Blog update
Sunday, June 10, 2012
It’s
amazing! Tonight CH was asleep by 7:45pm, TM was asleep before then (or
pretending well enough that it was true soon after), and now it’s just me and
the cat on the sofa! Q is travelling again, but he’s away for just a short trip
this time.
CH is almost
14mo old now! In the last two weeks she’s really grown up. It’s quite obvious now
that she’s definitely a toddler, not just a 1-yr old. Seeing her grow up is exciting
and sad at the same time. TM is looking forward to being in 1st
grade next year, which is good. We’re working on her math, but I keep
forgetting to keep quizzing her, and without constant practice, she slides
backwards rather quickly. Her reading is much better, which is fun. Q keeps
threatening to go to business school, which is something he’s always wanted to
do. I’ll be interested (very) to see what he finally decides…
Work is
going well – or at least it’s fun, which is close enough to “going well”. There
are so many things I wish we could do with my projects that it’s easy to get
sidetracked and disheartened, but I have to remember that “it is what it is”,
and we’ll do what we can with what we have. Thanks for the reminder, Dad J. Meanwhile, it’s fun!
Last week
was a pawpaw week – I collected some leaf tissue for DNA extraction and basic
genotyping, looked at some results from my last experiment, and messed around
in the greenhouse some more. I absolutely love going to the greenhouse! Pawpaw
plants are wonderful. The leaves are big (huge!), they have a delicate green
smell, and the new shoot tips droop strongly downward, then straighten out as
they get older. It’s such an interesting plant! They’re in the Annonaceae,
family, along with the custard apple, which was one of my favorite fruits in
India. Asimina triloba is the
northernmost genus of the family (I think I’m safe saying that), which explains
its oddly tropical appearance.
Last week I
also went to the large commercial nursery with whom we are collaborating on the
pawpaw grant. What an amazing setup they have! They can propagate hundreds of
thousands of plants in a week or two. It’s absolutely astounding. And of course
the smell is wonderful – green growing things abound. They also use mostly
biological controls to keep infestations at bay. I hope I get to learn more
about that as time goes by, because it’s fascinating to hear about pathogenic
insects and their predators.
My favorite
part of the trip was an infrared temperature gun – you point it at something,
squeeze the trigger, and it tells you the temperature of whatever you’re
pointing it at! My hand was 31C, the pots and the floor were at 25C, my purse
was a little lower… oh so much fun! I want one.
Last week
was pawpaw week, this coming week is Mimulus week. I’ll be collecting tissue for
RNA extraction! I hope I get it done well and quickly. There are over 200
plants, and I won’t be collecting from all of them, but from as many as I can
(the plants with fully expanded but not dying leaves). Once we get all the RNA
extracted, we’ll ship samples off to be sequenced! I’m excited and a bit
nervous about that – data from sequencing this sort of thing can be around a terabyte.
How in the world does one deal with that much data? I’ll find out.
I’m so lucky
to be working on these projects. They’re fun and interesting and take up
whatever extra energy I have left over from mom-life. Speaking of mom-life, why
in the world is it okay to pay someone ELSE to take care of your kids, but if
you take care of your own kids, you’re unemployed (with all the associated
stigma)? How is that logical? Huh? Not that I want to leave my job, no, I’ve
just been pondering the logistics of raising kids.
