From Definite To Definitely Vague

Ten years ago I was just entering college. I wanted to study abroad, do chemistry, and go hiking and canoeing a lot. (I did.)

Five years ago I had left a long relationship and was alternating long days at work with sitting on my bed staring at the ceiling. It was not a good year.

When I came to grad school, I wanted to teach at a SLAC. I loved my professors, and they loved teaching. They all did research, but we did real experiments and went to conferences. Eventually I realized, and later accepted, that I could take this path, but I was unwilling to.

So in the last year, I've looked at my options and decided I want something more stable, predictable, and well-paid. Right now, I don’t have career goals. To paraphrase Mrs. Whatsit, I have few desires remaining to me:

1) Sleep
2) Have a baby.

Later I may add:

3) Sew and garden
4) Earn money.

There are a lot of possibilities for jobs, going from science education and editing at the top down to supertech/lab manager at the very bottom. (Somewhere in the sub-basement is ‘Postdoc.’) While my little bear-brain is terrified of nobody wanting to hire me, my science-brain reminds me that two headhunters have already called and I haven't even been looking. So: Work. At something. Near family. This is my career goal for in five years. Plus a baby and a dog. Maybe two. (Each.) Oh yes, and the adorable husband; I'd like to keep him.

What has been amazing- and not necessarily in a good way- is my friends and I have changed. My girlfriends have children; many of them have become stereotypical wives, so it’s grown harder to understand each others’ daily lives. I have become a different person: harder, meaner, sharper-tongued, less patient, less tolerant, but also better at helping others even when I'm exhausted, more able to realize what's truly important, less likely to argue with my loved ones. I have absorbed enormous amounts of science. I can think up a coherent and plausible-sounding answer to any question in 10 seconds or less.

What I want personally, for the next five years, is to continue in a loving partnership with my spouse, to start a family, and to settle down somewhere. I have a picture in my head of how it'll be. I am going to make it happen.

Ten years, though? Too far away!

Sad Commentary

Yesterday I did the Timecourse From Hell. Then I left a cart by my bench, full of dirty specialized glassware. This afternoon I ran into it. Oh, I thought, I should wash that now, since I'm taking a three-day weekend.......

No.... wait, I'm taking a two-day weekend.

Sigh.

Research On The Cheap 2: DIY Lab Supplies

How To Run A Lab (As) Cheaply (As Possible)

I encourage commentary; additional suggestions will be appended. (Please only comment on the things listed in this post; more to follow.)

Part 1: Recycling and Repair

4. Learn to make things.

• If you've not bought many things for labs, you'll be amazed how much they cost. Gel tanks: $350 and up. A lot of equipment can be cobbled together, with creativity. It's worth it to make some things yourself, but do a cost/time analysis first. Check and see how complicated basic [thing] is before you buy or make one.
• Newark Electronics sells everything.
  
• Horizontal gel boxes: jigsaw, plexiglass, epoxy, some Pt wire, some long wires, a couple connectors, electrical tape. (Disassembled lamps and so on provide excellent recyclable wires and plugs. Scrap plexiglass can sometimes be had free from companies or the shop.)
  
• Miniprep columns: plastic spin filters (Sigma et al.) and a little silica gel (about $80 for 500 g; but a kit for 250 preps runs about $300).
• Find a machine shop and a glassblower if possible (some do work by mail). The machine shop can make you gel plates and the glassblower will repair that $200 flask for $20. Most expensive glassware is worth repairing.
• You can make your own gel-picture box with a cheap UV emitter, a cheap digital camera, a large box-like object, and ImageJ.
  
• If you feel really cheap, a hot plate, a pan, and some sand make a fine constant-temp 'heat block'. (But only one temperature at a time.)
  
• Someone in my lab made a plasma-cleaner from an old microwave, a vacuum pump, and some tubing.
  
• Rotation-only orbital shakers cost thousands of dollars. A few large springs, some flat stuff (plexiglass works well) and a rotary-shaft motor will also do the trick. Ugly... but effective. If you throw in a variable-speed switch in front of the motor, it's adjustable-speed.
  

