2/28/09: About 6 weeks or so ago I introduced you to a little boy, he is the nephew of one of the bloggers I read, VegasDad. For those who don't have time or don't feel like clicking, Christopher is the adorable 2 year old with a bum ticker pictured above (Sorry VegasDad, I stole your pics for this post, hope you don't mind!). In January he had to have an extremely risky open heart surgery to try and correct his defective heart. His parents were given the choice, try to save him with a series of highly risky operations or watch him slowly die, no parent should ever have to make such a decision! Obviously since I mentioned his surgery in January his parents decided to risk the surgical option, it went rather well though I guess they found his heart is worse than they thought in some ways so they are doing the second surgery sooner rather than later, as short of a break between as possible from the sounds of it. This week he faces some tests that will determine what surgery/procedure he will get at the end of the week and so it will be a tough one for him and his family. Please keep this little guy and his family in your hearts and prayers this week.
Christopher's uncles have been raising money to help out their sister and family with some of the costs that insurance does not cover, not only medical costs but also things like time off work and driving from their home to Duke. They set up a free tech help service in which people can ask a tech question and get an answer for free, and he is a professional tech nerd, and ask that if you benefited or just feel like helping out and don't need advice that you donate to the fund. In the two months since they set up the fund people have donated over $3000, you guys are awesome!
Christopher after his first surgery, pic stolen from here.
And here is where I ask those of you who are parents or have experience with 2 year olds or are just hit with inspiration for help. They need to keep this poor kid on bed rest after these surgeries, which has been difficult as I am sure any of you who has been within 500 feet of a 2 year old can imagine. Does anyone have any ideas that would be free/cheap and easy to do to help keep Christopher from getting bored but keeping him still/in bed? Please leave your ideas/suggestions in the comments and I'll harass ask VegasDad to pass them along, thanks in advance!
3/4/09:Amazing news, his heart valve has improved to the point where he does not need the surgery right now! The docs were beyond stunned because this NEVER happens, how awesome is that?! Thank you everyone for praying for this little guy. He is not completely better by any stretch, he has multiple heart defects, but for now he can go home and be a 2 year old =).
Also about the request for ways to keep him occupied while on bed rest: Thank you so much for the lovely comments first of all, love them! I may not have been clear enough, though awesomely the subject is somewhat unnecessary at the moment given he is not having surgery right now (not sure when but from what it sounds like down the road at some point he will have more). After his surgery he of course is going to naturally have a period where he is hurting too bad to try to get up and such, the problem they were having, and VegasDad specifically mentioned to me, is that he starts to feel better BEFORE he is supposed to be off bed rest. I think part of it is because he has been sickly his whole life and so is used to pushing through more than someone who hasn't. Also the heart surgery improved his circulation significantly, so he probably suddenly has more energy than normal and feels better perhaps than before but that does not negate the fact that he had just had open heart surgery and NEEDED to stay still. Niecey was an extremely energetic and active 2 year old and so I can't imagine trying to keep a kid that age in bed and not bored, which is why I was appealing to you all for tips, thanks =).
You know that I love you all and enjoy working with you for the most part, yeah sometimes I get jealous of the others with their bugs* that do not have to be incubated without oxygen like you but all in all you are great bugs. The fact that first B. breve, my shining star bug, stopped growing after the initial revival step. That was bad enough but then when I got up early so I could inoculate for the last run of my last rep (not counting redoing some runs that did not turn out after I am done with rep 3), I was so excited! Then I pulled you out of the incubator and only B. bifidum grew well, B. breve grew a tiny bit, and B. infantis and B. longum, nothing!
It makes absolutely no sense that you did not grow, you grew in the first step and that was coming out of the -75°C freezer. It would make some sense if you did not revive at that point but the second pass, why!?! I am trying again but this puts me way off my schedule! Thankfully the new schedule works so that I will still be able to see Doc on Monday, though of course I am quite nervous about this appointment since it is basically a one way ticket to referral land and I do NOT want to go there! You all are so not helping, you know stress is a trigger for GI issues right? I will admit, I stress you out with my simulated GI tract, I'm sorry but it is for your own good. Have you all gone bad and made some sort of deal with Helicobacter pylori??? Giving me an ulcer will make this take longer but it is not going to stop me so you might as well be good little bugs and grow like you are supposed to!
