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Whew, I'm actually relieved it's monday. It seems like I work so much harder on the weekends?! I was getting VERY frustrated to say the least. I was trying to use an older instrument since there was indeed contamination in the newer one causing the loss in sensitivity I was observing. So with the older one, the signal was so noisy, I couldn't make any sense of the data and still couldn't detect a lot of the metabolites I knew were present. It's now been almost a month since I've gotten reliable data and I have well over 100 samples from various yeast strains I've constructed that are just sitting there. I don't know how the other people in the environmental department can use LC-MS facility; it seems I'm always having problems. The good news is that we're putting in the order for "my" new LC-MS this week. We are seriously running out of room in the lab and I keep coming up with more stuff to order--like a nitrogen generator--and the footprints for every piece are huge. My hope is that this will make my project move MUCH faster and my data more reliable and reproducible.

So I really didn't do anything else last weekend. I'm such a loser. Last night I needed to chill so I borrowed Little Miss Sunshine which was a great movie. Other than my neverending labwork (I'm still cloning new enzymes even though I know I won't be able to analyze them for a while, go figure?), I really don't have any complaints. I had my bodyfat tested the other day and it's staying about the same which is good. I've been changing things up between all my new gyms. I do my cardio religiously in the morning then go back and train in the afternoons when I need a break. I've been training in the mornings for as long as I can remember but this is nice too. I get things started in the lab earlier and still have good workouts as long as I don't wait until I'm too mentally drained.

Pretty soon it will be time for the Ironman, Sacramento, and Arnold pro shows. Once the season starts, it'll be time to start dieting for the nationals before I know it. Yikes--I better get out and live a little the next few months!

Worst day ever!

Yesterday was just one of those days where I should have stayed in bed! It started out ok--I got up, did cardio, and then headed over to the lab. I was debating how much I wanted to do and then decided to go ahead and do my western blot since I grew my cells the day before. This should have been quick, but everything that could go wrong, did go wrong! First I didn't get good lysis and had to re-lyse the cells and repeat the protein assay, then I had to steal transfer buffer from upstairs, then I ripped my gel in half, then I got coomassie stain all over the microwave, and the list goes on. But in the end, everything worked out ok and I finally made it to the gym for a nice leg workout. Oh, I also didn't get colonies from the cloning/mutagenesis I was doing and the signal on the LC-MS was still too low. Hopefully today will be better!

I wanted to share another picture from my shoot with Roberto. This is what I call the fembot outfit. I need to get all the raw images because these don't need much photoshop; they look pretty cool with just the plain white backdrop.

Chicken and waffles

Well, maybe not the waffles but I'm definitely cooking up some chicken tonight (I pass Roscoe's chicken and waffles on the way to my new gym so someday I will have to see what it's all about). I swear I have serious OCD when it comes to cooking my food. I simply HAD to get my food ready tonight even though I was in the lab until after 10pm and then had to go grocery shopping. And it's not like I don't have a ton of cooked chicken packets in the freezer already. Oh well, at least I got my website updated in the meantime. I got a new desktop for the lab this week which is sooo nice but also keeps me from doing non-work-related stuff that I get distracted by on my personal laptop.

I've been working pretty hard lately and am not entirely sure what I've accomplished but at least I feel productive! I got some new enzymes, and I had to make new expression vectors because of restriction site conflicts but am excited to test these shortly. I think I wrote last time that all my data was crap so I will have to rerun this weekend along with some new stuff so hopefully I will get better results. I am nervous! Not much other news--I always write about my labwork and chores on the weekend and this is no different. However, having a 4th person in my apartment has really kicked the disaster level in my apartment up a notch--the kitchen especially is going to take a while to clean. Gross!

Happy MLK day!

For most people, today was a holiday and I tried to work as little as possible. I'm actually extremely disappointed because I ran ~50 samples on the LC-MS over the weekend and my data looks like absolute crap. All the ion counts are ~100-fold lower than what I typically see for my standards/substrates so it's nearly impossible to detect my metabolites of interest. Again, I'm not sure what the problem is. There are so many different values to set that should be saved and reloaded with my method, but if something was changed accidentally, I can't find it! Ugh! I will have to get help with this tomorrow or at least sometime this week and reserve more time on the instrument. I'm actually really hoping to get my own LC-MS soon--we had to re-request a quote. It would just be easier if it was MY instrument and I could spend more time on it and also to have proper training and help with method development. Someday...

Other than that, I was doing more cloning so I have all my constructs ready to transform into yeast tomorrow--this was actually something that I had to go back and correct because I cloned multiple enzymes into this one vector (with a tag for western blotting) that had a 1 bp mutation and appeared to be interfering with detection. I swear I have the worst luck sometimes! And tomorrow, I have to be on schedule because I'm teaching a student from another lab to work with yeast. It's really a very simple protocol to learn but it helps to go through it with someone the first time.