5. Mixing it yourself is cheaper than a kit.

• Don't use a kit! There's another way, and it's much cheaper. They did it another way before the kit, of course.
• Most things in kits you can make, including silver stain, labeling reagents, and everything from Qiagen.
  
• DNA purification: PCA extraction, then glycogen and ethanol.
  
• Make your own media powders if possible. Not hard.
  
• Pour your own gels; buy dry acrylamide (but only if you have a fume hood!).
• Don't ever buy a protein purification kit. Just don't.
  
• High-processivity proofreading enzyme? 10:1 Pfu/Taq.
• You can make your own Taq. And it's even legal now. The prep is basically 'Boil, spin, run over column.' You can also make: specific proteases, size ladders (buy dry proteins from Sigma), and so on.
  
• Boil your own dialysis tubing.
• Ethidium bromide really is the cheapest option. Sorry.
  
• The quick ligation kits just have PEG (5000, 5%) and regular T4 in them.
• Mutagenize DNA with primers, not a kit.
• For most reagents, you can use much less than the instructions say. Colloidal coomassie: 7 ml/minigel. TOPO: 0.25 uL works too.
• Learn tricks. Like: 0.5 M salt in a blot reduces nonspecific bands dramatically. Or: there's no way to predict which PCR additive will work best, but start with DMSO. ('Additive Q' is 100% betaine. Someone put it through an NMR.) Some specialty journals, including Electrophoresis, have entire papers on tricks.
  

Next and Finally: Think, Then Haggle, Before You Buy

Revenge of the Matzah

I have been MIA while cleaning. Oh, the cleaning. For the first two days I feel a sense of deep spiritual connection to the holiday of Pesach. On the third day, when we boil all the dishes, I think "WHY am I doing this to myself AGAIN????"

Happily, there remain approximately 360 days until I must do it again.

On a related Pesach note, here are my two favorite talmudic rulings:

1) Pesachim 10b. With a mouse. To summarize, it goes: what if you see a mouse go into your leavened-grain-free house with a piece of (gasp!) bread??? What if you see another mouse? Are they the same mouse? What if it's a WEASEL?

And the answer is, who knows.

2) It's Pesach. Someone drops their sandwich into the reservoir. Oh no! It's Pesach! We can't rule that it's nullified by the huge amount of water because chametz can't be nullified on Pesach! What to do?

And the answer is, don't be crazy, drink the damn water.

Research On The Cheap 1: Recycling and Repair

A while ago, Flicka Mawa posted about research at small colleges. (I respond to external stimuli with exquisite slowness.) Naturally, I thought back to my small undergrad institution, and also to the various tricks and dodges I've learned to save money. (In biology; I'm not so great at other disciplines, sorry.) Without further ado, I present:

How To Run A Lab (As) Cheaply (As Possible)

I encourage commentary; additional suggestions will be appended. (Please only comment on the things listed in this post; more to follow.)

1. Understand how things work. Because then you'll know what parts you can make yourself/ use less of/ get more cheaply. If you understand what that kit is doing, chances are you can make it yourself. (For biomed labs: Invest in Maniatis; likewise Methods in MolBio is your friend. I assume other fields have similar resources.)

2. Reuse and Recycle.

• You'd be amazed how many things are reusable when washed/ melted down/ sterilized. A selection: agarose from gels, test tubes, 0.22 um filters, disposable columns, miniprep columns, acid washes, even Petri dishes if you're desperate.
  
• Don't get throwaway regents when there's a reusable: not glass beads to spread cells, but a spreader. Use glass pipettes if possible. Glass test tubes can be washed in a base bath. (Glass beads and tips can be washed and re-used; use bleach (see comments); gloves can be re-used.)
  