Yours, Karen
~~~~~Copy LiteralDan Section~~~~~ *Bugs means bacteria or other microorganisms, it is a somewhat common nickname in my field and I use it a lot.
So I have mentioned my good friend Ian before a time or two, and there will be more mentions of him if I ever get around to editing and posting another spotlight on nutrition video I took awhile ago (there are several of those along with other vids rotting away on my hard drive). He is a music major and I have to admit that at first I was kinda skeptical about the whole music major thing since the arts tend to be glutted. Then I heard him sing, holy crap that boy is crazy talented! He doesn't just sing either, he writes music too. I LOVE this composition he wrote for class, it has its own tab on my firefox browser so I can play it whenever I want, and usually listen to it on a daily basis because it puts out happy vibes that make me smile:
Now for my credentials, I am a bored grad student who sometimes has a spark of creativity and can't sing. Ask Uncle Richard if you don't believe me, he is my concert buddy and so has actually heard the train wreck that is my singing. Or better yet ask Niecey, she tells me to stop when I sing along with the radio when taking her out and about (I admit I ham it up just to harass her). Most of my musical talent lies in my ability to play the radio. I am also able to play CDs and get the songs from them onto my computer and from there to my mp3 thingy (thanks to Pasha, knower of all things tech and saver of this non-techie's butt in tech situations over my head).
Today I have to work. Last night I was up literally all night long feeling miserable (GI issues, I am so not eating dinner tonight and having a third night in a row like this, if you read this Doc* I have a few tricks to try before calling you to discuss my terms of GI referral surrender, I am not going down without a fight! And one meal won't kill me, I have chocolate and ensure!), I decided to go in and inoculate for tomorrow's run earlier than normal and then come home and sleep a bit and then go back and finish my work. I was eating whatever that meal is that you eat when you go to bed for a few hours in the afternoon and wake up and eat cereal because you are from the north and the thought of eating anything heavier when you wake up makes you feel ill (not GI and GI issue related), and then heard the rain and sleet start to get really bad. I'd already seen the radar earlier and knew that this band was going to be nasty and last forever and go from freezing rain into snow. Can't remember if they were saying 1-2 inches of snow in the afternoon and another 1-2 tonight or if it was 1-2 total, either way it sucks. The only good thing about the snow part is that sometimes it combines with the ice in such a way to provide traction (until the university brushes it off the sidewalks leaving the extremely slick ice behind, you think they'd learn in 150 years!). So I see the horridness that is the weather in this region this time of year as I know since I have lived in the midwest all my life but still I am pissed, I HATE winter!
Then something triggers in my disoriented brain and I decide to rewrite "Deck the Halls" into a song describing the tip of the iceberg of my feelings about the weather, I don't think it is possible to adequately describe how loathsome and vile I find winter. I put it into a skype chat that is populated be my sister's friends that I have been adopted into and by and now consider the majority to be my friends as well. Ian saw this and ran with it, he changed it up a touch where I lacked in rhyming ability and I nearly fell off my chair at the ending I was laughing so hard. I've been harassing him to record my songs before, this one had the good fortune of him seeing it when he actually had everything set up and was recording another song. OK totally hilarious, literally as I typed that line he linked the song I was referring to which he had put on the uploading back burner to get our Deck the Halls collaboration up, it is amazing so check it out, especially if the song this post is about offends you, it will totally win you back over it is that good! Disclaimer:The F-word is featured VERY heavily in this song, if you are offended by this do not listen (nor click the F-word link, which is one of my favorites), if you have children present or are at work you may want to consider waiting. Or you can use Auntie Cheryl's rule and tell them, "Never repeat the horrible things Auntie Cheryl (or Auntie Kee and Ian in this case) says!" so you can listen to what I am quite proud of (non-profane lyrics below):
Here are the lyrics minus the swearing: Deck the trees with freezing rain. 'Tis the season to be lame. Don we now our not gay like Ian's winter apparel**. Troll the sidewalks for not slick patches. See the blazing snow come after. Strike the sidewalk and break our [butts]***. Follow me in dreary weather. While I say it's bad as ever. Fast away the driveability passes. [Heck] this sucks ye lads and lasses.****
And now, those of you who have not been driven away by my vulgarity (all of which is mine, Ian did not add any), I have to get ready to brave this storm so I can try to get to bed early so I can somehow get my butt to work at 10am (instead of 11am, ew!). Too bad the secret motivation blog members would probably kill me if I joined them since I am struggling to keep on and at times gain weight, seriously how could they not want to kill me when one of my goals would be "maintain/gain weight without resorting to eating own weight in chocolate" (and two of them have my address!). At risk of hate comments/mail I envy those who want to lose weight, I've actually been there and looking back it was so much better, much less painful.
