Friday:
Arrive at Richard's house. Attempt to parallel park next to the curved curb. Encounter his relatives. His sister shows me embarrassing photographs of him that we've all seen. Little boy offers me a lychee jelly drink. Nearly permanently damage another child. Jeopardy. Precautions, goodbyes, and reminders from Richard's parents. Big fat map. Aud is a robot. Nonstop talk one second, sound asleep the next. Music requests. "Do you have Christina Aguilera's Dirrty?" "I DO!" "...I was kidding." The mystery of idle construction workers with cones. Aud goes to the bathroom often but scarily fast. Britney Spears's Toxic. Snack bag. Peanut butter crackers turn out to be cheese crackers. 10 PM traffic. (F)alicia Rice. Why calicos are female. Malcolm's fur pattern. Peachy colored apartment.
Saturday:
Slightly complicated shower. Bagels and cereal. Self-realization becomes self-parody. The Passat. Parking for Mr. Lee only. Sunglasses. Sushi and tempura green tea ice cream. Kristen's work. Aud reads Japanese. Black Eyed Peas. The Getty. So California. Irises. Pictures. Three dollar kid-size T-shirts. Drop Richard off at frat house with messy front lawn (styrofoam cups and beat up couch). "The Row." Winding hills and roads to Topanga Canyon. Topanga Canyon. "I'm going to pee." "Okay. Does anyone have napkins?" Persistent bee. Serendipitous hummingbird. Close toed shoes (flip flops in trunk) and photographs of closed toe shoes. "Did we all take pictures of our feet?" Invisible Man. Third Street Promenade. La Salsa. Crazy crowds. Anthropologie. Santa Monica beach at night. Wet jeans and sandy toes. Kristen on starting a water fight: "I don't know...would you guys get mad?" Chimes on the pier. Wayside stories. Hollywood drive. Dead end. Tattoo shops. Coldplay. Green eyes. Cynthia Street (Victoria: "Let's see where she goes.") Life after college. Drunken phone call. "So what'd you guys do today?...Where'd you go today?...What did you guys do?" No more apologies. Topanga and Cory. Outkast's Roses. Kristen and Aud sleep horizontally.
Sunday:
Sleeping in. Subway sandwiches and Popeye's. Victo's workplace. Venice Beach. Venice Beach Recreation Center. Finally find college roommates and friends. Three-person Frisbee team. Melkis's fingernails. Steph and Jey's sand crabs. Neil/Lance Armstrong. Head back north. Richard sleeps. Aud takes over and promptly gets on the wrong highway. Quality friends. Japanese song. Kaze means wind. Details of Aud's life: gymnastics, remarriage, religion, calling to live on a boat, her mom's life. Parental stories. We know you're not irresponsible or spoiled. Fight Club (Now what should I do? Go to college. Now what? Get married). Life after college, again. I Love the 90's. Bad movies. Super personal question (Answer: No). Shrimp chips ("Geez Kim, this bag was at least half full!"). Aud on night driving: "It wasn't like we were in a different place; it was like we always did this." Spotting five different car accidents. Lending Aud's sister the ND cap, gown and perhaps diploma ("Congratulations...Muto"). Phone calls from Richard's dad ("Hello?" "Rich?" "...No, this is Kim." * "Hello?" "Kim?" "...No, this is Audrey.") Melted chocolate raisins. Richard looks lost. Richard finds the squigee. Simultaenously sudden laughter. Richard demands that we stop laughing. Milk or dark chocolate? House sitting for Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez. First CD's. Making memories mode. Missing the bandwagon. Good, good conversations that flowed into one another in such a way that I can only remember the feelings and none of the words. Home, and sleep.
***
One road trip. Two and a half days. Five friends. Four girls and a guy. Two cars. Two iPods and many songs. Two full size beds and one sleeping bag. Two In-N-Out stops and numerous bathroom stops. Two breakfasts, and three eat-out meals. Two beaches. One high school and five colleges. Two long drives and several short ones.
How to end the counting? Not at all.
