It seems that I’m failing at blogging. It all started with the catastrophic loss of my old website, which I was unable to rebuild (but was able to save the entries, whew!). Meanwhile, my new, no-frills website is sitting here unattended and lonely.

I made a conscious decision to stop blogging last fall. It had been so long since I’d written, that I thought it would be best to give it up for awhile. In place of this outlet for my thoughts, I started writing to Lucy. Letters. That get sent through the mail!!! Well, I kept that up for awhile, but now it seems I’ve failed at that. Or, I’ve failed at that throughout the grad school application process, and should probably start up again.

Perhaps some day soon this site will get back to its original glory. Maybe someday I’ll do something with biodork.com (a name with so much potential). For today, this is my lame excuse of a posting. No real content, but maybe a placeholder for the future.

My friend Webbo tagged me in her blog, City Mouse Country.  It’s some sort of tag blog chain thing, which I am going to officially break [sort of].  The rules were as follows:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules to your blog.
3. Write 6 random things about yourself.

• My “memory problems” are usually an act.  If people never expect you to remember things like their birthday, then they are pleasantly surprised when you do remember.
• Next Tuesday I’ll be having dinner with one of the guys who proved the semi-conservative theory of DNA replication.
• I’ll be teaching algebra this year.  I secretly hate math, but I’m really good at it.
• I have a hoarding problem.  Currently I am hoarding Polaroid film, watches, photo flashbulbs, computer programs, and digital music.
• I listen to just about as much classical music as I do modern.
• I am planning on taking up the piano again— something I skipped last year due to my terrible thumb injury.

4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them.

{not going to do this one}

5. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog.

No
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is posted.

ok.  it’s here, webbo.

Don’t worry about what’s in my samples yet.  I’m just trying to get this story across as easily as possible, since I have to run a gel on my samples in about half an hour.  Lets just say that I spent the first two weeks at work learning how to run my samples, then spent weeks 3 and 4 trying to run my samples.  My results were awful, but ok every once in awhile.  My technique got pretty good, so I basically had to start running mini experiments within my experiments to figure out why things were going wrong.  I started to suspect that it was taking too long between when I was creating my cDNA and when I was running PCR on it.  I was told to store my samples in the fridge, but I finally went to the head of the lab and asked about cDNA and how fast it breaks down in the fridge.  It seems I should have been keeping my samples in the freezer, and had been misinformed by the girl teaching me.  Long story short:  I’ll know once I run my gel if things are going to be ok.  I’ll leave a comment or something.

I owe many blog entries.  Missing pieces of my life that do not appear on this blog yet are:

NCS 2008

CT 2008 and the LITs

Life in the Big City

Life in the Lab

Let me see what I can get to right now.  No particular order.

I just had a flashback to my senior year of high school.  More on that later.

I moved into my sublet apartment this evening.  I have no bed, no chair, and no lamp.  The drive from Lake Placid was slightly treacherous; as I was trying to pull out of the driveway, the Iron Man competition started riding by on their bikes.  Thousands of them.  Traffic was only going in one direction, so I had to take the long way to 87.  It was stop-and-go traffic, which put me behind schedule by 2.5 hours.  I picked up the remainder of my stuff from camp, and made it to Boston by 8:30 PM.  I was worried that there wouldn’t be any parking in front of my building, but when I arrived there was an open spot right in front of the door.  In retrospect, perhaps the universe was delaying me 2.5 hours so I could get that parking spot.  It was worth the extra drive time.

My roommates are a married couple from China who are both cell and molecular biology professors and are studying proteins at Harvard Med.  I will certainly have to pick their brains once I get to know them a bit better, though I expect they will be researching in the lab most of the time.  Still, what a coincidence.  Seriously.

After putting most of my stuff away and setting up my computer, I sat down to read the first of the two research proposals that were sent to me.  They are the outlines for the studies I will be joining, and are really long.  I didn’t make it very far.

As I was reading the part of the introduction about the HIV epidemic in Botswana, something strange happened.  Perhaps it was the thought of the devastation and disease they are dealing with there.  Maybe it was the sweat dripping down my forehead and going into my eyes.  Perhaps it was the fact that I haven’t slept much in the last three days and haven’t read anything that technical in months.  My eyes glazed over with tears.  Not crying.  No tears fell from my eyes, but it gave my vision the clarity that a weak pair of contacts would have, if put on my lasik-corrected eyes.  Through my moment of clarity I had a vision of the professor at Bennington College who first taught me about HIV.  Not the “don’t have sex or you’ll die of AIDS” sort of teaching, but the real method of infection and how the antiretroviral drugs work.  That was a similar moment of clarity, when I realized that molecular biology really did it for me.  Sure, at that point I was still thinking of becoming a veterinarian, but it was the start of a path that led me here.