~~~~~Copy LiteralDan Section*****~~~~~ *My doctor knows about my blog and has the URL but most likely does not have time to actually read it, seriously he has to read doctor stuff to stay ahead of my broken self as well as take care of his other, probably much less ornery, patients many of which are athletes and he has to go to their stuff and make sure natural selection doesn't select against the more valuable ones (hasn't lost one yet, go Doc!). My little disclaimers are there in part because it amuses me to pretend he reads and in case he does because he does care and I don't want to worry him too much and in this one give him a heads up that most likely I will be seeing him in the next couple weeks. Him being awesome earned him that at great expense to myself since he is way sharper and quicker witted than I, even with me prepped and him not for what I am going to throw at him, so really I am giving him even more of an advantage. Though I do have a good one up my sleeve... **The use of the word gay is not meant to be offensive in any way except to Uggs, Ian wears the same ones as his mommy (she totally is copying him). Ian and I both love gay people and I love making fun of his Uggs. ***The real lyrics use the more vulgar word for the posterior... ****Yeah, little stronger than heck and I suppose I'm borderline on sucks, when I was a kid it was considered a swear but I think that society has excepted that as being a bit rude but not an actual profanity. *****I seem to have started something here, Nonna and Sibling have both started copying me copying LiteralDan. I get minion points for having underminions right Dan? Either way it totally cracks me up!
Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses; strengths to help you get through life and weaknesses to keep you humble. One of my weaknesses is the fact that I am navigationally challenged. Once I have been a place enough times I am pretty good at getting around but until I am used to it I can get turned around and lost quite easily. I was discussing this with WeaselMomma on one of her recent posts, I was telling her that if I ever went to Philly (her home town) that I would probably end up calling her hopelessly lost and she'd have to figure out where I was and get me unlost, or that I would have to kidnap her and use her as a prophylactic but in this case as a guide so I didn't get lost and not in terms of antibiotics* nor birth control.** I then revealed to her that I was navigationally challenged to the point of getting lost in my hometown and she said she wanted to hear this one so I am indulging her and the rest of you with one of my slightly less finer moments, enjoy.
It was the fall of 2001, I had graduated high school, gotten my driver's license, became a deli clerk, and got my first car, a 1988 Mercury Topaz that was my grandma's but she had stopped driving and it was just sitting in her driveway collecting wasp nests, a fact that scared the shit out of my mother (Hi Mom, I saw you save my blog address so you don't have to hide if you are reading this, I was getting ready to link you anyway). I started college that August at Benedictine University, a small private university in Lisle, IL. It was an interesting transition for me, not only was I new to the whole college thing but I had my K-12 in public school (a good system) and it doesn't take much guesswork to figure out that Benedictine is a catholic school given the being named after a saint thing.
At Benedictine Christian values are something they strive to instill in their students no matter what religion they are, this was rather apparent in their humanities classes, especially the first one that all students are required to take. In that course I was given an assignment, I was to do 10 hours of community service and write a report about the experience. This assignment proved very difficult for me, not only did I now have a full time course load but I was also a deli clerk and up until that summer I had been in a coed youth program through the Boy Scouts of America called Venturing Crew. My crew dissolved before I started college. While in crew I did many hours of community service, without crew I had no outlet and had to find my own place to volunteer, and most I thought of and contacted didn't have anything or I needed to have background checks or other nonsense that prevented me from doing it. Finally I found a nursing home that was happy to have some free labor, and it happen to be in my hometown, score!
