Happy Things, Part Three

[Re: The title of this post-- there were not technically parts One or Two of a Happy Things post.  But this is the third list of happy things (I think) so that’s my title and I’m sticking to it. See below for an explanation of the fact that English isn’t working right now. Also, this is my 50th post on this blog (obviously I didn't do very well at writing every week). So yay for that!]

I can’t possibly top last week’s post in terms of thinky-ness, and my brain is much too full of other things I’m concerned with to even try to top last week, so that’s not going to happen (I’m about 95% sure that sentence made no sense... I’m trying to say that this post isn’t going to be nearly as thoughtful as last week’s. Okay. My brain is more or less back online).

I think it’s time for a list of happy things again, because I’m in need of a small de-stressing solution at the moment and happy things are fun. My brain seems to have forgotten how to write English well. I’m going to apologize now- the English thing really isn’t working. I don’t think it’s going to get any better. I keep forgetting what I'm doing and thinking in Spanish (Which is working surprisingly well, albeit with horrendous grammar errors). My brain is a bit fried, for no good reason. Okay, happy things. Here we go.

1.    Cookies! (And brownies and more cookies...)

I made both brownies and cookies this week.  The brownies were because I never bring anything into lab, and I decided that I should make something for people to eat.  They were from a box, but they were very well received.  I also had what was quite possibly the best brownie of my life (I didn’t make this one though).  It was ridiculously fudgy, and had walnuts in it, and was far too rich. But it was delicious, and I was in a chocolate mood, so it hit the spot.  I also made cookies which were well received. The recipe said it would make 60 cookies- it probably made closer to 80. It’s a good thing that I didn’t double the recipe like I was planning to...

2.    Birthdays!

One of my friends had her 21^st birthday this week.  As a result, I have a new restaurant that I’m dragging people to when they come to town: The Painted Burro.  The chips and salsa that they serve are the closest I’ve ever come to finding fresh chips and salsa that rival those from El Pollo Loco in Palm Springs.  The nachos were also fairly amazing.  Basically, I’m totally down to go out to dinner with whomever comes to town. 

3.    Brains!

One of my classes was talking today about the development of human brains.  It turns out that we have so many brain cells that our brains have to fold into themselves to make more surface area for the cells to grow.  As a result, our brains have the characteristic foldy/wavy shape that you probably all know (but here’s a cartoon for reference)

  

In comparison, mice have far fewer brain cells than we do, so their brains are smooth.  This is probably slightly less cool than I actually think it is, but the lecture made me happy about the fact that I’m a Bio major, because I get to learn a bunch of cool things like this without the horrible evil math that accompany the cool things in bioengineering.

4.    Weather

Boston weather has been totally random for the past week... we’ve had rainy days and 80°F days and days that had lows in the low 40’s.  Yesterday though, was completely gorgeous.  It was about 65°F and sunny, and it was more or less my perfect weather.  It was jeans and a sweatshirt weather, which I love for multiple reasons.  Mostly, it was because it’s the kind of weather that lets you be cozy if you want to be, but you can also go out in a t-shirt and jeans and be totally fine.  It also came after a few days of horrible, cold, rainy weather, so the sun was definitely welcome.

5.    LAB

Lab was completely and totally the best thing about this week, and I can’t believe that I forgot about it until the last thing.  We’re knocking down genes in cells right now, which means that the genes won’t be expressed in those cells. (So, for instance, if you had cells with a gene that expresses green light and you knocked down that gene, the cells would no longer express green light.)

The method we’re using to knock down genes involves building viruses that will infect our cells with a piece of DNA that will knock out our genes of interest.  Building viruses is incredibly cool, but also incredibly hazardous, especially since we’re trying to knock down the genes that allow us to repair DNA damage caused by UV light.  There was a lot of bleach used this week as we disinfected everything that could have possibly gotten a virus on it.

Lab this week also resulted in the solution of the mystery of the DNA stuck in the wells!  There’s still a tiny bit of DNA stuck in the wells of my gel, but significantly less than there was previously, and I ended up getting about 10 times as much DNA out as I had before, which was exciting.  I may have done a small dance in lab when I got the results back.

I think that’s about all I have time for today- I have to go write a section of my thesis to turn in a draft of it tomorrow, and I need to read and critique three scientific papers, and I have to study for my Spanish exam.  And I have to do a bunch of other random things to get ready for the remainder of the week and just for life in general.  Yay fun times!