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Thursday, July 22, 2004
today and relativity
So I know I'm a bit behind, but I just realized the importance of relativity today, at least as far as how it affects my own life. During the first weeks of work, I felt a bit young and useless because everyone else was so experienced and all I did was read as much as I could to catch up. Reading being a very inactive activity, I didn't feel like I was doing much. I still haven't started my exciting experiments yet (my cells were dying...more on cell death later...) but I've been taking care of my cells and other things, so I've been doing a lot more, but it didn't feel like much of a difference until a new high school student started working at the lab. Watching her read and do all those things I had to do in the beginning made me very much aware that I've at least gotten past that stage, and that for once I'm more familiar with the lab than someone else there.
Then, the postdoctoral fellow who I work with wanted me to help her transfer some mice to other cages. My main project deals with cell cultures, not mice, but I've been taking care of her mice while the person who usually does that is on vacation. In the beginning, I have to admit, I was wary, as I was scared by the mouse in Clav and I'd never seen so many mice in one room before. Plus the other person who was training me to take care of the mice (not the same as the postdoc) had been working with them for years so it was nothing to her. Needless to say, in comparison, I again felt a bit inexperienced handling them (though they brought back bittersweet memories of my pet mice). And, when the postdoc trained me in other procedures, she's so expert that I was bewildered at first. But today I was really surprised to find that she is extremely nervous around mice and left all the transferring up to me. We had to weigh them, and one of them jumped out of the very high container onto the floor (mice are amazing; that container's height was three times the mouse's size). The prospect of this happening has been a fear of mine since I started, but being with a person more scared of them than me made me much less so, and though it took about ten minutes, I caught it and without any anxiety. This role reversal made me feel much more useful, even though it's not really a big part of my work there.
Just when I was feeling responsible and old, everyone in the lab started talking about our beach outing tomorrow. We're going to Santa Cruz to celebrate our boss's birthday. People were talking about how they didn't want to be out in the sun, running around all day and someone mentioned bringing aspirin. This discussion all came after I was thinking about how excited I was that Richard, Aud and I have finalized our road trip to LA and how we'll be meeting up with everyone at the beach, and how I love being in the sun all day, and how much fun our previous energy-draining beach outings have been. Back to feeling young, this time in a good, unjaded way.
After work, I went to the grocery store to buy ingredients for the food I wanted to bring to the beach tomorrow. We don't do much grocery shopping during the school year since we have the dining hall, so I experienced that on-your-own feeling that grocery shopping gives you (the one that's replaced by the I-hate-this feeling after you've done it enough times). Then I went home, remembered that I can't cook (it took the actual failed attempt to remind me), and I realized that there are still things that are independent of age, and that are just me.
Then, the postdoctoral fellow who I work with wanted me to help her transfer some mice to other cages. My main project deals with cell cultures, not mice, but I've been taking care of her mice while the person who usually does that is on vacation. In the beginning, I have to admit, I was wary, as I was scared by the mouse in Clav and I'd never seen so many mice in one room before. Plus the other person who was training me to take care of the mice (not the same as the postdoc) had been working with them for years so it was nothing to her. Needless to say, in comparison, I again felt a bit inexperienced handling them (though they brought back bittersweet memories of my pet mice). And, when the postdoc trained me in other procedures, she's so expert that I was bewildered at first. But today I was really surprised to find that she is extremely nervous around mice and left all the transferring up to me. We had to weigh them, and one of them jumped out of the very high container onto the floor (mice are amazing; that container's height was three times the mouse's size). The prospect of this happening has been a fear of mine since I started, but being with a person more scared of them than me made me much less so, and though it took about ten minutes, I caught it and without any anxiety. This role reversal made me feel much more useful, even though it's not really a big part of my work there.
Just when I was feeling responsible and old, everyone in the lab started talking about our beach outing tomorrow. We're going to Santa Cruz to celebrate our boss's birthday. People were talking about how they didn't want to be out in the sun, running around all day and someone mentioned bringing aspirin. This discussion all came after I was thinking about how excited I was that Richard, Aud and I have finalized our road trip to LA and how we'll be meeting up with everyone at the beach, and how I love being in the sun all day, and how much fun our previous energy-draining beach outings have been. Back to feeling young, this time in a good, unjaded way.
After work, I went to the grocery store to buy ingredients for the food I wanted to bring to the beach tomorrow. We don't do much grocery shopping during the school year since we have the dining hall, so I experienced that on-your-own feeling that grocery shopping gives you (the one that's replaced by the I-hate-this feeling after you've done it enough times). Then I went home, remembered that I can't cook (it took the actual failed attempt to remind me), and I realized that there are still things that are independent of age, and that are just me.