A little bit about my hometown. It is a rather small suburb of Chicago. According to the sign last time I saw it there are 24,600 people in my town, obviously this is a somewhat rough estimate but close enough. Almost no one has heard of this little town, it isn't uncommon for people from neighboring burbs to have not heard of it. I was about a year and a half old when my family moved to this town and lived there until I finished my undergraduate work and moved here for grad school. So one would assume that I know this town quite well right? Well you assumers are wrong, I know parts of this town very well, the nursing home in question was NOT in my area, which was still very small since I had only recently started driving. My mom told me she knows where this place is, it is past 63rd street she tells me. And so confident in my abilities I got in my trusty Mercury and hit the road.
I get on the street the place is on and am driving along and get to 63rd street and start looking for a nursing home, I didn't see one. I kept going a ways until I decided I must have missed it and so turn off the main road onto a side street so I can turn around legally (too much traffic to do one of the U-turn using all 4 lanes my daddy taught me and I have made my own). Unfortunately for me this stupid side street had some odd twists (I was going around the block instead of finding a driveway to use figuring it would be easier, hah!) and instead of ending back on the main road I was on I got on another road that I thought was the main road but wasn't. At this time I had this really bad instinct to keep driving, I used to always do that when lost, just keep driving in hopes I would eventually get somewhere I recognized. In my defense I had not diagnosed myself as navigationally challenged yet and used to be dumb enough to think this method might work.
I drove until the road I was on either ended or forked and kept going and going. Eventually I saw a Jewel, which is a grocery store chain, and decided enough was enough and stopped to find out where the heck I was and call for help. I walk into the Jewel and find an associate and asked them what town I was in, the answer was Countryside, which is several towns over and around 6 miles from my hometown, though I took the insanely "scenic" route. I found out the street names and got on my cell phone (which only had 75min/month so I never used it) and called Grandpa and told him where I was and asked how to get home. He gave me specific enough instructions and so I went on my merry way.
The funny/ironic part was as I got back on the street I was on and drove further I drove into LaGrange, the town I was born in, where my clinic/hospital was and oh yeah, where I went to church for quite a few years. I was not far along at all when I started recognizing the landmarks, the road I was on was the road we took to get to church, except we turned before Countryside since it was in LaGrange, once I was in LaGrange I knew exactly where I was and how to get back. So my strategy funnily enough would have worked had I stuck with it about a block or two more, which is probably why I later used it when trying to navigate elsewhere with generally bad results. Instead of going home I decided that since I had been driving for like an hour or so I should at least try to make it to the nursing home, which Grandpa told me was BEFORE 63rd street. I found it and worked for a few hours, the next day I went back for a few more and then was too busy to get the full 10 so wrote it up as was and turned it in for a not so good grade.
And that dear readers is how I got lost in my hometown. Since then I have actually improved in my abilities to turn around and am a little better at navigating. It helps that I generally refuse to go anywhere without mapquest directions. Oh and my getting a little mixed up on my way to the Weasel's house was totally the weather's fault. I went during a bit of a snow storm that consisted of somewhat sticky blowing snow that coated the street signs and reduced visibility. That said if I ever do go to Philly I will likely get myself GPS chipped and steal WeaselMomma along the way!
~~~~~Copy LiteralDan Section~~~~~ *Use of antibiotics in a patient without a bacterial infection that has a risk of contracting one is the application of the word prophylactic that I encounter and use the most. **Referring to various birth control methods as prophylactics was the application I actually forgot about when commenting on WeaselMomma's blog, proving once again that I am a nerd and my blog title is quite appropriate in more than just the figurative sense.
First off, merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate Christmas, to those of you that do not disregard the merriment if you so choose, you can definitely be merry if you want, whatever works for you and happy Hanukkah to my Jewish reader(s) and to Doc (if you read this Doc my present to you is I gained about 2 pounds in mostly healthy ways). That said Christmas is kicking my ass. Last Christmas I spent inside my car, outside my apartment, in the freezing cold weather we in the midwest all know and love *cough despise cough* before going to work for a few hours and then having company over in the form of a police officer and three firefighters. This Christmas so far does not seem like it is going to turn out much better. What you want me to go into excruciating detail? OK, for you my dear readers I will.
Round One: Christmas 2007 v Microblogologist
Last Christmas I was supposed to go see my family only they were sick. I was dating a guy who lived at home with his parents and his dad (who is awesome) has cancer and is immunocompromised. My goal in life at the time was to get to see boyfriend and not kill his father (who I adore). I also did not like the sounds of the diseased masses that was my family at the time, seriously ew. The year before I went to their place for thanksgiving and they decided to give me more than thanks, they gave me influenza, thanks family! After that I tended to avoid going home if they had some form of pestilence but especially with the immunocompromised in my life (besides bf's dad there was also my diabetic friend and her former premie son, aka my godson Buggy).