• Antibodies and coomassie stain can both be re-used.
• Resins can be cleaned. Glutathione-sepharose costs $10/mL, and that's one of the less expensive ones. Clean your resins.
• Universities throw out an awful lot of equipment. Find a building manager or two, or a buddy, at the nearest big school, take them out for coffee, and ask them to let you know when stuff's going to be tossed. Chromatography sheets, microscopes, ancient power sources, vertical gel tanks needing only new gaskets... these are all usable, if you:

3. Learn to fix everything.

• Well-equipped labs need at least: a set of Allen wrenches, a few sizes of screwdriver, a hammer and a mallet, needlenose pliers, adjustable wrenches, regular (large) pliers, WD-40, a soldering iron, a voltmeter, thread tape, a small saw, nails, screws, etc. (Or access; a few labs could go in on these things, or the department could leave a toolbox in the stockroom.) The investment is worth it: repair companies typically charge $100-$200 per hour, plus a drop fee.
• If it's broken and dead, there's no harm in trying to fix it. It can't work any less well, after all.
• If there's a building manager or scientific support staff, they may know a great deal about fixing things.
  
• Basic electrical knowledge will help. If something's broken and out of warranty, it won't hurt to open it up and check the connections. This is where the voltmeter is handy.
  
• Try easy fixes first. I once fixed a -80 by blowing air through its electronics for 15 minutes.
• Call the company and ask for the real tech support people. Keep going until you get someone who doesn't ask 'A what connector?' They may be able to tell you what's wrong.
  
• Epoxy is your friend. Also heat-shrink tubing, electrical tape, thread tape, and duct tape.
  
• Soldering doesn't have to be pretty to work.
• Buy replacement parts for moving bits or whatever you use, and learn to put them in yourself. Incubator doors, for example, are not mechanically complicated but break a lot. A screwdriver, a pliers, and another set of hands usually does it. Vertical gel tanks can be fixed with wire and patience.
  
• If large numbers of screws feature anywhere in your equipment, a screw remover will prevent a lot of pain and swearing.
  
• Small-volume pipettes (you know, like Rainin), you can calibrate yourself with a balance, spare o-rings, and a tool that costs $5.
  
• If parts are cheap enough, it's worth it to replace them even if you don't know if that's the problem.
  
• Newark Electronics will sell you any electronic part you want.
• Circuit boards always die first. They are rarely worth replacing.
• If there's a Graduate Women in Science chapter, they may run a fix-it seminar! Or organize one yourself- there has to be a machine shop somewhere.
  

Coming up: So Make It Yourself; How Not to Play Nice

Bookshelves

Since Julia tagged me- and pictures! with books! what more could I want, I present to you: our bookshelves.

Due to our utter lack of cabinets, most of them have linens, food, board games, and camping equipment on them. However, I doubt that's what Julia wanted.

The big bookshelf in the dining room:


Featuring photo albums (and my book on gardening-in-apartments):


When a chemist marries a biologist:

and this is after we sold the duplicates, too.

Reference in several languages, plus Howard McGee (thank you again Belle, we still look things up in it at at least once a week!):


The product of a college bookstore which often ended up with dead (white male) professors' libraries, left them on shelves for years, and finally moved them to the 25-cent cart, some of which books I have even read:


The product of a French Lit degree and the fact that French books are much, much cheaper in France (who knew?), plus miscellaneous books left with me over the years and a partial set of Worst-Case Scenario postcards (I used to send my little sister one every week, but ran out of funny ones; the rest are kind of depressing, like 'What To Do If Your Car Crashes):


The product of many people's erroneous assumption that because I cook, I want more cookbooks, bless their hearts. My family gave me Moosewood and the Farm Country ones; I bought both Julia Childs and the French pastry one; the Asian one was my gift to Dr. S, and the rest accumulated:


There is a heap of books next to the bed: Dr. S's Bible, a couple Robin McKinleys, a few stray Economists. I have spared you this unsightly scene.

Where the well-thumbed fiction lives: under the coffee table. (Hey, it's a shelf.) These are the books I read over and over and over and over again. I have a weakness for 'cozy' mysteries, but really don't like violent ones. LMB: my hero. (The rest of her books are to the left except those latest ones with the knife, which I don't like. Robin McKinley, LeGuin: also my heroes. I read a lot of science fiction, but usually don't love it enough to buy, so...


