whining

There really ought to be something I could blog about that somehow matters or is in some way at least a little bit significant. Today, however, has shaken it all out of me. Getting frustrated with this damn gel, or rather the PCR which is requiring five gels to get results. Seriously, there has GOT to be a better way to do this. And here I am at work past five o'clock just getting more and more frustrated with this damn thing because I think I'm going to have to do it over again despite all the pain and effort and ridiculousness and why did I even try doing this many samples at once and people are waiting for the results and maybe I'll just getting really drunk on green beer tonight and call in sick tomorrow.

Okay, done whining now. I think.

success

It worked! I finally got a conventional PCR to work! Everyone I worked with in the lab as an undergrad would be shocked. And I might actually get to keep my job after all.

cozy warm molecule

My God, I think something in my head just exploded out of joy. The science nerd in me just got together with the crafter and the hippie, who joined hands and started singing, all over a single piece of cleverness from a Portland mom.

Gainful Employment

Seven long months after graduating I finally got a job in my field! As nervous as I am to start a new job and to head back to the bench I'm excited to have my hands on a set of micropipettes again. A state job, a leave work at work job, a not under pressure to to get results job. I'll be taking biological samples and testing them for the presence of viral or bacterial infection. Or as Jess put it, "testing things for stuff."

From a local blogger on "How To Live in Austin", via Austin Metablog:

"If you don't like hippies, tattoos, piercings, poetry, metal, alt-country, tourists, politicians, science, technology, organic food, mohawks, hybrid cards, or anything else associated with these things, move to Dallas."

Well, that effectively removes the chance of most of my family moving here for several reasons or others. Thanks to the hippies and mohawks, or science and metal, I'm safe. Whew. However, it seems that I have other issues:

"Austin's Craigslist is great, but don't troll for dates on it. This town is one of the best places in the nation for dating. If you can't find love in Austin, you're doing it wrong."

My secret is out. I've been spending late nights furtively stalked Craigslist for love now that my thesis is out of my life. No, not really. Based on my track record of living here three years and not yet finding someone within the city limits to call my own, however, I am apparently a failure.

Though, I seem to be doing something right based on the great friends I've found and life I'm making for myself here. Though I really do need to do something about this living on the far north side.

contrast

There are so many things in my life right now that make me exceptionally happy I am alive. Today while at the grocery store I ran into a couple, one a post-doc, the other a lab tech, I know from my graduate school career, which threw just how much better my life is now into sharp relief. I walked away from our brief conversation about PI's and other academic people with the strong reaffirmation that, for me at least, all the misery is just not worth it. Terrors for PIs, failed experiments, long hours, lack of job satisfaction, never seeing any good come out of excruciating painstaking work...not worth it. I'll take high quality of life over a few more letters after my name any day.

It's been about a year since I bottomed out. Three since I moved to Texas. Grad school got me to Austin, and thus is the reason for so many of the wonderful things I appreciate so much. I wonder though if I shouldn't have realized earlier just how miserable I truly was. Then again, hindsight is always clearer.

faith and science

There is a rather eloquent blog post to be written somewhere in between this CNN article on Collins and this blog entry refuting Dr. Collins ideas and opinions. Right now I don't have enough presence of thought to write said post.

Suffice to say that faith is intrinsically not quantifiable. That's why it is referred to as 'faith' and not something more solid. Attempts to force views on either side of the faith question are never going to win converts, merely escalate arguments.


Data analyzed...working on results section and discussion, albeit slowly and painfully and stressfully.