recent goings on in the lab . . .

Since the lab is literally my home away from home (I'm there like 9 or 10 hours a day usually . . .) I decided that I should write about recent goings on! First of all I must comment on how beautifully clean the lab is since our lab cleaning "party" a few weekends ago! I don't think the lab had seriously been cleaned for decades (ok maybe an exaggeration, but not by much . . . we found papers lying around that hadn't been looked at in YEARS) so it was a HUGE improvement! We started cleaning around 10:30 am one Saturday and the last of us left around 2:30 or 3:00. Dr. Bell and I were the refrigerator/freezer clean up crew! This entailed going through practically every drug the Bell lab has used since Dr. Bell arrived at BYU. I know I should've taken a before picture so you could truly appreciate the beauty that is the fridge right now, but oh well, I appreciate the beauty so I'm going to post a picture of it!

Isn't it gorgeous??

Ok enough of that since no one cares. So recently I have been helping Dr. Bell write a paper about experiments that were done long ago (some as early as the year 2000 . . . when I was 13 years old haha) so that's taken up a ton of my time. I've basically had to REanalyze all the data they collected and create figures to go into the paper. So this has entailed taking raw, noisy fluorescence data and fitting it with a curve using the computer so that we can actually quantify that. So that doesn't sound that hard but sometimes it takes FOREVER to get it right since you can get some funky curves . . . anyway the point is I have done something like 150 of these curves (or maybe more?) and just last night we discovered all these experiments we didn't know about so now I have to analyze all of THEM. Here is a picture of me the other day after fitting curves all day and being completely exhausted . . . oh and I was wearing a lab coat because I was cold, not because I'm legit . . . and I know it's kind of an awkward angle, but oh well it represents my thoughts about fitting curves at that very moment . . .


Also I have to let you all know that I'm officially a nerd (yes officially this time), because in recent days I've realized how much I LOVE creating awesome aesthetically-pleasing excel spreadsheets that make things so much easier. Ah there's just nothing like a nicely designed excel spreadsheet :) It's one of those simple pleasures in life ya know? For example, for all these millions of curves I fit, I designed a spreadsheet with a cell that has a smiley face when all the outliers are removed and a frowny face when it's not quite at a happy place yet. How cool is that?? Haha I really am a nerd but hey at least it entertains me :) In fact one day I took a picture of one of my spreadsheets just cuz it was so pretty, but I am going to resist posting it since that's just a lame picture to put on a blog. This whole post in fact is pretty lame, but that's what's been going on recently haha! I think part of why I just love my lab so much is all the fabulous people I work with who are just my pseudo-family here. Ah good times chatting in the lab. Here are three of my favs just cherishing in the lab: Hannabeth, Katalyn, and Celestine!

a fun family-filled weekend :)

Well it was a fun weekend cuz I got to spend it with the fam!! Saturday night I pretended to be a Boster and went to see Jenny's brother-in-law, Benjamin, in the opera Don Giovanni with all her in-laws! They're such a fun family so I loved tagging along for the night :) Jenny and I couldn't help but laugh during the last song as we pictured the family video we have of the 2 of us with Annie and Abby, our shirts stuffed with pillows, popping out from behind the couch lipsyncing (is that how you spell that?) "DON GIOVANNI!" hehe all dad's idea of course. We got pretty into it, what a great childhood. I wish I had a pic of that . . . but here's a pic of Jenny and I on Saturday in the HFAC. . .I hitched a ride back to Salt Lake with Jenny and Jonathan afterwards so I could spend Sunday at home. Lucky me I got to wake up the boy and have a nice cuddle before the Bosters went home up the street. It's rare for James to sit still these days, so we had to catch the cuddle on camera! What a sweetheart . . .
Sundays are always so great at home! Church wasn't QUITE as fun because James wasn't there to play with during the meetings like usual (Jenny and Jonathan were in Layton), but Mom and I survived. The whole fam damily was there for dinner which doesn't happen much so I just loved it! As usual the fam had a good time playing on the wii, this time a game Jonathan brought where you're either knocking stuff down or trying NOT to knock stuff down like in Jenga. Too hard to explain, but the highlight was having Jonathan start making up words to the cheesy nintendo music . . . something about wanting a friend but not having one . . . with an underlying beat of "percocet, percocet, percocet" since that's the drug jonathan was on at the time (he just had ear surgery). Sometimes I just think you have to be my family to understand why things are so funny sometimes. Anyway it was SO fun to be home and be goofy for the weekend. Here's one more pic of me with James (he was not so cuddly this time haha).

return to the game...

