Thursday, August 14, 2008

Why having an art major sibling rocks.

Baby sibling is an art major, she is about half way done with getting her associates degree but currently is not working on her degree since her financial aid got dropped. Her area of interest is jewelry, her favorite saying is "There's no such thing as a starving Jeweler." in response to Middle Sister belittling her for her choice in majors. I don't believe I have ever suggested Baby Sibling change majors to something more useful, she has basically always been an artist and I am not sure that she would be happy doing anything else.

Being the sibling of a molecular biology major who planned to go into microbiology Baby Sibling learned a thing or two about bacteria. She can spout out a over-sanitizing speech almost as good as mine. I tried to con her into taking micro as her life science course but she refused and took botany instead, brat. Joke was on her, the botany class sounded much harder than micro. Of course her favorite courses were the jewelry classes. I think she knew she wanted to be a jeweler before she took those classes and taking them reinforced it. So what is the result of this formula: Baby Sibling in jewelry class + future microbiologist big sister? Why you get these of course:


Picture 1: Three necklaces that are disks with bacteria shapes adhered to the surface, she despises the two on the left because they were the first she made and she had not yet perfected her technique, the one on the far right is her favorite and the one she didn't try and steal back from me. I love all three of them and she is so not getting them back!

Picture 2: A microscope charm necklace, I invested in a bunch of the charms and chains and she made them all into necklaces and we are hoping to sell them (turns out I am a very crappy salesperson). I am encouraging her to tap into the nerd jewelry niche, I think it is possible for her to make a living off such jewelry (bonus is I get a sibling discount!).

Baby Sibling also rocks photoshop with her fancy mouse drawing pad thingy and comes up with things like this to amuse me and give me blog fodder (in reality she is actually doing it so she can laugh at what a nerd I am):

Explanation: There is a staining method that differentiates between two kinds of bacteria called Gram staining (after Dr. Gram who invented it). Most bacteria are either Gram Negative (pink), or Gram Positive (purple). Lactobacilli are Gram + rods. She actually came up with this gem mostly by herself, asked me which color was positive and what kinds of bacteria were, I had no idea what she was up to.

And that dear readers is why it rocks to have an artist baby sibling.

Love you Baby Sibling!

~Update 1/5/2009~
Note to all the people viewing this: I am very curious how you found this post and for those of you who found me that way what you are searching for on google images that leads you here. If you do not mind letting me know in the comments I would appreciate it, you can comment anonymously or use the name/url option (url is optional on that) if you want your name attached but do not have a google/blogger account. Thank you for your interest in my blog and baby sister, if you are more interested in her than me (I am the scientist, she is the artist) you can check out her blog.

13 comments:

nonna said...

aawwwhh how could nobody comment on this post? your sis is so talented! i love the microscope charm.

you know, i have a silver charm bracelet and would love to have a steel dart charm.. hint.. hint. ok, that really wasn't a hint, but a blatent begging (no, i have no shame) oh! or even better some type of charm i can put pics of the 2 g-kids in. that would be really cool too. i might even be tempted to pay for said charms (as long as i can get a minion discount which would, of course, make it verrrrry cheap so i could actually afford it)

oh, and i found this page by following your link here. wha? oh, well you asked how. you didn't specify you didn't want to know if i used YOU instead of google. hehe i'm cracking me up today!

The Microblogologist said...

Nonna: This is a pretty early post of mine, it is very common for a blogger to not get many comments in the beginning. Seriously when I was going through McMommy's archives there were like no comments and now look how popular she is! The microscope charms were actually doll house microscopes that she turned into charms, we are attempting to sell them since I bough supplies for her to make a bunch of them. Hmmm, maybe if and when I have a contest again that could be a prize.

The photoframe charm exists as I recall, though not sure if they have the fancy real silver kind or if they are all just cheap plastic or some kind of cheap metal. I remember buying a bunch of frame charms so Sibling could make christmas presents or something but as I recall they were never actually made. I think they were cheap at Hobby Lobby but can't remember for sure how much they were. As for the dart charm you would have to talk to her, currently she has the stuff to turn something into a charm but not to make a metal charm from scratch. I am sure something can be arranged if any of the above is possible.

Haha, you seriously crack me up, found it through my link indeed! You are spending way too much time on LiteralDan's blog ;)~

Anonymous said...

google search "lactobacillus gram stain"

The Microblogologist said...

Thanks for the comment Ashley. I hope you found useful information either here or elsewhere =).

The Microblogologist said...

Dearest Anonymous you were not off topic, stroking the blogger's ego is always on topic in the blogosphere! Thanks for the comment and kind words!

Anonymous said...

I will not acquiesce in on it. I over precise post. Specially the designation attracted me to study the whole story.

Anonymous said...

Nice post and this post helped me alot in my college assignement. Say thank you you on your information.

Jesi said...

I found this by google searching images of gram stain drawings (I was actually looking for something I could color and label to help me remember the peptidoglycan layer and layers of the outer membrane of Gram negative bacteria.) This is exactly the kind of geeky stuff I like.

Anonymous said...

I searched lactobacillus gram postive rods in images and found this....hahahaha...loved it! Would like to add the picture to my report. We had unknowns in micro and mine is L. Fermentum.

Anonymous said...

I was looking for a fun picture to put at the end of my student's final. Personally, I liked it. We'll see whether your pic will cheer them up during the exam :).

dreamy said...

I was Googling for 'gram staining' procedure photo when I click on a 'grampositivefinal.png' link.

Lim Julie said...

i was googling gram positive gram negative in the pictures tab

im a chemist with an artistic streak so i enjoyed your post much :D

i concur that nerd jewellery is worth checking into!

Lim Julie said...

i was googling gram positive and gram negative in the pictures tab and came upon the comic

i hv a chemistry degree but im naturally inclined towards the arts so i enjoyed your post :)

i concur that nerd jewellery is worth looking into! :D