Err...

Excellent advice for all locomotives, I should think.

The Bonds of Matrimony

I know I promised to scan all the wedding photos from the disposable cameras, but the scanner here at work is just too painfully slow to make that practical. However, I did want to make sure everyone got a chance to appreciate this terrific (and very symbolic) shot.



Nothing like a good solid hadaka jime judo choke to remind a fellow why he married that woman, right? :-)

A Lucky Cat

Not every cat has a custom-made llama felt basket liner. Kaiyo says thank you, Mom!

Quick Movie Review

Rainy, miserable day, but we went to see Stardust, which is a wonderful movie. You should all go see it. It reminded me very much of The Princess Bride, in all the good ways. A delight!

Got to run!

Photogenic Phood

In celebration of today's success at science, it's time once again for Pictures of Dinner! Today, we're featuring food from the Dinosaur Barbeque cookbook, using the sauce mentioned a few posts ago. For the main course, we have the chicken and andouille sausage (with peppers and onions and lots of tasty sauce), with a side of honey-glazed cornbread. The Smoking Loon Merlot seemed like the appropriate wine for the occasion, and they had it on sale at the corner liquor store, so you can't go wrong.

For dessert, we had this lovely chocolate icebox pie. Mmmm.

A thoroughly successful day. Life is rich and sweet.

Woo!

Glorious victory! Finally figured out how to knock out genes in Rhodobacter sphaeroides! Only took 3 years, but I've got the little punks now. Turns out the secret is that the excission event only happens in about 1 in every 10^11 cells. Do the counter selection with a 100 ml inoculum, and you're golden.

I hope it has an interesting phenotype, after all this time. :-)

False Advertising

So, now that labs have started to move into the new building, yesterday afternoon thay had the first of a new series of departmental social gatherings there: the "BacTea at 3". It was lovely, and very nice, and they had lots of cookies and fruit and things. But there was no tea. No Tea.

Sigh.

New Building!

As you may or may not know, the university just built a brand new building for Microbial Sciences, and I finally got a chance to go inside and check it out! The place is enormous - bigger than anything else on campus except for the basketball stadium.

The first thing you see once you're inside is this tremendous atrium. The stairs are not for the faint of heart, but I suppose they probably won't collapse in the first couple of years. There are actually two atria, but this is the big one, which will have a cafeteria / cafe in it, which should be nice.

The place is full of comfy chairs and places to sit and socialize. One feature I especially appreciate is all the rolling whiteboards. There are dozens of them, which is going to make scientific chattering really easy and fun. The place is set up to increase collaboration among labs, which is a nice change from being isolated in the basement of the Enzyme Institute.

Heading up into the lab areas, it's divided into "neighborhoods" of 4 to 6 labs each. We're in neighborhood 4 of the 6th floor, along with the Downs, Forest, and Thomas labs, who should be good neighbors. We share this corridor with the Downs lab, and eventually it'll have a bunch of equipment (-80°C freezers, etc.) in it. The student offices are through the windows on the right there. They're cozy, but should be workable.

And here's the bench which'll be mine! (And my chair, apparently.) I have shelves! And drawers! The luxury is nearly overwhelming. The lab space is considerably smaller than the space we're in now, but it's not as bad as I had been led to believe. We should have lots of room for most of our stuff.

Turning 180° from the last picture, here's the view from outside my bench! Pretty nice. I've never worked in a new building before. I've always been crammed into spaces which haven't been renovated since the 60's. I'm not sure I know what to do with nice things. I'll have to be careful with stuff. :-)

We move in November. I think we're about the last lab to go, but that's all right. It means they'll have plenty of time to figure out all the things that don't work before we get there. Hopefully our "neighbors" will leave us some room in the coldroom.

Ahhh...

My parents have been bundled off onto the train, and I have a full day of not much to do ahead of me. Life is good.

We had a fun weekend. They stayed at a bed and breakfast just north of town which was very nice and had sheep and llamas (Anita was happy!) and a very pleasant dog. I think my Dad's favorite part of the whole vacation was the dog. :-) We went to the art museum, to Sardine for French dinner, saw Canned Heat play at the Atwood Summerfest, and went to New Glarus for Swiss-themed lunch and a brewery tour. We also went down to Verona to hang out for a bit at the Sow's Ear, a combination yarn and coffee shop. The heat was brutal for the last ocuple of days, but we found enough indoor things to do. And this year I didn't get horribly ill.

They also brought presents! Terrorists have not yet tried to capture a train using barbeque sauce, apparently.