Trial experiments!

Well, I have a trial in the works!  We are doing a quick and dirty exposure and I'll be measuring some structures.  Some interesting results may come from this!

Anyway, >100 zebrafish eggs were spawned and fertilized around noon today.  Rakesh collected them and brought them back to the lab where we selected 40 for my trials.  A good first run, I think.  I also ran PCR on a couple samples for beta-actin expression.  Not sure what this is all about, but it was a trial for me to get my feet wet on the molecular side.  Moral of the story, I'm kinda bad at squirting blue liquid into a semi-invisible hole in an electrophoresis gel.  Results came back well though.  Not sure if they were expecting that or not...

I also did my first loads of laundry across the court.  Hard to believe that is news after the hundreds of loads washed at Luther College in machines that look strikingly identical.  The good news is that none of my clothes are now pink or tiny.  It helps that I own about zero red clothes.

Also found out today that my UMass ID will get me into the movie theatre for £4.50, so I'm going to go with some of the other labbies tomorrow.  Also, my pay-as-you-go cell phone is on a network that offers a buy 1 get 1 free ticket sale on Wednesdays.  Not sure if this also works with student discount.. We will see, I suppose!  Apparently Glasgow also has comedy weeks(?) starting Thursday, so I've been invited to that along with other grad students.  My social calendar seems more full than at home!

I also mentioned that it was St. Patrick's Day on Saturday to Dr. Rattray who then seemed to think it was no big deal.  It must not be in Scotland, which makes sense, but with Ireland being so close, I figured there would be more craziness than that.  I might have to find out how I can get across the gap for that day. :)