So I decided to wait it out and go home for new years instead. I was not thrilled with this, missed everyone and had worked my butt off to get my experiment done in time so I could have gone and all but I was trying to make the best of it. I had found a duck at the store for a good price and decided to make it for my meal, might as well celebrate with a nice meal. I baked the duck and I think made mashed potatoes and beans to go with it, some of my favorites. Right when my dinner was done the carbon monoxide detector decided that to inform me that I was going to die.
I opened the kitchen window (it was probably in the 20°F range, thanks Pasha for teaching me that alt 248 = °), turned on the stove vent thing, and muted the CO detector and sat down to eat. Unfortunately the stupid detector only stays muted for a short time before telling you that you are going to die some more in its own special ear splitting way. I think death may in fact be preferable to the horrid pain the alarm inflicts on my poor ears! I kept muting it for a bit but eventually got frustrated and moved me and my meal out into my car so I could at least eat it instead of having to get up every 30 seconds to hit the alarm. I called my BFF Pasha from the car because I knew it would make his Christmas to hear I was eating Christmas dinner in Oldsie, it did, Merry Christmas you bastard! (I swear we really are friends!)
I finished eating and the damn alarm was still going off so I decided to let the apartment air out some more and go get some work done, not like I had anything better to do. I went back in to get some stuff and open more windows and then abandoned ship. I went to work and enjoyed having the lab to myself and made up a bunch of dilution blanks, which I use to see how many bacteria are in a sample. I got back home around 1am and the damn alarm was STILL GOING OFF! The neighbor was outside smoking and told me that it was ok since he could sleep through it, I was soooo glad. What really ticked me off was the fact that the neighbors knew the alarm was going off but none of them checked on me, this is not the first time alarms have gone off in the building and they have ignored them. I check when I hear one, if it were in their apartment I would knock and see if they were ok if it went off for more than a few minutes, maybe it is a cultural thing... So I decide it is time to call the after hours number listed and get the ISUPD and they dispatched a cop and called the fire dept. They did not find any CO in my apartment and pulled the battery from the alarm. My guess is that there may have been CO produced by my oven that triggered it and then it got stuck on, could have been defective just as easily, wouldn't be the first time for either scenario in this neighborhood. Definitely a Christmas FAIL.
Christmas 1, Microblogologist 0
Round 2: Christmas 2008 v Microblogologist
As my regular readers know I contracted a plague (respiratory virus not bubonic) at the end of October when a professor decided to visit my lab and share the viral love. I quarantined myself for over 3 weeks and almost didn't go visit my family for thanksgiving but Doc checked me out and told me that I had a secondary infection and was no longer contagious and to get my butt out of here and go see my family. He didn't send me off without drugs of course, he is my drug lord after all. He sent me over to the drug dealers and they hooked me up with an antibiotic (highly debated) and these cool little cough suppressant pills. He tried to put me on two antibiotics but I protested and got it down to one, having a wacky GI tract to begin with I didn't want to beat the crap out of it with antibiotics. My Bubbie (grandma) basically called me an idiot for not listening to him and taking both, the woman who pretty much tells her friends I am a genius and going to cure cancer or something (highly unlikely), Mom also thinks I should have taken both. I currently think that I should have had both but perhaps staggered them, my GIT has been acting up a bit since I had the first round so who knows how bad it could be if I had two at the same time unbalancing the system. Remember, I do approve of antibiotic usage when it is needed.
So I took my meds and went for thanksgiving and had a blast. The antibiotics seemed to help but they did not knock it out completely, I am still sick. Thankfully I became a functional not contagious sick person so I was able to get back to work and worked my butt off since the day I got back so I could be done with the current experiment before Christmas. I did in fact finish it, not counting the ones I have to redo and we were supposed to leave the 23rd for Chicago (we as in Baby Sibling aka my babysitter aka The Unmarried Housewife), but I lost track of time and we weren't ready to go at a reasonable hour and I was starting to feel my sinuses building up pressure. The plan was to leave early today but I was feeling progressively sicker and my sinuses want me dead so that didn't happen. I am hoping that tomorrow I will feel better and be able to make the trip but either way I believe this round goes to Christmas.
