The Dishwasher

A professor once told my class that if you have a question you should ask it and not feel stupid because most likely if it is not clear to you there will be more people who don't get it too but are too scared to ask and will be grateful you had the courage to. I took this lesson to heart and have found that when I have asked profs to clarify something there are a lot of murmurer and pens/pencils moving! So I have decided to apply this lesson to my blog, Nonna asked about the Dishwasher, who starred in my documentary about the pink goo. She wanted to know if he minded being called "The Dishwasher" and why I call him that (note: I call him by his real name most of the time).

To answer the first part of that question watch the documentary, notice that when I called him "The Dishwasher" he didn't miss a beat, the poor guy has been working in the same lab with me for way too long and so that totally didn't phase him nor upset him. The skip in the vid was my deciding to explain to him why I called him that (I totally forgot in my excitement to get the interview recorded to inform him of my privacy policy and what I named him for the blog) and asking if he minded or if he'd prefer another nickname or his real name. He laughed and said he liked "The Dishwasher" and so that he shall remain.

And as to the why, besides me being insane there are actually two reasons I call him "The Dishwasher". The first is because of the lab jerk (aka Prof Wannabe). The lab jerk is one of those go get 'em types in many regards, which can be good. His is a first class butt kisser when it comes to the higher powers (professors or people he can exploit), but us lowly fellow lab workers do not deserve his precious time that he doesn't have enough of. Idiot is a grad student in I have no idea how many clubs and wonder if he knows, and wonders why he has no time! I am in one club, which I might quit since he recently joined and seems to be taking it over, besides I don't have enough time for it really since I have to focus on my research, writing and prelims (currently 100% focus is on research). When he first started as a grad student it was after he had done a summer internship in the lab, during the summer he managed to piss everyone off including me, and I was only in for a few days before my wrist forced me to take the summer off.

Everyone but I was an undergrad in the lab and when I came back he was trying to be friends with me in hopes of having one person in the lab not loathing him. The arrogant SOB was telling me how he felt the lab dynamics should be, basically the undergrads should be our slaves and do all of our prep work and wash our dishes and basically do our job while we just do the thinking part. I tried to nicely explain that our lab did not work like that, the undergrads in our lab had experience and were among the top of their class and hand picked by the lab's prof to do actual research. These were not minimum wage freshmen, they were slightly above minimum wage upper classmen! They were hired for specific projects and undergrads here can only put in 20 hours a week working for the university while classes are in session as per university policy, that is not much time and really they did not have time to do their work and ours! His response was to say we should hire a slave then, I told him that was highly unlikely and that the prep and cleanup was our job and most grad students have to do that stuff too, least the ones I have worked with in all the labs I have worked in. His views have not changed, his attempts at trying to get me to change mine failed and we are currently mortal enemies. What has changed is the lab dynamic, the undergrads graduated and one got a real job while another decided that grad student life was for her (poor misguided soul!), suddenly we were a lab of grad students and there was but one undergrad, the lowly Dishwasher. Being the pain in the butt hilarious coworker that I am I would tease him about how he is the undergrad and I am the grad and so he should do all my work for me and wash my dishes and everything! He and I would go back and forth exaggerating the lab jerk's insane ideas a bit as a form of playing around and stress relief, working with someone like the lab jerk is highly stressful which is great for blogging since it triggers GI issues that make it hard to sleep so might as well write a blog post and feel guilty my brain is too mushy to do lit review to make my boss happy.

The other reason behind my naming him "The Dishwasher" is because as an undergrad he takes a ton of coursework, which requires a lot of time and does not leave as much time for him to do lab work. One thing that tends to suffer when one is busy and trying to get their job done is dishes. You HAVE to do prep work or you can't do the research, of course doing the research is the whole point, and in the end the only thing one can really slack on is doing the dishes afterwards. Sometimes this causes conflict, it is very annoying when you come in and all the dishes are dirty and my pet peeve is when all the sinks are full of them, the lab has 3 sinks with two basins each there is no excuse to fill them all! Also sometimes one of us who is feeling benevolent or who has given up on the person ever doing them, will just wash the dishes for that person, this makes Dishwasher feel very guilty. His way of trying to avoid conflict and guilt was to write a note on the board saying to leave the dishes for him to do. Being the smart ass comical coworker that I am I would usually either write under it that my test tubes are waiting for him on my bench or I'd tell him it in person if I saw him. Sometimes I would refer to him as the lab's dishwasher and such, yep I'm a hoot to work with!

And that my adoring public is why I call him "The Dishwasher", the combination of inside jokes and slight insult aimed at the lab jerk (who I'm naming my ulcer after if I have an ulcer, find out in a few months probably). The Dishwasher is a great person to work with, he is laid back and puts up with my silliness. I would never let him wash my dishes as that is my job, the only one I let do so is V and that is because we share when we are both working and rotate who cleans the dishes and does the prep work, easier than splitting everything up. And I told him I was going to make him famous so look forward to hearing of him in the future, when I get around to it, lol.

