The LA County Fair

My labmates (aka people I work/slave away with) took a fun trip to the LA County fair last week with our PI (aka boss) - my lab is just too cool. This was my first time at a fair and I was kind of excited, even though I was still dealing with shingles pain, uh. Overall, it was a great day.

Here are some shots from our day:

Note: I didn't go on that ride. I enjoyed having my feet planted firmly on the ground.

Fair food may look amazing, but it definitely didn't taste amazing, sadly.

Bee exhibit

 Can you find the Queen? She's larger than the other bees and has a circle of worker bees around her that pet and groom her all day long. Here's a hint: she has a red dot on her head - the dot is not natural. It's for the bee keepers to identify her.

Pig races. My little piggy won the first 2 :)

 I won a chocolate covered banana for it (courtesy of the person I bet against, haha!). It didn't taste good.

Clydesdales

Fried Oreo

History Channel Interview

Yesterday was a crazy cool day.  Our PI was chosen to be interviewed by the History Channel for two shows called "Ancient Aliens" and "Invasion: Earth".  Our lab has nothing to do with aliens and I don't think anyone in the lab really even believes that we have come from aliens and/or that aliens invaded earth and passed their DNA onto us (sorry Scientologists), but they were interviewing about general science questions for their show, so it seemed anyways. 

We had to clean up the lab the day before, get things organized and presentable for the camera.  I'm always down for clean/organize anything :D so I felt right at home with that.  We also had to make sure, if we were in the lab when they were filming to be on our best safety behavior.  Meaning, lab coats, gloves and goggles on at all times.  We normally only wear gloves and the rest of the stuff is worn when we feel like it (ha!), but in case OSHA or EH&S watched or saw...we could get into trouble :D but luckily, they didn't film us, and we actually ended up having to be really quite during the filming, so we just sat around and watched...you know, moral support and all. 

It was cool to watch the set up and the interview, and hear our PI answer their questions with great ease and eloquence.  They do some neat things while setting up...I'm going to keep some of the secrets for now :D They may or may not come back later to film some of us doing "cool sciency things" as they called it, but for now I'm going to try to avoid the camera if at all possible, but it was cool to be a part of this nonetheless.  The show is supposed to air sometime in the Fall, so I'm sure we'll know more later and I'll have more details to share.

Makeup time :D

Shirt change...he matched with the darkness too much.

Interview time...

 

Happy Friday

First and foremost, thank God it's Friday.  Secondly, I have found a new lab to join and I'm secretly super excited, or not so secretly, hehe.  I hope I've made the right decision and I hope that it works out in the long run.  Grant money is super tight so as of next year, things might be up in the air with funding, but I hope from now until then, I will get a good project, get LOTS of data, find a fellowship of some sort and/or boss gets his grant re-funded.  This is me being uber optimistic.  But, we'll see what happens.  For now, a small weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I can take a minute to breath.  I have to get into gear for a long haul of hard work, so I hope this excitement lasts (or as my hubby put it...it better!).

I have tons to do this weekend for prepping for Noruz, and I have presents to wrap and some baking to do...and tons of non-school related things....fun :D  

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Happy Friday! :)

Thank you HeLa

I wanted to take this chance to give a sincere thank you to Henrietta Lacks (and her family) for her cells (HeLa) that I have started working with in my lab.  I've used all sorts of other cell lines before, some cancerous, some not, but I've never used a cell line that was covered in such controversy and shame and derived from a patient without consent (and that was SO cancerous, practically nothing can harm them).  It is no wonder she died such a painful death...these cells are insane! They DON'T die! 

Henrietta Lacks, I wish there was more I could do for you and your family, but nonetheless, thank you for this opportunity! They will hopefully serve me well on my project. 

Check out this post I wrote a while back about her and the book ("The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot) that has been written about her life.

The elongated looking cells are the ones that have adhered to the dish and are growing.

Lab

I had to make a quick run to lab on Saturday in the middle of all the dinner party preparations.  My mom came with me and of course, being a mom, she had to whip out her camera to document what she calls "I have no idea what you're doing but it looks cool".

I was finishing up an experiment (XTT assay) and passaging my melanoma cells.

So this is what I do 5-6 days a week (sometimes 7).  My life is at this hood.  

Sigh...