Bits and pieces

It seems Craig has managed to pick up my cold. So hopefully he's not sick for too long. I am finally feeling better after going to bed at 7 last night-- yep, you read that right. I slept from 7pm until 7am... and finally feel almost human. Now if I could only stop coughing like a 70 year old chain smoker I'd be back to normal. Winnie had another day with no messes-- YAY! She does have the most painful ear splitting bark though--- ugh, I sure hope she doesn't do that all day while we're at work. 5 barks is enough to make me want to try and chop out her vocal cords.. I can only imagine what the neighbors think after a day of that noise.





I've got a long and hectic procedure at work today, so I am hoping to be out of here by 5. The one thing I can say about this procedure is that when it is done I have TON of data. So its nice to show the boss that I can be productive-- it just makes for an unpleasant work day. Keep your fingers crossed that it works!


Here is one pic of a previous run of this experiment. The procedure takes mouse boobs (yes, the techinical term) and turns them into a soup of single mouse boob cells. Then I can run those cells through a machine called a flow cytometer that lines them all up single file and looks at them. It looks at them for what they have on their outsides--- (that is, are the tags I stuck on there)-- I can then see how many cells that have a certain tag (A) also have other tags (B, C, etc)-- then I can quantify how many cells are A+B vs B+C, vs A+C--- which tells me something about the kind of cells that make up the mouse boob. The big problem for me is that I put a LOT of cells in, but only the ones circled in the picture are the ones that matter. So it takes me a long long time to get enough of the important cells--- oh yeah... and it takes me 6+ months to get a mouse with the right combo of genes to be old enough for the experiment--- so there is a lot riding on it working right--- cause if it doesn't I have to start over with breeding more mice-- YUCK!









Other than a big science day, we have cake class tonight--- no actual cake this week, just working with fondant and gumpaste-- we're learning carnations, "fantasy flowers" and daisies. Should be a quick and easy class. I'll try and get some pics up tomorrow for everyone to see.






Also-- if you have any recommendations for an affordable reliable car-- 4 door, decent gas mileage (ok, so anything will be better than the blazer was), has a radio, good safety record, would hypothetically hold a car seat and associated progeny related crap, that doesn't look awful-- please, let me know.
The blazer is dead (may she rest in peace) and I need to find a new car. I figure I am going to have the new one for a bunch of years, so practicality is important. All suggestions of models or makes are welcome!