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
before sunset
A little while back, Richard told me that it was strange to read my entry describing work because he wasn't used to me talking about science. He's right; I don't talk about science much. But, outside of work, I also rarely hear anyone else having conversations about science, "science people" included. People associate me with the humanities because that's what I like thinking and talking about. Up until very recently, I distinguished between humanities and science by feeling that I like studying the former and I like doing the latter. Having experienced both departments in college, I didn't think the two could be any more different. Now, outside the context of academics, it's amazing to see how one way of thinking that's fueled by a belief in objectivity and explanations is so closely tied to a mode of perception that's based on subjectivity and interpretation.
I remember learning about apoptosis, aka programmed cell death, in genetics freshman year. Individual cells commit suicide for the sake of the larger system. I'm a sucker for good stories about sacrifice--Casablanca, Tale of Two Cities, that sort of thing--so of course this all sounded heroic (on the most microscopic level possible). Then, while reading for work, I learned about necrosis, aka accidental cell death. It got me thinking about the analogous system of people, and not just the cells that comprise them. What's programmed and what's accidental? It seems simple to divide people into the same categories, suicide and accidents. But--thinking about it like that on a small scale in terms of cells is logical, yet thinking about it like that on a large scale in terms of people is a little scary. What I mean is, it makes sense that some cells need to be sacrificed to keep a person living. It's just as rational to imagine the same happening to people to keep the world running (to maintain stable population and competition, if you don't want to think about it with feeling; to give purpose to those who attempt to prevent it and those who offer consolation after the fact, if you do). But if you think about suicide as programmed, by whom or whatever, this means that the experiences and emotions of the individual person don't really matter. Potentially there could be no reason or cause for a person's death by unnatural and deliberate means--Aud mentioned this when she talked about Elephant, and Sarah brought up United States of Leland. Things just happen to keep things going while ending certain lives. None of these thoughts are new to anyone but they just never entered my mind via science before. One of my favorite lines from Fight Club comes to mind: "If you wanna make an omelette, you gotta break some eggs." It's interesting to think about, but despite all the theory and explanation, it still makes me a little sad.
So as nice as this mind-consuming work has been lately, the fact that it has been intense makes me really guard and love the time away from it. Hiking Mission Peak for the first time (after 18 years in Fremont) was really good for me. I haven't walked around an isolated outdoors area in the dark since TASP. Even though we never quite figured out where the top was supposed to be, the views were beautiful; I've never looked at my home from that perspective. Sarah pinpointed the nicest thing about it, though, when she said that it was a nice change of pace from school and work.
And of course, the walk-and-talk atmosphere reminded me of Before Sunset. I liked Before Sunrise a lot, but I really loved Before Sunset. I should relate more to the first movie since the characters are in their 20s and everything is hopeful, romantic and slightly idealized, all adjectives that describe my predominant outlook. But the setbacks, the experience, the anger and resentments of the second movie make it so much more poignant, and it's living through fiction like that that makes me want to go through the whole teen angst, broken heart, deadbeat job thing. I guess I tend to idealize all of the that, too.
What I really like about the movie is that the dialogue consists of things that you think all the time but wouldn't normally say because they're the type of things you believe are undeniably true one minute, then just as adamantly refute the next. It's hard to be spontaneous and honest with what you say aloud, because you think you should say what you believe in general rather than what you feel at the time. This hit me when Ethan Hawke says, "It's okay to want things as long as you don't get pissed when you don't get them." It's something I totally feel at certain moments but not something I entirely believe when I really think about it.
Mmm...I'm so ready for this weekend's road trip.