So it's official, I've returned to the game of soccer after an 11 year absence! (at least it was around that time . . . ) The last time I was on an official soccer team, we were the POISON IVY and I think we won 1 game total haha. I always played defender because "I was good at it" as the coach said. I always knew that it was just because I didn't have it in me to be a forward haha. Highlights from the Poison Ivy include:

*Being on the team with 2 of my best friends, Michelle and Lori. We carpooled together so it was awesome. I seem to remember an inside joke about seeing large spoons in somebody's yard?? yeah hopefully they remember that or I'll feel pretty stupid . . .
*Nobody on the team knew my name I don't think. They all called me Tiny instead! I can still hear the cries . . . "pass it to Tiny! pass it to Tiny!"

So my new team is an intramural soccer team thanks to my good friend Janelle for letting me join! We are "Team Awesome" for obvious reasons, and all the girls on the team are super nice and WAY better at soccer than I am. I'm just so grateful they're letting me cramp their style since I am always looking for fun things to occupy my time these days. Highlights from last night's game include:

*We won! 2-1. (no i did not score a goal...real shocker I know)
*My most embarrassing moment of the decade... yeah after we scored they were taking it to half field. In a moment of stupidity I forgot we had just scored, wondered why no one was kicking the ball, and ran up and gave it a good kick! Then I hear the referee blowing a whistle and a girl on the other team saying "hey you can't do that!" and I realized what was going on. Haha those poor girls on my team. Ah the embarrassment, I can't believe I'm putting this moment up on the internet. Oh well, hopefully it gives y'all a good laugh. Let's just say I won't be doing that again.
*The nice girls who told me I did a good job! I think they were just being nice, but hey at least they were still talking to me :)

Well I wish I had pictures to post...blog seems boring without them. I'll have to take some. Anyway I must say that soccer is way fun! I'm glad I returned to the game...and hopefully I improve as the season goes on...

The first post has to be about something so why not about wasps?

So RANDOM I decided to start a blog! Who knows if anyone will visit it, but hey it seems like the cool thing to do and I am not one to be left out of things :) Plus maybe it will make my life seem more exciting...

Except today really WAS exciting, so I don't even have to pretend. It was exciting for 3 reasons:

1) we had a wasp infestation in the lab!! I don't know where they came from, but we found a total of eleven wasps in Rm 529 of the Widstoe. Turns out that the Widstoe becomes the hotspot for both wasps and box elder bugs around this time of year. Ah another reason to love this building I live in. Here is the final tally of kill-age...
Jen: 2
Mark: 4 (with one assist!)
Dr. Bell: 3
Liz: 2 (it was a pretty exciting moment when Liz went from one who screamed to one who killed)

2) I finished my "program of study" for my graduate program! Basically it's a plan of all the classes I'm going to take that has to be ok'd by my graduate committee. It's the first thing I needed to turn in! Next comes my prospectus, then eventually my thesis! Anyway so it sounds boring, but I was just really proud that I am on the ball and did it. It's kind of sad how excited I was that I did it today.

3) So this is sounding more and more pathetic that these things are exciting to me, but #3 is that I found out that the New York Times is free on campus at the Kennedy Center! So yeah, I picked one up today and I'm going to go home and read it so I'm not ignorant anymore! Yay! Also sad but exciting to me is that I went to the Wilk and bought the textbook for the family finance class that I've always wanted to take. I'm going to learn it on my own so I'm not stupid about money anymore! The other day I just had this epiphany that with all this time on my hands (I don't have homework since all I'm doing is research) that I'm going to read a lot like my Pops and become smart like he is. I realized that there's books about EVERYTHING so I can learn anything I want to! I'm just really excited about it! 1st stop: the New York Times and "Get a Financial Life" :)

Well that's about all that was exciting today, but hey it's only 5:30 pm, so maybe more excitement awaits me?