You gotta be a little nuts

to be a female bodybuilder! I just started changing up my diet and I'm already a basketcase. I'm used to being pretty heavy in the offseason but this year have stayed much leaner and was feeling good about starting my prep. But sometimes the most innocent comments can be taken the wrong way make us very self-conscious about our bodies again. I can get very down on myself sometimes and it's hard to turn that around and use it for motivation but I think I've managed to pick myself up again.

I took the afternoon off to do my grocery shopping and clean so I don't have to worry about it later tonight. I'm just finishing up a few things in the lab and hopefully won't be too late. I may just rent a movie and chill--that sounds nice. My cells are finally doing the work for a change. I have an incubator full of yeast but most still have to grow for another day or so before I do the analysis. I'm going to do some data analysis and writing tomorrow but hopefully kind of enjoy the weekend like I did last weekend. I also want to go to the competition out at Venice Beach on the 4th--that's always fun. Not much else to say!

Let the games begin

So tomorrow I will finally start making some changes to my diet after following the same guidelines this whole offseason. I'm excited even though I'm already going to do a little carb depletion. I will get my bodyfat checked by a female trainer at the gym who will be more reliable (yes, I am an a man-hating mood tonight) and mark this as my official starting point.

My data is also looking pretty good so I'm setting up a ton of samples to get triplicate data for the paper. And I got a new enzyme that should be pretty straightforward to test and move us closer to a few different products. I have a lot of new leads/ideas on other parts of my system to experiment with as well. I think I mentioned that I was going to bring someone in to help me with some things. However, today I heard that he was going to be working on something else (on top of the project or two that he's already been working on). I just don't understand this place sometimes. I made the mistake of spreading myself too thin and it simply doesn't pay. With these types of projects, you can focus on maybe two different areas at a time (at the most). I can already see that my plans will probably be forgotten. Again, it's even more frustrating that I have no idea where any of these side projects are going. There seems to be no cohesiveness or long term plan/goal. Without an application or deeper insight, it will be difficult to even publish. Oh well, gotta focus on my own work.

Disgusted!

So I was officially so grossed out by my apartment (specifically the kitchen) that I took off pretty much the entire afternoon to clean. I didn't really mean to, but I had to come home for a minute and it ended up taking me about 3 hours just to clean the kitchen (and we have the smallest kitchen you can imagine for a 4-bedroom). I guess I let it go more than I usually do b/c the last couple of times I've planned to clean, my roommates have been cooking; that and the fact that I'm barely home to sleep. Mind you, I ALWAYS clean up after myself, but try not to clean up after others (too much) b/c I'm not their mom. But when it becomes unsanitary, I just can't take it. Now I always say this, but seriously, here's an example to illustrate my point. A couple of days ago, I got an email from one of my roommates that something smelled bad in the living room and she traced it back to the hamster that had been dead for several days and threw her in the dumpster. I freaked out b/c the owner of the hamster left several months ago and I realized I didn't know who (if anyone) was feeding her. Well, it turns out that my other roommate knew the hamster was dead and was waiting until the weekend to bury her, meanwhile she is decomposing in the living room (in the middle of summer). And she got mad at the other roommate for disposing of the rotting corpse. What is wrong with these people?! But on the bright side, this roommate also forgot to reapply for housing so she's out at the end of the month--which also means two new people will be moving in.

So anyway, to make up for that, I had to stay late in the lab and ended up missing dancing under the stars to the salsa band that was playing on campus. They were already packing up as I was walking home--how sad! And then to add further insult, there were already dirty dishes piled up when I got home. Sigh. OK, I'm over it.

Tomorrow is the Jr. Cal promoted by Ironman columnist and M.C. extraordinaire Lonnie Teper. If you're in the Pasadena area, stop by and check it out! www.npcjuniorcal.com
I know a couple of people competing and Jay Cutler is guest posing. I have to get up early so I can train and get a few things going in the lab before prejudging so I better get to bed!

Smells like bread

So this morning I had to give a journal club presentation, and the paper I chose was about yeast that were able to sense DNT (a volatile impurity in TNT) through activation of a recombinant mouse olfactory receptor. (Admittedly, the title of this entry was stolen from the "news and views" commentary on this paper published in Nature Chem Bio.) It was kind of cool to research the expression systems/assays for different types of G-protein coupled receptors in yeast. Such methods are very useful for drug discovery and yeast is probably the most simple organism you can use to express these transmembrane receptors correctly and demonstrate functionality. I kind of got into it and it was a nice break from the typical literature I read most relevant to my work. This journal club thing is something new we're trying based on the suggestions of our post-doc to get us to evaluate papers more critically and think about how we would set up experiments, what we can learn, etc. Everyone said I should just bail out but I decided that I was going to set a good example and I think I did, whether we continue it or not.