I remember learning about apoptosis, aka programmed cell death, in genetics freshman year. Individual cells commit suicide for the sake of the larger system. I'm a sucker for good stories about sacrifice--Casablanca, Tale of Two Cities, that sort of thing--so of course this all sounded heroic (on the most microscopic level possible). Then, while reading for work, I learned about necrosis, aka accidental cell death. It got me thinking about the analogous system of people, and not just the cells that comprise them. What's programmed and what's accidental? It seems simple to divide people into the same categories, suicide and accidents. But--thinking about it like that on a small scale in terms of cells is logical, yet thinking about it like that on a large scale in terms of people is a little scary. What I mean is, it makes sense that some cells need to be sacrificed to keep a person living. It's just as rational to imagine the same happening to people to keep the world running (to maintain stable population and competition, if you don't want to think about it with feeling; to give purpose to those who attempt to prevent it and those who offer consolation after the fact, if you do). But if you think about suicide as programmed, by whom or whatever, this means that the experiences and emotions of the individual person don't really matter. Potentially there could be no reason or cause for a person's death by unnatural and deliberate means--Aud mentioned this when she talked about Elephant, and Sarah brought up United States of Leland. Things just happen to keep things going while ending certain lives. None of these thoughts are new to anyone but they just never entered my mind via science before. One of my favorite lines from Fight Club comes to mind: "If you wanna make an omelette, you gotta break some eggs." It's interesting to think about, but despite all the theory and explanation, it still makes me a little sad.
So as nice as this mind-consuming work has been lately, the fact that it has been intense makes me really guard and love the time away from it. Hiking Mission Peak for the first time (after 18 years in Fremont) was really good for me. I haven't walked around an isolated outdoors area in the dark since TASP. Even though we never quite figured out where the top was supposed to be, the views were beautiful; I've never looked at my home from that perspective. Sarah pinpointed the nicest thing about it, though, when she said that it was a nice change of pace from school and work.
And of course, the walk-and-talk atmosphere reminded me of Before Sunset. I liked Before Sunrise a lot, but I really loved Before Sunset. I should relate more to the first movie since the characters are in their 20s and everything is hopeful, romantic and slightly idealized, all adjectives that describe my predominant outlook. But the setbacks, the experience, the anger and resentments of the second movie make it so much more poignant, and it's living through fiction like that that makes me want to go through the whole teen angst, broken heart, deadbeat job thing. I guess I tend to idealize all of the that, too.
What I really like about the movie is that the dialogue consists of things that you think all the time but wouldn't normally say because they're the type of things you believe are undeniably true one minute, then just as adamantly refute the next. It's hard to be spontaneous and honest with what you say aloud, because you think you should say what you believe in general rather than what you feel at the time. This hit me when Ethan Hawke says, "It's okay to want things as long as you don't get pissed when you don't get them." It's something I totally feel at certain moments but not something I entirely believe when I really think about it.
Mmm...I'm so ready for this weekend's road trip.
Friday, July 9, 2004
july 4th weekend
Instead of making the road trip down to Southern California, my dad decided he wanted to stay home for the July 4th weekend. I was disappointed at first because I'd been looking forward to San Diego beaches, but I had a good time anyway. My oldest brother, from New Mexico, came home. I love spending time with him because he's the most laid-back person in our family. We went to Napa Valley, where my dad blatantly offered me wine in front of the bartender who subsequently went ballistic. We didn't bother explaining that we used to manage a wine store, that I've never been drunk in my life, or that wine is good for you. Anyhow, it was beautiful. As much as I love the ocean, if I absolutely had to choose, I'd take the hills.
On another day we went to Monterey and Carmel, and took my parents on the 17-Mile Drive, where I visited Pebble Beach for the first time. I love the tacky names people give their houses on the shore and cliffs: "Sand and Sea," "Seahorse," and the like. There was one, though, that I really liked that was less obvious: "Periwinkle." I wish I could remember if I thought that word was cute before or after I knew what the color looked like. If it was before, I'd finally have a word to use as an example during the times that I think that the feelings we associate with words can just come from pure sound and aren't necessarily a result of what the words describe. I guess, though, that periwinkle could be associated with wink, twinkle, and other words that have "cute" connotations. I'm giving this way too much thought.
Anyway, driving around NorCal made me realize again how much I love it here. I've wanted to live on the East Coast for the longest time, and now I have, and I enjoy it as much as I thought I would, but I can't really compare it to home. And I know, everyone is attached to their hometown, but I honestly think that even if I had grown up somewhere else and then come here to live, I'd still feel it was the best area to live (at least for me personally). It has the laid-back environment characteristic of California, without the superficiality also associated with the West Coast. It has the intellectual atmosphere of the East Coast without its stereotypical boarding school snobbery.
If only it snowed every so often here.