Tomorrow I start my internship (actually I’m technically a guest researcher since I’m not an employee) at Harvard School of Public Health.  B gave me a long list of professors to read about when I was thinking about grad school.  As soon as I read about M’s lab, I knew what I was supposed to do.  I could draw a path of random punctuations in my existence that led me to that exact moment, but I’ll save that for another time.  I’m exhausted from the end of camp, lack of sleep, eight hours of car time, moving all of my stuff up four flights of stairs, and huge sense of purpose that I’m feeling right now.

While writing the previous post, I heard the most awful retching sound coming from the hallway.  It seems that one of my students woke up sick, and decided the carpet was a good place to puke.  I yelled “RUN TO THE TOILET,” but it was too late.  He puked all the way down the hall.  I ran to get the carpet cleaner from maintenance.

All in a night’s work…  or time off.  Or whatever we call it at NCS.

Every so often in life, I like to switch things up in a major way.  In my younger days I might change my name, or my eye color, or my hair, or the music I listen to, or my hobbies, or get an entirely new set of friends.  It seems that the older I get, the longer it is between major changes.  I’ve been at the same thing for almost 5 years now, with the exception of photography, which is a two-year hobby so far.

Well, without giving away the plot of my life story, I just have to say that there are changes coming.  I’ll be moving houses for next year.  I’ll be a co-primary houseparent, so I’ll be able to roam a little more freely in my job.  There will be job changes for me at NCS.  I’ll explain once I have a contract.  In any case, I seem to be energized by change, so I’m looking forward to next school year with new-found passion.

I suppose you could call my camp job a major change as well, and the fact that I have some time off this summer for the first time in my adult life.  I’ve already started filling my upcoming time.

I got my first motorcycle during my last semester at Keene State College, back in 2001.  It was a Honda C70, which was small enough to fit in a bike rack, and got 90 mpg.  That bike was a blast to ride on, but made me want to get a real motorcycle.While working in Maryland as a bioprocess associate at Human Genome Sciences, I bought my second bike, the 2002 Kawasaki Ninja 250.  It was a little green crotch-rocket.  I loved that bike, but sold it when I decided to quit my job and go back to camp.  I had that bike for less than a year.  This winter it dawned on me that I would like to have a bike again, so started looking into it.  It turns out that Kawasaki redesigned the body and engine of the 250 for 2008 (something they hadn’t done since 1988 or so).  The Ninja 250 now looks like its modern big brothers, the Ninja 500, 600, and 650.

My dear friend Valerie drove my bike all the way from St. Albans, VT, last weekend.  I registered the bike on Monday with a NY custom plate that says BIODRK (only allowed 6 letters).  Was thinking about getting TAKODA, but I can always do that in future years, as you have to register custom plates every year.

Riding the bike is exactly how I remember it.  What a fun way to get around.  Now, for all of you worry-warts, you should know that this is a small bike.  It looks big, but it doesn’t go any faster than a car, and doesn’t accelerate like its big brother bikes.  I just have to watch out for everyone else…

I hope this can be my main vehicle for the summer.  If I hold onto it for a few summers, it will pay for itself in gas in just a few years.  Can’t go wrong with 70 mpg.  Right now I’m riding the bike through its break-in period, during which I can’t rev the engine or go much above 40 mph, though I have taken it up to 55 to keep up with the speed limit on Rt. 73.  Anyway, can’t wait until the first 500 miles are up.  Here’s what it looks like:

I have completed my training for the ambulance service in town (though I’m not done with some of the extra EMT stuff), and last night I was voted in as a full member of the squad.  I still have to do two more calls, but they were nice enough to give me some extra time to get it done since I’ve been trying and I work a lot at NCS.  After my 6 calls are done, I have to run 5 calls on my own as the head EMT before I’m set completely free to work a call.

This is really cool.  I haven’t belonged to a team like this for a long time (with the exception of the NCS staff team, but they come with my job by default).  There is a sort of comeradery that can only come from sharing in some pretty heavy times.  We’re mostly volunteers, with the exception of a few paid daytime employees.  It takes a certain kind of person to put themself out there to help people, with the risk of making a mistake or getting hurt emotionally.  In that aspect, we are all the same, though we all seem to differ in personality.  These are the first folks I’ve met and spent any time with in town, so it’s cool that I’m branching out.  Perhaps with some of the extra time I’ll have this summer I can actually go out and have a social life.

Now that I’m certified as an EMT, I figured I should do something with my skills, so I joined the Lake Placid Volunteer Ambulance Squad. I was voted in as a member in training, and have spent many hours of my spring break learning everything needed to work on an ambulance. For the final part of my training, I need to help out on at least 6 calls. No problem, you might think… Not so. After about 60 hours of time spent at the squad house, I’ve only gone on two calls. It seems that while I’m present, no one gets hurt or dies. One of the other EMTs called me a ‘white cloud.’ Nice that no one’s getting hurt, but not so good for my training, especially since the kids get back soon. I’m going to spend some of Easter at the squad.

It seems sort of odd that I’m hoping someone gets hurt or sick. Then again, if I don’t finish my training I can’t help anyone out in the future.