Most books circulate through here, the final resting place for library books on their way out the door. The people at the library know my name. The Snooty U library delivers me books to the library that is downstairs from my lab. I probably borrow several hundred books a year. And I love Laurie King's mysteries, although the non-Mary Russell ones keep me up at night.

Ta-da!

'Sorry, We're Illiterate'

By the way, although Dr. Jekyll has already mentioned it, this is one of the funniest retractions I've ever read:

In this Article, the messenger RNA that is identified to be a target of microRNA-23 (miR-23) is from the gene termed human 'homolog of ES1' (HES1), accession number Y07572, and not from the gene encoding the transcriptional repressor 'Hairy enhancer of split' HES1 (accession number NM_00524) as stated in our paper.

(Translation: We can't read. Wow, do we feel stupid now.)

Just Like A Switch

I used to scoff at the idea of a biological clock that went DING and suddenly the young woman in question had an overwhelming desire for a squishy baby.

I am here to tell you that my timer has gone off.

A few months ago, I woke up one morning and said to Dr. S, 'I want a baby.'

'Now???' he asked.
'Yes. But... I'll wait a little longer. That whole PhD thing, so inconvenient.'
'Ulp.'
'WHAT?'
'Just... a little sudden... I need to sit down.'

(On a related note, rather in contrast to FCSGS, grad school has inspired me to a high degree of 'just knowing.' The other way is probably more rational. But I also woke up one day to the certainty that I was, after all, going to marry Dr. S. I think it's my subconscious hitting my conscious with a bat. Hello! Pay attention to your feelings here! THWACK.)

We talked about it a while. When is the right time to start trying? Aside from not now. Fatigue or nausea would not help me graduate. But after, I'm taking some time off. Should I find a job before attempting to cause a baby? Work there long enough to get leave? Find a job before I'm showing? What if they won't hire a pregnant woman? What if I want to work part time? What about insurance coverage? What if we don't know about Dr. S's fellowships until it's too late and.... what if what if what if.

And then the other day I realized, you know what? Screw it. There is, very emphatically, never a perfect time. If they won't hire a pregnant lady they can take the proverbial long jump off a short pier- conveniently located downtown. I have had it up to some point over my head with putting my life on hold for The Ideal Career Trajectory. The day I graduate... well, you know. Take that, patriarchy!

The Return of the Photo Library

It is not dead; it was merely resting. (I am giving things away at the bottom, by the way.)

A quilt for little Ms. Julianna

(It looked better in person.)

Over Colorado it looks very wrinkly.


In San Diego, on the other hand, there are beaches:


And they are pretty.


They have peculiar, six-foot-long bits of seaweed:


And long bridges.


It also boasts a multitude of flora, including cactus gardens:


Truly odd flowering trees:


And museums of 'Man'. Bah.


It is spring! (Turns out warm sunny places get there first, who knew?) The ranunculus are in bloom:


The aloes are fascinatingly patterned:


And the orchids are overjoyed.


But the TSA is, as always, pleased to inform us that it has no sense of humor:









*****************
On another note, here are some well-meaning gifts that I do not like. If you want one- preferably for your own personal use and enjoyment, or to give to some other deserving soul- email me,and I'll check on Sunday and sort it out in the unlikely event that more than one person wants any of them. (I would like to add that I make no assertion that I will ship them quickly.)


Scarf. New. Beige. Very beige. Made of polyester. I don't do beige. Probably a little darker than it looks in the picture. The tape measure's 60 inches long, so it's a little longer than that.

My dear and well-meaning aunt gave me both of the pins below. I have carted them around for fifteen years and have not yet worn either one even once. They'd be lovely for someone's coat... LIKE MY GRANDMA. They are made by hand; ceramic with unknown glazes. Both have a locking bar pin on the back. Sorry the little one's out of focus.






Happy weekends to all. I hope it is not raining wherever you are, and that the daffodils are blooming!

Jargon Thesaurus Strikes Again

Although the phrase 'deranged energy metabolism' does appear in the medical literature, I do not think it should.