I heard on the radio awhile back that some magazine surveyed 200,000 people as to the "most rockin' city" in the US, and San Francisco was number one. So this assertion has no validity because I don't remember the radio station or the magazine, but I CAN tell you that I agree. And what I like most about the Bay Area is the conglomeration of small cities that are all individually so interesting, all in one concentrated area of California. Practically everything is within two hours or less of Fremont. This isn't as true of the East Coast; though the different states are a close enough drive to one another--which is something I love--they are, after all, different states. But I have to admit that when you've lived long enough in an area, you find yourself loving it for the details that you haven't had the time and experience to find in other places. No one comes to the Bay Area to go to the Stanford Theater, downtown San Jose, or Mission Peak, and those are the kind of things that I've become attached to. I'm sure these details lurk in other places I claim to know but really have only visited. So impossible to see everything, and so natural to want to do so.
Movie update: Spiderman 2 was good. The Notebook was not.
I'm looking forward to seeing Before Sunset this weekend. Like Before Sunrise, it has no action whatsoever, just "intelligent conversation and lovely scenery," which--if you subtract the adjectives--I think reflects real life more than most movies. The more I think about it, the less I view life in terms of plot and more in terms of dialogue and places.
You'd think that with all this introspection that I indulge in, I'd be more pessimistic. Like Aud, when I read over my entries I felt they were one-dimensional in tone, but for the opposite reason. I tend to want to write (at least for public reading) when I'm happy, or when I've reached a point where I feel positive again. I've been telling people lately that I've never wallowed. A part of wallowing is feeling that what you're experiencing is unique to you, so you deserve the right to brood. I just can't think of a burden that any one person could bear that doesn't weigh on someone else, somewhere else. Not that I think people shouldn't wallow; I understand that it's not about actually knowing that you're alone but just feeling as though you are. It's just odd. If I had to say that I was "too" anything, it would be too sensitive. I get angry, upset, and annoyed really easily. But I can't ever seem to let go of that last bit of rationale that prevents my emotions from completely taking over. When I was younger, during the time when the expectation was that I was going to succumb to uncontrollable angst, I was proud of this, of what I thought was maturity. Now I regret that I've never experienced something strong enough to make me wallow.
But as those older than me tell me, I'm only twenty.
On another day we went to Monterey and Carmel, and took my parents on the 17-Mile Drive, where I visited Pebble Beach for the first time. I love the tacky names people give their houses on the shore and cliffs: "Sand and Sea," "Seahorse," and the like. There was one, though, that I really liked that was less obvious: "Periwinkle." I wish I could remember if I thought that word was cute before or after I knew what the color looked like. If it was before, I'd finally have a word to use as an example during the times that I think that the feelings we associate with words can just come from pure sound and aren't necessarily a result of what the words describe. I guess, though, that periwinkle could be associated with wink, twinkle, and other words that have "cute" connotations. I'm giving this way too much thought.
Anyway, driving around NorCal made me realize again how much I love it here. I've wanted to live on the East Coast for the longest time, and now I have, and I enjoy it as much as I thought I would, but I can't really compare it to home. And I know, everyone is attached to their hometown, but I honestly think that even if I had grown up somewhere else and then come here to live, I'd still feel it was the best area to live (at least for me personally). It has the laid-back environment characteristic of California, without the superficiality also associated with the West Coast. It has the intellectual atmosphere of the East Coast without its stereotypical boarding school snobbery.
If only it snowed every so often here.
I heard on the radio awhile back that some magazine surveyed 200,000 people as to the "most rockin' city" in the US, and San Francisco was number one. So this assertion has no validity because I don't remember the radio station or the magazine, but I CAN tell you that I agree. And what I like most about the Bay Area is the conglomeration of small cities that are all individually so interesting, all in one concentrated area of California. Practically everything is within two hours or less of Fremont. This isn't as true of the East Coast; though the different states are a close enough drive to one another--which is something I love--they are, after all, different states. But I have to admit that when you've lived long enough in an area, you find yourself loving it for the details that you haven't had the time and experience to find in other places. No one comes to the Bay Area to go to the Stanford Theater, downtown San Jose, or Mission Peak, and those are the kind of things that I've become attached to. I'm sure these details lurk in other places I claim to know but really have only visited. So impossible to see everything, and so natural to want to do so.
Movie update: Spiderman 2 was good. The Notebook was not.
I'm looking forward to seeing Before Sunset this weekend. Like Before Sunrise, it has no action whatsoever, just "intelligent conversation and lovely scenery," which--if you subtract the adjectives--I think reflects real life more than most movies. The more I think about it, the less I view life in terms of plot and more in terms of dialogue and places.