As I have whined about for about two weeks now I am still sickly, sadly this is totally cramping Flat WeaselMomma's and my style. Thankfully she is a very sweet guest and has been helping to nurse me back to health, thanks FWM, your home made walmart brand condensed chicken noodle soup rocks!
Since my last Microbiology FAIL post was such a hit and I found this picture I had taken a few weeks ago up in the pathogens lab I have decided to post it as another nerdy imitation FAIL blog post (seriously check out the original, they are hilarious):
The purse is owned by a woman who hypothetically should know better than to have a purse, with candy in it, in the path lab, not only sitting right next to where the biohazardous trash is kept before making its pilgrimage to be sterilized but going in the purse to get candy to eat while in the pathogen lab! My lab bench is right by this spot and I was leaving my bench to go get something across the lab and happened to catch her in the act and tell her one should not eat in the path lab... She gave me a look that said, "Huh, when was this a rule?" and mumbled something incoherant, I mentioned it to the prof in case she gets sick so he has a heads up and can defend himself if need be. Seriously the only food that is supposed to enter the lab is for testing and once it enters it is no longer considered safe for human consumption. Oh and I totally did not see her wash her hands before trying for the snack... I was horrified by the entire thing to say the least and declare it an Epic FAIL!
Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a lab far far away there worked a microbiologist. For several years this microbiologist did her job, learned how to work with her cultures and developed methods that would allow her to test the objectives of her projects. She had her share of problems along the way, perhaps more than her share some might argue, but that was in the past and she was ready to put it all behind her as much as possible and move forward. About this time she was asked to help get another grad student trained in the art of working with her cultures. This concept made the microbiologist a bit nervous, the last time she had been in charge of training someone had been in her days of being a deli slave and it had not always gone well. As a deli slave whenever they hired someone it tended to be someone older that her and they did not always take kindly to a "stupid kid" trying to teach them how to do something. She quickly found out that V was not like that, working with V was great!
For awhile everything was happy and productive in the lab far far away, the only problems the microbiologist and V had were minor and they got through each of them without any trouble. They worked so well together, the microbiologist did not feel as isolated being the only one not working with pathogens and under a different professor in the lab anymore. And then one day the microbiologist looked at her plates and noticed that there were different looking colonies on her plates and when she looked at them under the microscope they were not the same, she had contamination! She decided that perhaps she had been using the same stock tube to get her cultures from too long and switched. That seemed to fix the problem at first until V showed the microbiologist her new plates, they were beyond contaminated, the Bifidobacteria had been totally overrun and there was nothing but contamination visible. They went back and forth a few times, sometimes V's plates were contaminated and the microbiologist's were fine, sometimes the reverse has been true, sometimes they have both had contamination...
About a month of testing and the source did not reveal itself and the microbiologist and her boss decided they should try moving forward again. And so they did, V made a new batch of yogurt and the microbiologist did her final preliminary run before getting going on her project at long last. The microbiologist waited anxiously for V's plates to come out of the incubator so she could look at them to see if she spotted any problems, and they looked fine. Then she took her own out, and they were quite obviously contaminated, she was crushed! The joy of getting back on track was derailed much like a toy train in the presence of a toddler. Being one that does not like to show such emotions in front of others the microbiologist took a few deep breaths and did what she does in such situations, she tried to make it funny, laughing is way better than crying! And thus the Contamination Fairy was conceived.
The Contamination Fairy is an evil fairy that likes to mess with the poor microbiologist's head. It randomly attacks the microbiologist and V's cultures leaving no trace of how it came in so the microbiologist is helpless to stop it from getting in that way again. It has been said that in order to beat your enemy you have to know your enemy, and this is where you come in dear readers. I am asking you and or your kid(s) to draw me pictures of what you/your kid(s) think the contamination fairy looks like. To give some incentive I am offering the winner their pick of one of the GIANTmicrobes. Here are the rules:
Each person can submit one picture, it can be anything from being drawn on paper using crayons/pencils/marker, it can be drawn with a computer program like adobe or pc paint, it can be a picture of a play doh/clay sculpture, as long as it is in good taste it can be entered. If you have several kids who can be conned into playing then each can make their own and be entered. To make it easier please make one comment per individual on this post, I will publish your comment after I receive the picture so you will know that I got it.
