Oops hi

Hi all,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Oooopsies.

This week I was mostly working with Katya and Peter on DNA Sequencing. Unfortunately, since we had bad results the first time, we had to do the whole experiment over again on Wednesday and Thursday. And after 4 days of work, we still had bad results (albeit, better). Oh well.

Wednesday I worked with Nastya a bit on a Western Blot; she said that we will be doing some next week so I’ll get more practice soon.

Oh! And I put together more of the pieces of both projects I’ve been working on. Nastya’s project is on PKMzeta (protein kinase c, isoform zeta) which functions in the process of storing long term memory. It is hypothesized that when this molecule is removed, a certain memory would be removed (which has been seen I believe in some trials with rats in removing memory of a learned skilled). I think there are issues with translating this study to humans though, since memory is not so localized. Moreover, how can you isolate one memory from another?

Insert! (FYI this post will be very scattered). Galya doesn’t know about banana bread! I told her that I make a lot of banana bread, and she didn’t know what it was! I showed her pictures on the Internet, but it’s not the same as the real thing! Maybe I will bring in banana bread for the last week into work.

Anyway. Where was I? Oh yes, so that is Nastya’s project. Katya’s project focuses on the methods of removing ribosomal RNA. It seems more investigative than driven by a hypothesis.

Also this week I was looking at jobs… real life people jobs. It seems very intimidating, but I think I will have a better handle on things once I go back to school since our job searching website will have more opportunities listed. I’ve always imagined being in NYC or Boston… There is also the fact that Alec is in NYC…. Which, well, I suppose affects things too… not an awful exaggerated amount, but still, something to think about. Sorry I’m not speaking in sentences blah. 

This week I also took the isidewith.com presidential candidates quiz. Lolz. People on Facebook were posting results and everyone’s was the same (including mine). I guess that makes sense considering we all go to elite private liberal arts colleges…

Also Hilary Duff’s new album came out this week and it’s bomber. (FYI hi Kristin).

I’ve been talking a lot with Katya during the day, and it’s really nice and interesting. She’s a very cool and smart person; we also share a love of sci-fi. When I told her I hadn’t seen Star Trek, she was appalled, but laughed at my story of my younger self who stared at the television screen whenever the theme song came on. She did say, however, that all sci-fi fantasies have already been written. I would retort that if this is true for sci-fi, then how is it also not true for other genres? Dramas, rom-coms, etc… How are any of them different from past stories?  Ah…one of the plights of art: hasn’t everything of worth already been done? I feel this way when choreographing sometimes.

Oh! I found a closet in my apartment! I had no idea this closet existed, and then I closed a door once and found a closet behind it! It had random things inside (all of which were not useful to me), but hey, I found something new.

Another random thing – Russians call each other a lot. I think Peter gets a minimum of 7 calls a day. I wonder who is on the other line.

On Thursday, I went to a park with colleagues after work. Peter, Galya, Yulia, and I walked around, chatted, and shared funny anecdotes of culture differences and language. I learned idioms and slang; it was really fun, we were all laughing.  

Peter at one point asked if women sailed in America. I answered “yes, why wouldn’t they”… And then everyone laughed and Peter said something like, “oh America has so much feminism.” Sigh.

Ukraine also came up for the first time recently when I was talking to people about music. Of course they were very happy that I know and love Земфира and Кино and they were very happy to tell me other bands they like. One that was suggested was Ukrainian, and very off the cuff, someone said, “oh yes you know we have problems with Ukraine… but they are Russians and I hope we take them.”  And then people laughed. I don’t think it was supposed to be serious.

I’ve been a tad lazy with this blog. Right now it’s Sunday, but I don’t feel like talking about the weekend (next post woo!). I’ve really gotten into Grey’s Anatomy again and it’s kinda thrown off my movie streak, however, I have watched…

1.     The Hedgehog. French foreign art house film. Super interesting about normal people and their lives. That sounds boring. It wasn’t though.

2.     The Bourne Identity. First time watching! Worth the fuss.

3.     Duplicity. It was boring; couldn’t finish it. I expected more from Julia Roberts. L  

I’ll debrief the weekend soon. Have a great Monday, all!