A Five Year Old's Perspective on Virology

When Niecey came to visit me back in August she of course spent time in every room in my apartment, this of course included the home office/plant room (and thankfully the bathroom, she was a late potty user and almost didn't get to come because I said she had to be potty using in accordance to the state law to be allowed to visit). In said home office/plant room there is a wall that has dark wood paneling. This nasty paneling is actually featured through much of the apartment. I have seen worse but either way I am not a fan of it. To make it more livable for me I decided to cover/decorate it with my GIANTmicrobes collection and some family pictures. Now I actually like the wall, and so did Niecey. There was one microbe in particular that caught her eye, it is the plush for E. coli.


Every year there is this huge student-run/organized (somewhat mostly, the university seems to have a huge hand in it) campus-wide celebration that lasts a week but the main bash is on the weekend. This occurs in April, usually the weather is starting to get better and the frozen tundra begins to thaw so the fact that the buses are totally rerouted that weekend isn't quite as upsetting to me (I am usually stupid enough to try to work that weekend). Every year I try and make a point to visit the undergrad micro club's display and will often buy a shirt from them (they also sell giantmicrobes and sometimes other stuff). Last year they had made little replicas of bacteriophage (aka phage) out of a styrofoam ball, a wood peg and pipe cleaner and were giving them to whomever bought something from them. I was going to buy something anyway but really really wanted the phage. Phage are viruses that infect bacteria. Well I decided to put this little phage on the E. coli plush and thus my tangent now connects with the original logic train.Niecey can be a very curious child, as are most children her age, and so she wanted to know what that thing was doing on that microbe. I gave her a watered down version of phage:bacteria interactions and how viruses work. I am not 100% how well she understands virology at this point, but she does have some conception of it and this is her rather good interpretation of how it works:


This picture is one of my absolute favorites and I will keep it forever! I plan to eventually frame it, she was so happy that I put it on my fridge that I have left it there for now. I love how easy it is to make a child's face light up and their little chest swell up with pride! That is why I always try to pay attention when there are little kids around instead of ignoring them. A kind word from an adult can totally make their day and not much else makes my day better than making someone else's, adult or child but children are usually easier, lol.

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Picture 1: Picture Niecey took when she found my camera, this features some of the microbes wall and some of the plants.
Picture 2: Another Niecey pic, this one features the E. coli plush (football shaped with string coming down) and the phage (round thing on top of plush).
Picture 3: Niecey's depiction of a bent rod shaped bacterium being attacked by two phage, the one on the left appears to be injecting its genetic material into the cell while the one on the right appears to be in the attachment phase.

Introducing my new lab assistant

Today Niecey raided my closet and found some old balloons I had bought on clearance years ago (I am a bit of a pack rat/impulse buyer who forgets she bought something). I blew up a bunch for her and we played with them for hours, $1.00 well spent! Pa showed her how you can rub them on the couch and then stick them to the ceiling. I told her that it was making electricity and that is what held them up and showed her that she could also make it by rubbing her hands on the balloon and then it would stick to her hand. She was quite impressed!

Niecey has been wanting to see where I work and see my microbes from even before she got here. Everyday she has asked me when we will go to the lab to see my bacteria and I told her they were sleeping (they were incubating, the plates were boarder line not ready when I took them out). So after informing her of the "Don't touch anything unless I hand it to you" rule several times I brought her to work with me. I sanitized everything and let her count the plates that I didn't need. Counting plates is a tedious job that is made easier by a "colony counter", which is just a hand held device that you push the button and it clicks to the next number, this of course was a great toy for my little click monkey. Dad coined the phrase "click monkey" to describe someone who keeps pushing buttons when they don't need to, like clicking an icon or link 5 times because it is not loading fast enough (Niecey and my mom are both chronic click monkeys).

Counting plates is what I do to get the data for my experiments, basically I want to know how many bacteria I have in my sample and so I dilute it out until there are between 20-200 bacteria per milliliter and spread it across petri dishes containing agar where each cell (theoretically) will land and then grow into a visible spot (colony), which I count and then multiply by how many times I diluted it, typically my bacteria grow to about a billion or two cells per ml. Plates that have less than 20 colonies are considered statistically insignificant, but make for great counting practice for a kid about to enter kindergarten. I was also testing one of my cultures for contamination and so was making a slide to view under the microscope. So Niecey, and Dad, got to see bacteria in two different ways (I could have shown them bacteria grown in broth tubes but that is somewhat boring), on plates you are seeing a colony that has millions or more cells together forming a spot and with the scope you see what the cells look like by themselves.

All in all a good day with Niecey and Daddy. Perhaps I have inoculated Niecey's mind with the idea that science is fun and cool and it will grow into a love of the subject. And you have to admit, she looks adorable in a lab coat!


Safety First!