Electronic submissions are best, you can upload them on a hosting site and drop me a link in the comments, use this contest as blog fodder and link me to your post about it, or e-mail them tomicroblogologist@yahoo.com. I will allow certain people to mail me entries (no anonymous requests, I have to have some sort of proof that you are not a serial killer ;)), e-mail me and we'll discuss it.
Since I am allowing the idea of snail mail I will arbitrarily have the contest end on October 31, 2008 to give time for it to get here, I must receive all entries before 5pm central (3pm west coast, 6pm east) on the 31st. Winner will likely be announced that evening or on the 1st of November depending on how busy I am.
I have an international reader or two I think, not sure of the logistics of sending you the prize but I am more than willing to try to figure it out if you want to participate and have your art chosen.
This is just a silly contest and the prize is a silly stuffed toy that costs about $8. Don't take it too seriously and get mad if you don't win or something. Trying to sue me would be pointless, I owe the bank more than I am worth. (This should be unnecessary but you never know...)
Keep it clean, I will disqualify any entry I wouldn't be willing to show my niece (who is 5) and like the idea of decorating my lab bench with them.
Since I am only going to allow for one winner and have this open to everyone I plan to use a random number generator or something like that to pick the winner. I HATE picking favorites of pretty much anything and one cannot really compare a drawing done by an adult or older child with a younger one. This is why I ask for one comment per entry.
GIANTmicrobes inc is not aware of this contest, they are not liable for anything having to do with it (please don't sue me GIANTmicrobes, I love you guys!)
A few lines explaining why you/the kid made it the way they did would likely amuse me greatly (and would be a hilarious blog post that would totally write itself) but you don't need to, I would like to know the age of the kiddies so I can do the "That is sooooo cute!" thing.
Most importantly be creative and have fun!
**Edited to extend the contest deadline since I have not gotten a single entry =(. Niecey and Cheryl both made me pictures (I am not counting them in the "contest"), they are awesome and are currently hung with pride on my lab bench. Perhaps they will help spark someone's imagination: Oh and special thanks to Deb, she wrote a totally sweet post about me and pimped this contest, it made my day! She is one of my favorite bloggers, which makes her the equivalent of a celebrity in my world, not only does she write hilarious posts but you get a bonus mini-post if you read the labels she puts on her posts. I totally try to copy her with mine but definitely do not have her talent for it! Oh and her linky love caused a huge jump in my google analytics stats, I have named the spike in the graph Deb's Peak. Thank you so much Deb!
As an undergrad I majored in molecular biology, which sounds more impressive than it actually is. My plan was to go to the University of Illinois in Chicago and get a PhD in molecular genetics. I would commute to grad school and save so much money on housing, it was going to be great! Then I learned that molecular genetics was totally not as cool as it sounded and that I have no interest in being a geneticist. But before I came to that realization and ended up on the path I am currently on I took my undergraduate genetics course. My teacher was great, I adored him and the class. Like many of my science courses this one had a lab. Most lab courses had a new experiment every week and some of them would have some sort of task that was completed over the course of the semester. For genetics lab we had to do some weekly labs and then there was the "big" experiment which involved working with fruit flies, specifically Drosaphila melanogaster.
My lab group was given three vials of fruit flies. One vial had flies with a recessive wing mutation, they had kinda cool looking heart shaped wings. The second vial had a recessive bristle mutation, they didn't have as long of "back hair" essentially. The last vial had flies without either mutation, aka wild type flies. Our task for the semester was to figure out if the mutation was good for the flies or not*. When mated with the wild type the mutation was good then it would help the mutant flies get lucky and there would be more mutants, if it was bad then they would be undesirable freaks and not get any fly lovin'.
In order to complete our experiment we had to breed the flies together, which sounds easy, I mean anyone who has ever had a fruit fly infestation knows that they are fricking prolific buggers, mix them up and let nature take its course. What complicated our task was the fact that once mated female fruit flies store sperm. In order to prevent this we had to separate the females from the males** within 8-10 hours of them hatching out of their pupa (fly cocoon) and keep them apart until it was time for the big fly orgy. So we put all the adults from our stocks into a new tube and as the new flies hatched we would collect the virgin females. I felt bad to just kill off the males and so would save them too, my lab partners were not so considerate. When we had enough virgins of each type we would toss them in a new tube together and let the fly love making begin, as I recall we gave them a week to have their hot fly sex party. We then had to wait for their offspring to grow and hatch out and observe how many of each type there was, as I recall this took another week.