You'd think that with all this introspection that I indulge in, I'd be more pessimistic. Like Aud, when I read over my entries I felt they were one-dimensional in tone, but for the opposite reason. I tend to want to write (at least for public reading) when I'm happy, or when I've reached a point where I feel positive again. I've been telling people lately that I've never wallowed. A part of wallowing is feeling that what you're experiencing is unique to you, so you deserve the right to brood. I just can't think of a burden that any one person could bear that doesn't weigh on someone else, somewhere else. Not that I think people shouldn't wallow; I understand that it's not about actually knowing that you're alone but just feeling as though you are. It's just odd. If I had to say that I was "too" anything, it would be too sensitive. I get angry, upset, and annoyed really easily. But I can't ever seem to let go of that last bit of rationale that prevents my emotions from completely taking over. When I was younger, during the time when the expectation was that I was going to succumb to uncontrollable angst, I was proud of this, of what I thought was maturity. Now I regret that I've never experienced something strong enough to make me wallow.
But as those older than me tell me, I'm only twenty.
Thursday, July 1, 2004
the elusive "work" explained
For anyone who's been wondering, I've been at work long enough to be able to describe it a bit. And since I'm posting this during my pre-lunch break at work, I might as well talk about it.
I work at Stanford, in the Pediatrics Department of the Center for Clinical Science Research. My lab works with pulmonary vascular diseases, specifically pulmonary hypertension (increased blood pressure). I'm studying BMPRIA, which is a gene that, when mutated, contributes to hypertension. Essentially, it allows cells to proliferate and migrate into arteries, clogging them (or that's the hypothesis). One component of my job is phenotyping and genotyping transgenic mice. The phenotyping consists of examining and characterizing cells from control mice and mice who are heterozygous and homozygous for BMPRIA mutations. That part, thankfully, is over. The genotyping involves DNA isolation, gel electrophoresis and polymerase chain reactions--basic techniques that are fun but not directly related to experiments or data (similar to my last summer job).
The most challenging and interesting part of the job is my individual project. So far, the lab's only studied the effects of BMPRIA knockout/mutation in mice. This summer I'll be in charge of studying it in human pulmonary artery cells. This first involves culturing, feeding and generally maintaining the cells. Then, I will transfect them with short interfering RNAs, which will disrupt the mRNA activity of BMPRIA, which will then reduce the gene's protein levels. I'll have to extract the RNA to examine the RNA levels, run western blots to assess protein level, and conduct microarrays to study the gene expression. Once it's confirmed that the gene has been knocked down, we can study if and how the gene knockdown affects the migration and proliferation that leads to hypertension. This requires a slew of other experiments.
If you think all this sounds like I know what I'm doing, you've been deceived. I have less than two months to accomplish all of the above. So while I'm learning a lot in very little time, it's also more responsibility than I'm accustomed to, at least in the academic realm. If I don't exactly do the right thing in my classes, no one is really hurt except for me. Now I have tiny cells and real people depending on me.
Enough about work and onto driving, which is somewhat related to work, at least as far as how my life is set up right now (drive-work-drive). When I'm driving with other people I always prefer to be the passenger (unless that means that my mom will be driving), because I hate having to pay attention to the road. If you need directions and navigation, I'm useless. I'm only good for sleeping, daydreaming and controlling the music. But when I'm on the East Coast, I often miss driving alone. So a few unconnected thoughts concerning the two hours I now daily devote to driving. #1: The other day, I was actually "driving down the 101" while listening to Phantom Planet's "California." I've wanted to do that ever since Chris recommended the song (I've never actually seen the OC opening theme). #2: My car is about seven years old but looks and feels like it's fifteen. Every time I look at it, there's a new dent or scrape (I swear these occur spontaneously, induced by no action on my part). I used to be able to lazily drive with one hand, but now it feels unstable enough for me to have to grip the steering wheel with both hands (but not unsafe enough that I worry about it). It's not really my car because everyone else uses it when they don't want to drive their own cars (to avoid long distances from clocking on their odometers and those dents from appearing on their cars), but I use it the most so I claim it. And since I view cars as solely functional, and since it's always gotten me where I needed to go with a sufficient amount of comfort, I don't give its beat-up state much thought and actually it's become endearing. It would be too easy to make my car a metaphor for my life. #3: I hate that people use the carpool lane when they're driving BY THEMSELVES. And why, why do people insist on tailgating you when you're already miles and miles beyond the speed limit? It'll only make me go slower. Antagonism doesn't change my ways.