I also finally laid out the figures and "plot" for my next manuscript (hopefully with another to follow shortly). I still have a lot of data to collect, mainly so that I get triplicate data using "fresh" yeast strains, the same substrate stocks, etc. It should be quick and I basically know what most of the data will look like so I can start writing in the meantime. I'm attempting to construct a few more strains but I have enough for a solid paper with or without this data, so it just depends on how smoothly it goes whether or not it's included. So that's good and I'm motivated to get it done! I've also started talking to one of the newer students about tackling part of my project with me. There's one step where I can envision more experiments than I could possibly get to on my own but it's absolutely critical to making the upstream portion of the pathway work.

So everything is going pretty well. I still haven't started my diet yet--I'm waiting to hear back from Ed and Betty. I'm assuming they're on vacation or maybe they thought I was beyond help?! Hmm, maybe I am...but I believe and therefore I will achieve. Training is still awesome and I've totally readjusted to my contest prep schedule and doing cardio at the Caltech gym at 6am--yippee! When I first did this last year, I thought my weight training would suffer, but by the time I get over to Gold's, I've completely recovered and am wide awake--plus it's so nice not to have to do cardio after I train.

On another note, have you ever met someone who is just really good at at reading people; like they can tell everything about you just from looking into your eyes? I was talking to a guy this morning at the gym like that. It's so rare these days that we take the time to really care about other people so I was really touched by what he said. You know, like when someone asks how you are, do you always say "fine" or do you ever stop and elaborate? I hate this question because people ask (and answer) so insincerely. I mean, what's the point if you really don't care? If you ask me on any given day, you might get an earful (or maybe just a grunt if I'm dieting)! I'm not sure where exactly I'm going with this, but basically, it was nice to feel like someone did have compassion and truly cared. I didn't even mind that it interrupted my workout!

"Get it done!"

I'm borrowing this quote from Steph today. I've just gotta get it done, whatever "it" may be. No excuses or distractions. I am running a little later than expected though getting into the lab but there is nothing urgent I need to attend to. I guess I was up a little late for some reason (oh yeah, a hot date!), then did cardio, trained (back), went to the grocery store, etc. I've been having really good workouts lately--I'm loving it. I can feel a big knot in my back but it didn't bother me too much. I'm so out of whack--I just got adjusted earlier this week and my chiropractor said I was still pretty twisted but he couldn't see me again until Monday. My hips tend to get out of alignment so I'm trying to stay on top of it so I don't hurt myself again. It's weird because I'm so aware of it now, it's hard to believe I was walking around crooked for so many years.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there! I called my parents this morning and was surprised to hear that they went to a local bodybuilding show last night--how cool is that?! They saw the people who first got me started competing at Pro Bodies Gym in Longview, TX--Robert and Helen Irby. I saw them in 2003 at the Ronnie Coleman Classic but am not sure if they know how far I've come since then. It'll be nice to compete in Texas again at the Nationals (in Dallas, November 16-17). I'm hoping to have at least a few family members and friends in the audience!

The other thing I was thinking about in relation to Father's Day is how much like my dad I turned out to be. Like the other day at Target, I bought 2 different colors of the same T-shirt (to go with the other 3 I already have) and decided, "this is what I'm going to wear every day." I think it's very Einstein-like to simplify things like that. I mean, I already eat the same thing every day. My dad is also a mechanical engineer and I know he can relate to a lot of my lab stories based on his experience in industry. It's surprising that academia is not always that different--it's still very Dilbert-like.

OK, this is kind of a scatter-brained post, but I wanted to mention the Jr. Nationals this weekend--congrats to everyone who competed! It's a shame that the number of fbb's is dwindling (and even more so at the local level) but the quality was excellent in all classes. My favorite guy was Brandon Rey--what a nice physique!

Ahh--I can't work like this!

Seriously, the lab has been like a freaking zoo this week. I'm getting a little claustrophobic just being at my bench. We have so many people in the lab and for some reason, they've all been working all of a sudden--lol. I guess a few were taking classes, etc, but still. Fortunately, it's rush hour only a small fraction of my normal working hours and I'll always have the weekend. There's also been a lot of construction going on in the tissue culture room this week which just adds to the chaos and clutter.

It's not just that, but for some reason, the motivation has just not been there for me this week. I need to get my act together and really wrap up a few things, but I keep getting sidetracked. I've mentioned this a few times but there are certain key things that I just really, really want to work and it's hard for me to just put those experiments on the back burner. But I absolutely have to because it's just not paying off. I'm smart enough to realize that at least. I hate to let things go (or sit for a while) but not as much as I hate spinning my wheels.

It's also hard to see that we have so much manpower in the lab but no one willing to tackle a challenging project. I feel like an island. But at the same time, I see that it's taking people an entire day to make one solution (and if they have to pH it, you can forget about it). So, I'm not sure how much that would really help in terms of my project. OK, time to plate my yeast--let's hope they will be good to me.

