Beating that heat

Some fun goals have finally been achieved this week with research! While the CO2 tank is still empty in Dr. Trinkle's lab, I've been using an incubator and biosafety cabinet in Cong Li's lab where the cells have mercifully not died. This means that I've finally been able to carry out that confluency assay and have determined an optimal seeding density for the titanium bottom petri dishes. I also did a whole bunch of fluorescent dyeing on these dishes yesterday to figure out the optimal dye concentration for Ethidium Homodimer-1! Now that I've figured these out, I can start seeding dishes for actual laser spallation. I should probably also get started on my research paper too...

Last week, I decided that I was going to make it to Black Swan Books before they closed no matter WHAT because I was needing a book. I had finished Slaughterhouse Five a couple days before and had taken to re-reading Trader Joe's Fearless Flyer to the point where I had it pretty much memorized. So, after getting off work, I had an hour until the bookstore closed so I bee-lined home and then walked down Maxwell Street in the sweltering heat. On the way, I passed the florist that I had spotted a couple weeks ago and it was ALSO OPEN. I weighed my options and then went inside. It was so adorable in there! I was tempted to buy seeds and honey, but I settled on a greeting card because I just started organizing my summer budget (with half the summer gone already, of course). I'm going to be a florist now. Here is proof that this place is the best:

Once I dragged myself away from the florist, I got back on track to the bookstore which ended up being this nicely air-conditioned old house in the middle of some antique shops and boutiques. The old guy who ran the place told me stories of how he started this shop from ONE book and how he traveled around the country in search of books for his collection. He also complained about young people going to Amazon for all their needs and I pointedly thought of Melanie. I explored the shop while he went to dig up an old copy of Gone with the Wind in the basement. When I'm a florist, I will live right next to an eclectic bookstore like this one. My life plan is SO GOOD NOW.

When I got back from my adventures, Melisa and Matt and I wanted to get matcha, but the matcha place has a strange license for serving alcohol and kids under 21 weren't allowed service at 6:30 pm. So we went to this secret cafe behind the greenhouses next to the florist! It was covered in ivy and full of fireflies and there was a very social cat wandering around. They had some really good blood orange soda. I want to go back for gelato when I get paid again!!!

I'm getting so fit

This week in the lab started off much like it has in the past couple of weeks, with the cells starved of CO2. Even though I had adjusted the incubator's CO2 levels, the CO2 tank decided to become empty. Additionally, JD had some car trouble on Monday, so I had some quality bonding time alone with my cells. While we were making arrangements for the cells to be housed in Cong Li's incubator, I contented myself with observing the culture flasks with the inverted microscope. I was surprised to see the most of the cells actually weren't dead! Three of the flasks still had many adhering cells, and one had enough to seed two new flasks. The petri dish that I had seeded last Friday was also still filled with surviving cells, so I seized the opportunity to dye them with a new concentration of Calcein AM to test with the fluorescence microscope. I think this concentration is a winner:

On Tuesday, I got excited by the brief rainfall and decided to run outside rather than go to the gym with Mel. Sadly, it did not end up raining, so I ended up running through thick, muggy, Kentucky air instead. On the bright side, I discovered Woodland park! I had a good time wandering around and listening to a mini orchestra warming up on the corner stage.

On my way back to Jewell, I found BLACK SWAN BOOKSTORE!! If you'll remember from my first blog post, I found this bookstore on the world wide web in a desperate moment of boredom. I hadn't ended up going yet, because I didn't realize how close it was to where I lived. I plan on visiting before they close today so that I can see if they have Gone With the Wind.

Cell Death Mystery SOLVED

So this last week, actual stuff started happening with research! We managed to figure out why our cells kept dying in Dr. Trinkle's incubator: the CO2 level was 0.5% too low. I took care of that business, but it takes forever for cells to grow up. While this issue was getting sorted out, the confluency assay for the petri dishes was underway at pharmacy. This was quite a nerve-wracking experience this time, I went to change the media WITHOUT JD. Changing media isn't too bad, but it's really nice to have a buddy at pharmacy. The people who work over there are all pretty nice, I'm sure, but I know very little about them--only that they are experts at the latest gossip. I imagined them shooting me furtive looks as I blundered around their gigantic lab, possibly judging my biosafety cabinet skills. While the experience was uncomfortable, I felt quite accomplished as I walked back to Dr. Grady's lab in the soggy oven that is Lexington. Unfortunately, I have no exciting pictures of the pharmacy lab to include here because I didn't have the guts to take one. I do have proof of my confluency assay! Here are the little MG-63 cells adhering to the plate! They're cuties.

Toward the end of the week, Floyd said he was done with the two pieces that I designed on Inventor! The microscope dish holder and the spincoater lid have come to fruition!! 

Aside from research, there was a fantastic adventure to a cheese factory over the weekend and I am now planning making homemade ricotta--and possibly cheese cake.