L'ville as much as I can, anyway ;-)

Then I'll be back on Sunday for a whole week of microscopy and image analysis and other joyful molecular biological fun.

Aren't you glad I shared all that with you?

PS I sent my resume and cover letter to another IP Law Firm today. If they respond favorably, I'll send all my other stuff.

40 minutes left to autoclave venting.
Gonna write a to-do list while I wait. . . Tickticktickticktick

Comments

[kendokamel.livejournal.com]

Glad to have you here! (;

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Usually, these days, I either learn from context or use google to get an answer. But I hope you'll forgive me for just showing my ignorance. I read with interest about the "confocal microscope". I got the microscope part, and I can imagine the latin roots for confocal, but could you tell me just what a "confocal" microscope is and does?

Nothing to forgive, silly man!

[bramey.livejournal.com]

Think of the microscopes you may have used in your school science classes (way back when!). Those microscopes shine a light through your sample and you move the sample up and down to focus on it.

Now this is fine and dandy if your sample is flat or if your magnification is low. If you want to look at a three-dimensional object though, you're going to have problems. For one thing, you can only focus on one part of your sample at a time, and the light is shining through, giving you background light and fuzziness from the unfocused parts of the sample.

A confocal 'scope solves those problems for you by focusing the light in only one plane at a time. The microscope will therefore let you look at planes throughout the 3D object, without bleed-through light or fuzzy out-of-focus background from other planes.

So imagine then that you can move from the bottom to the top of your sample, focusing at intervals as you go along - do small enough intervals and you get images that are like slices of the whole. Then you can put the slices back together and look at them as you would look at pictures in a flip-book or stack them all together and get a three dimensional image. Even better, you can turn the image on its side and make slices *that* way, getting cross-sectional images.

People use it for looking at embryos of flies and worms and other things that look better in 3D. I use it to look at my mountainous bacterial communities - it's sort of like cartography, I guess. I can map and quantify how mountainous they are - how short, how dense, how complex.

I love it because the images are so beautiful and so clear, I can see single bacteria swimming around, attaching to the surface and wriggling, dividing, running into each other. . . so cool.

Re: Nothing to forgive, silly man!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the explanation. That's very clear, and easier to visualize than the usual cybernetic-drenched google-derived definition might have been.

That sounds so cool, that I'm tempted to say "I need me one of them there confocal scopes". That would be a great museum item--a confocal scope with twelve view ports.

Re: Nothing to forgive, silly man!

[bramey.livejournal.com]

If we can pool the $200k for the set-up and the $10k a year in maintenance fees, I say we should go for it!

Re: Nothing to forgive, silly man!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I'm shopping in New Zealand, and buying a cheap one!

http://www.forestresearch.co.nz/topic.asp?topic=Advanced%20Tools%20Images&title=Confocal%20Microscope

Re: Nothing to forgive, silly man!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Well, actually that's a 100 dollar single image from a microscope, but I'd still like to visit New Zealand.

Re: Nothing to forgive, silly man!

[bramey.livejournal.com]

I was gonna say. . . whoa. And yeah, I have to visit the southern hemisphere someday.