Great Moments In Lab

More like great mishaps in lab.

So lets start with last week, where our microscope decided to kill its bulb. Not the end of the world, we have extra bulbs, right? Yes, with a caveat of course. The bulb is in my PI's office, who is on vacation for another week. Greeeeat. Oh and did I mention I have no idea where the bulb even is in this microscope? And that we need it to look at our plates daily? And that the next nearest one is at least one building over?

Thankfully, after much fighting (gentle mind you) with the scope, I found the lightbulb and got the housing around it off. I then was desperate enough to try the bag of 'used' bulbs. 90% were in fact used, however there was one that worked! I cannot tell you how happy this made me.

Next moment of pure brilliance (please read much sarcasm into this statement). I tried to make 1g/mL of BSA in PBS. Instead I made snot. I seriously cannot describe the consistency any other way. And not runny snot, but the seriously thick goopy stuff. Okay, so lets bump the starting concentration down to 100mg/mL of BSA. Much better. Now we dissolve in PBS and really well in RIPA buffer. But the special extraction buffer? Yeah, I somehow dissolved my BSA partially in this water based buffer, walked away with it on the shaker to finish dissolving while having lunch, and came back to a gelatinous solid. And I do mean solid. Even my PI was like, well thats weird, what was in this buffer again? We think we somehow accidentally cooked the BSA with some chemical reaction in the buffer (we are thinking it may have been the beta mercaptoethanol). Needless to say, we just scrapped using that buffer in our Bradford assay as a standard.

And then to finish off the day, I am going through my old notes to figure out what experiments I still have in limbo and I realize, I used the wrong control reagent on a whole experiment. Face, say hi to palm. Thankfully I hadn't done the qRT-PCR (I the big expensive reaction part) on it yet, but it does mean I have to do it all over again. My PI did point out that I now have a nice bank of RNA for controls when I need it. Still does not make me super happy. Oiy.

Thankfully, this is an atypically high mishap week.

Reasons why breakfast (and lunch) are important

So I know I am someone who needs to eat fairly regularly, or at least with lots of calories. And drinking water is never my strong suit. Thus it was totally awesome when, in the middle of explaining a bisected head to a group of students I suddenly feel super hot and on my way to light headedness.

So not awesome.

Been here before though last time I think it was because I was standing for too long. This time, I am voting not drinking enough and thinking a few cookies, some fruit, and some almonds was a brilliant idea for breakfast. NOT!

Must eat better -.-

Guess what I did today!

This actually went really well! Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what this 'event' was!