So it took about 2 weeks from start of the fly orgy until we got their adult offspring. It took forever and our lives revolved around the mating/life cycle of fricking tiny bugs! I remember coming in after closing at work, the science building closed at 11pm and so I would get there at 10:30 and wait until the security guard came to kick us out (I was not the only lifeless nerd) and make sure that there were no flies hatched out so that any hatched females would be virgins when my lab partners came in the morning (when they decided to participate...). When we were working as a team (or I was working as our team) there was round the clock virgin collection. But I digress, the point is it took about 2 weeks from hot fruit fly love to new adult fruit fly.
Luis Pasteur was a french scientist, he was responsible for some very important discoveries. He developed pasteurization, wonder where that name came from... And he was finally able to prove once and for all that a concept called spontaneous generation is total BS. This debate had been going on for many decades, some believed that there was some mysterious force or God that would cause living things to just pop into existence, and others believed that life came from other life. Proof for spontaneous generation was maggots appearing on meat that had been sitting out on a counter and bacteria growing in broth that had sat out. Covered meat not getting maggots proved nothing because the life force stuff was in the air and couldn't get to the meat (if you consider the flies life source stuff they are right...). The arguments why the experiments that disproved spontaneous generation were many, Luis designed an experiment that covered all the bases and finally killed it.
So to wrap up yet another of my rambling posts, we have the fact that fruit flies take about two weeks to make more fruit flies and the fact that fruit flies come from other fruit flies and not some invisible life force from God. So how in the world is it that the generation time for fruit flies in my apartment is like 10 minutes?!!? I throw fruit scraps into the trash and within days my apartment contains a swarm of these annoying bugs! I wish I could charge them rent, damn freeloaders. Oh and I know what you are thinking, "Why doesn't she just take out her garbage? Seriously she got into grad school?!" and the answer is that I am lazy and cheap and hate the cold and a chronic procrastinator. It is a "waste" to take out the trash before the bag is full, and I am tired and don't feel like making the long arduous journey to the dumpster***, especially when it is freezing**** outside. It is supposed to warm up a bit tomorrow/this afternoon, it is time to quit whining and take out the garbage, then it will be just me and the crickets*****.
Now what will be interesting is to see if my hits go up, I semi-figured out how to use google analytics and so far the two searches that led people to this blog were totally lame. If someone searches "hot fly sex" I will laugh hysterically, and be disturbed. Of course they might well be a student taking a genetics lab, we often found ourselves in the hallway discussing wild type virgins and the like as if it were completely normal to discuss the sex lives of insects, the freshmen gave us the funniest looks while the people who already took the course gave us looks of pity. Wonder how many people looking for free porn will click thinking Drosaphila melanogaster is a sexual position. Will bringing up the fact that one of the meds I take are little blue pills cause some misinterpretation as well... Stomach meds, ED meds, what's the difference ;).
-----The copy literaldan section, aka footnotes----- *The cool wings were sexy and resulted in more wing mutant flies than wild type flies. Apparently back hair is sexy, to fruit flies, the short back haired flies didn't score much. **Sadly I am able to tell the difference, without magnification, between male and female fruit flies. ***There are dumpsters right across the street on one side and dumpsters across the parking lot on the other side of my building. ****Below 70 is cold, below 60 is freezing, below 40 I am in my winter coat and long underwear, and I really don't want to think about it getting any colder than that, especially since last winter it got into the negative degrees Fahrenheit here. *****Bugs are a fact of life in this state and I don't feel like spraying insecticide all over the place. I hate flies though so will whack them, fruit flies go away when their food source is removed so I don't have to go nuts on them. I don't like asian beetles but they kill themselves for me by frying themselves in the lights.
Formerly I was a deli clerk, after four years of that I retired. Fresh out of college I got in my trusty oldsmobile and drove west to start my new life as a graduate student. This blog will chronicle my crazy antics among other things as I crawl towards the light at the end of the tunnel that is grad school.
