lab shenanigans

Dropping things in liquid nitrogen, my labmate accidentally lost the moth.  There is now a moth lurking in our liquid nitrogen, despite his multiple attempts to retrieve it using only his gloved hand covered in ethanol.  He wants to find a child to drop in next.

He also carries a pocket knife which he uses for nonsterile lab tasks, wears rammstein shirts, and wanted to register at Home Depot for his wedding gifts.  There's a reason he's one of my favorite labmates. 

Today is Gregor Mendel's birthday.

Often called the father of genetics, his studies of pea plants laid the foundation for our modern understanding of simple inheritance.

Check out the Mendel's Birthday themed posts on my blog: FUCK YEAH PLANT SEX

-Me, (I am the best roommate)

-labmate, doing DNA extraction

Lab Adventures

Dashing madly across the lab to prevent the younger interns from completely screwing up the mechanisms on the micropipette, then running over again because they're getting moisture in the mechanism by pipetting UPSIDE DOWN.

Counting thousands of seeds. If I had counted straight up from the first seeds and shoots I totaled at the beginning of the summer, I could have counted to 23,778.

Shooting invisible, 820 nm lasers at plant seeds. 

Stealing micropipettors from grad students hoarding them. 

Getting yelled at for not putting away WET glassware by another intern.

Knowing where more things in the lab are than the PI, grad students, or other interns. Also knowing where to locally source dry ice (ice cream parlor).

I couldn't find my spoon, so I just stirred my tea with forceps.

I am, undeniably, the coolest.

-labmate, pretending to be one of his 'drugged up' plant tissue cultures

I'm not sure if this tofu and broccoli I made is actually the most delicious thing ever, or if it's just the fact that I am eating this meal as my postponed dinner.

Whatever. I'm just going to burn my tongue and eat too much garlic.

Afternoon walk

The cemetery near my apartment is full of groundhogs.

These groundhogs have no respect for human burial traditions, and delighted in popping in and out of burrows thoughtfully dug right atop some long dead individual.

Although, humans didn't seem to have much respect for human burial traditions either.

Hardees wasn't established until 1960.  I checked.

I found a tiny ghost in the cemetery today.

Fuck yeah plant sex! is an exploration of flowers, seeds, asexual plant reproduction, and other botanical facts relating to reproduction.

Unfortunately for you all, I'm still going to be blogging plenty of plants here as well.

Shitty things about my day:

Awesome things:

My family and I are at the beach, and my mom apparently can't do the dishes without dish gloves.

Luckily, I've been carrying around a pair of elbow length gloves from chem lab.

Everyone was quiet for 20 whole seconds.  It was wonderful.

My mother is trying to bribe me with a tuxedo to go to a family wedding.

hmm.

My dog ripped his nail and had to get it surgically removed.  Poor little fellow.

I honestly didn't think it was possible for him to get much sillier looking without wearing dog clothes.  Guess I was wrong.

Just found some switchgrass seeds in my bed.   Well, it looks like Science spent the night.

...resisting bioenergy related puns with all my might.