Not much else going on. All I did over the weekend was see one of the worst movies ever--Alpha Dog. Don't ask why I went to see this; I didn't know what it was about. But I just could not relate to the characters at all. How they could, first of all, go through life in a complete haze and then be so out of touch that they think killing someone is the only way to get out of kidnapping charges. I guess I am fortunate to have been pretty sheltered because I do realize that for some people, that lifestyle is all they know and it's hard to overcome that.

Well I just got back from the gym and need to hit the showers. I could have a hot date tonight, who knows?!

Pump room pics!

These photos from Repetrope were just emailed to me and I thought I'd share them. Oddly enough, I just got a call from them yesterday about the 2006 nationals video I ordered--hard to believe these pics are from the 2005 nationals.

New Gym!

So I decided a needed a change to start off the new year. Training has been awesome since the nationals but the environment at my gym (Gold's Pasadena) was starting to wear on me after spending SO MUCH time there this past year (and really the past 3 years). So I finally broke down and joined the 24-hour fitness in Altadena. It is a bit of a drive but I've trained over there a few times and like the atmosphere, plus there are 2 other gyms in the area that I can go to. I can't tell you how refreshing it is to mix it up a little and see some new faces. Even training at different times, I always see the same people at Gold's and was even having nightmares about some of the trainers there. I'm sure I'll be back and forth between the two and may also go to the World's Gym in Monrovia (where I shot part of the DVD with James after the nationals).

That's my exciting news for the week. Otherwise, it's labwork as usual. I did see something interesting in my data when I went back and looked at it more carefully. You know how sometimes you see what you expect to see? Well, that's what I was doing but now I have to do some additional experiments (similar to what I had planned anyway) to try to figure out what's going on. Basically, it seems like certain reactions may be more efficient when performed "out-of-order" from what I had assumed based on the pathway outlined in the literature. So, my findings may be interesting on several levels and also give us a chance to apply more complex regulation using specific tools developed in our lab. This is exciting because I didn't think there was much opportunity for this with the downstream part of the pathway but this is much easier than dealing with the troublesome metabolites in the upstream part of the pathway. I've probably lost a lot of people but don't want to get into too many details. You'll have to read about it when I publish!

Is the weekend over already?!

It seems like the weekends are way too short lately! I still have not had a single day where I didn't go into the lab AT ALL--ugh!

Friday night I just cooked most of my food for the week as usual. There's always a stockpile of chicken in the freezer and I'm getting a new roommate yet again this week so I hope she doesn't mind. Saturday, it seemed like I barely got my labwork and training in before I had to get ready to go out. We went to the Laugh Factory in Hollywood and had a great time! Comedy clubs seem to be our thing lately which is fine with me. Dane Cook was headlining and Bob Saget even made an appearance. And yes, his comedy is a far cry from his role on Full House (which I grew up watching--TGIF!).

Today was filled with more labwork and chores (laundry, cleaning, etc). And an extra leg workout and cardio! I've been training legs twice a week since the nationals so we'll see if I can make some improvements for next year.

I had a ton of samples to run on LC-MS this weekend and nothing too exciting came out in the data. I'm still having trouble with detection, production, and/or degradation of certain molecules and it's very hard to troubleshoot when you don't know what the issue is. On the upside, I finally got the last bit of cloning done for this set of experiments. It turns out my restriction sites had compatable ends (which is highly unlikely) so I was getting some weird stuff from my ligations. Its always something. I'm also supposed to be TAing this term which means I'm getting everything set up for the same class I taught last year but then don't have to deal with the students (next term). That will probably add to my labwork significantly in the coming months, but hopefully it won't be as disastrous as last year.

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays. I ended up spending a quiet evening at home curled up with some movies. I could have gone to a couple of different parties or to old town pasadena but just couldn't get excited about my options. Oh well, I did enjoy Napoleon Dynamite despite what some people had told me--and there was a fbb in it (which Gene reminded me of). The Improv the night before was a lot of fun too. We went out for sushi first (but I opted for the Hawaiian Ahi--yum) then saw Craig Shoemaker (aka the lovemaster). The opening act was good too (Dana something?).
Things are finally cranking in the lab again this week. The university was shut down all of last week so even I was only working a few hours a day and most people didn't come in at all. Now I have a ton of samples to analyze today and am really hoping for something interesting to report to my advisor tomorrow.
Anyway, I just wanted to pop in while my cells are spinning--back to work! Oh, I am trying to get on FTWebcam a little more this year so look for me. I have some really sweet and supportive guys who come by to chat with me which I sincerely appreciate!