Things I'm excited about: #1: Ryan Gosling tonight #2: The drive (as a passenger) to LA and San Diego this weekend with half of my family #3: LA and San Diego for July 4 #4: Spiderman 2 with my family (I'm neutral towards the first Spiderman, but my parents rarely go to movies so I always enjoy any chance to see something with them. And the second promises to be much better than the first).
Back to work.
I work at Stanford, in the Pediatrics Department of the Center for Clinical Science Research. My lab works with pulmonary vascular diseases, specifically pulmonary hypertension (increased blood pressure). I'm studying BMPRIA, which is a gene that, when mutated, contributes to hypertension. Essentially, it allows cells to proliferate and migrate into arteries, clogging them (or that's the hypothesis). One component of my job is phenotyping and genotyping transgenic mice. The phenotyping consists of examining and characterizing cells from control mice and mice who are heterozygous and homozygous for BMPRIA mutations. That part, thankfully, is over. The genotyping involves DNA isolation, gel electrophoresis and polymerase chain reactions--basic techniques that are fun but not directly related to experiments or data (similar to my last summer job).
The most challenging and interesting part of the job is my individual project. So far, the lab's only studied the effects of BMPRIA knockout/mutation in mice. This summer I'll be in charge of studying it in human pulmonary artery cells. This first involves culturing, feeding and generally maintaining the cells. Then, I will transfect them with short interfering RNAs, which will disrupt the mRNA activity of BMPRIA, which will then reduce the gene's protein levels. I'll have to extract the RNA to examine the RNA levels, run western blots to assess protein level, and conduct microarrays to study the gene expression. Once it's confirmed that the gene has been knocked down, we can study if and how the gene knockdown affects the migration and proliferation that leads to hypertension. This requires a slew of other experiments.
If you think all this sounds like I know what I'm doing, you've been deceived. I have less than two months to accomplish all of the above. So while I'm learning a lot in very little time, it's also more responsibility than I'm accustomed to, at least in the academic realm. If I don't exactly do the right thing in my classes, no one is really hurt except for me. Now I have tiny cells and real people depending on me.
Enough about work and onto driving, which is somewhat related to work, at least as far as how my life is set up right now (drive-work-drive). When I'm driving with other people I always prefer to be the passenger (unless that means that my mom will be driving), because I hate having to pay attention to the road. If you need directions and navigation, I'm useless. I'm only good for sleeping, daydreaming and controlling the music. But when I'm on the East Coast, I often miss driving alone. So a few unconnected thoughts concerning the two hours I now daily devote to driving. #1: The other day, I was actually "driving down the 101" while listening to Phantom Planet's "California." I've wanted to do that ever since Chris recommended the song (I've never actually seen the OC opening theme). #2: My car is about seven years old but looks and feels like it's fifteen. Every time I look at it, there's a new dent or scrape (I swear these occur spontaneously, induced by no action on my part). I used to be able to lazily drive with one hand, but now it feels unstable enough for me to have to grip the steering wheel with both hands (but not unsafe enough that I worry about it). It's not really my car because everyone else uses it when they don't want to drive their own cars (to avoid long distances from clocking on their odometers and those dents from appearing on their cars), but I use it the most so I claim it. And since I view cars as solely functional, and since it's always gotten me where I needed to go with a sufficient amount of comfort, I don't give its beat-up state much thought and actually it's become endearing. It would be too easy to make my car a metaphor for my life. #3: I hate that people use the carpool lane when they're driving BY THEMSELVES. And why, why do people insist on tailgating you when you're already miles and miles beyond the speed limit? It'll only make me go slower. Antagonism doesn't change my ways.
Things I'm excited about: #1: Ryan Gosling tonight #2: The drive (as a passenger) to LA and San Diego this weekend with half of my family #3: LA and San Diego for July 4 #4: Spiderman 2 with my family (I'm neutral towards the first Spiderman, but my parents rarely go to movies so I always enjoy any chance to see something with them. And the second promises to be much better than the first).
Back to work.
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