I'm getting ready to go to salsa class tonight (after I do a few more things in the lab of course) but wanted to post a couple of pics. The first one is my "before" back shot (since I always look better from the rear ;) and the other one was actually taken by the same person--Roberto Flores. This is one of the raw images from our shoot back in December. There's definitely some cool shots but it's just a lot of work to add backgrounds, etc. OK, I really gotta run!

Just another manic monday

OK, so maybe it's not so manic today if I had time to sit down and post. I'm a little "blah" today to say the least. The weekend was just filled with disappointing experiments. Two blank western blots and lots of crappy LC-MS data--I think I can detect what I need to at least (IF my yeast were producing what I wanted them to..which they were NOT) but the peak shape was horrendous. I need to figure out what's going on but I suspect the helium since there seems to be a slow leak somewhere. My frustration lately has been that I will see some indication that things are working and then set up a ton of experiments, only to find that it was an artifact and/or not reproducible, etc. But again, I suppose that is the nature of research and a very small percentage of things actually work. Sometimes I will read papers and think that not a lot of work was required (kind of like, "gee, I could have done that") but then you realize how many failed experiments almost certainly preceded that. I'm also a little frustrated with "lab politics" but will save that for another time.

I was supposed to meet up with my friend yesterday to take some "before" pics but we couldn't seem to get together in between all of our experimental work (he's also a grad student). I'm so ready to get into my prep this year! Anyway, hopefully I will have some pics up soon (on my site at least ;). I gotta plug my website here--it's a great time to show your support by joining my site and also keep up with my progress as I get ready for the nationals!

Just felt like blogging

I'm taking a coffee break (in the lab) so I figured I'd blog a bit. I feel like things are definitely on the upswing for me lately (knock on wood). My experiments are not exactly stellar but encouraging which is all I can ask for. I'm still focusing on troubleshooting the most difficult intermediate as far as production and detection. I've been doing a lot more in vitro work lately which has been helpful. I still ended up with very little protein in my purification but was able to detect some activity so I can work with that. Trying new protocols is always a crapshoot because if you don't see anything, it's hard to tell if your enzyme is not active, your assay conditions are not optimized, your assay is not sensitive enough, etc. It's also very interesting because I see a different product in vivo due to activity on another substrate---it's hard to explain without a drawing of my pathway which I don't want to post because then someone could scoop me! I'm a little slow so it may take me longer to work out the details than a team of MIT scientists.

Also, I'm just feeling much better overall now that I'm getting back into the groove (in preparation of starting my preparation for nationals). I had mentioned that I had fallen into a pattern where I would get up and do my cardio, come into the lab, and then put off training until later in the day. The problem is that the lab is like a black hole, and although I never missed a workout, I found myself training at 9 or 10pm which is just not optimal for me. I felt like I was having good workouts but my body just wasn't responding in the same way. Plus I would be wide awake after that and usually end up working till 2am. So the past few weeks I've made an effort to get my training done early in the morning and it's just such a relief. I'm even doing my cardio first most days (on an empty stomach) so I go to the Caltech gym at 6am, come home and make a shake, then go to Gold's or 24 to train. I'm actually very psyched about starting my prep which is great (23 weeks out this saturday)!

Too funny!

I wasn't going to say anything about this, but I have a few minutes to kill in the lab and this story is just too amusing to me. So earlier in the week I was contacted by a casting agency looking to fill the role of a buff chick in the new American Pie movie and today I went in for an "audition." The part is mainly physical with no real acting involved so I thought, "what the heck, it might be fun." Anyways, I seriously doubt I will get it because I'm too short and not very intimidating but it was one of those interesting life experiences. I swear, there was an actress (i.e. waitress) sitting on the couch in a little black dress and sunglasses when I walked in and as she was leaving she goes, "knock-em dead sweety." I was like, "is she for real?!" I am perfectly happy to stay in my little nerd world and be totally unglamourous in my workout sweats, thank you. I've actually had a few similar opportunities roll my way lately so we'll see if anything pans out. I kind of doubt it because it's not something I'm actively pursuing.

So now on to my usual incoherent lab speak... The assays I mentioned in my last post actually turned out much better than I expected. I was coupling two reactions and I actually saw more of the final product than the intermediate so now I have some new protocols worked out. Unfortunately, this was for one of my proteins that I now know is subject to significant proteolysis in yeast, but now I have a good assay and am testing a similar enzyme this weekend (from humans actually).

My LC-MS is running well at least. Unfortunately, some of the results are not what I was hoping for but I think I know the next set of strains to make/test. I'm still making a ton of chromosomal integrations which is relatively easy in yeast unless you're retarded, which I apparently am. The difficulty seems to be in confirming the correct insertion (into the targeted location) using colony PCR. I ordered a ton of primers to do this and some give me false positives, no product, etc so it's just been a pain. It's almost easier to assay for enzyme activity.

OK, I do have some cloning to do tonight but am waiting to start the bulk of my work tomorrow since I was gone most of the afternoon. I'm such a slacker :P