Skunked!

At first, I was having quite a pleasant evening: watching my mom's house and my dog, tending the wood stove, and reading the NY Times. I even made myself what may perhaps be the most elegant dish I have ever prepared: quinoa and chickpea pilaf with pomegranate sprinkled on top. I was about ready to call it a night so I let Shiloh outside to go to the bathroom one final time. She made her usual rounds, peeing by the birdfeeder than exploring by the garden. Then, suddenly, she took off towards the neighbor's yard. As I called after her, the faintest wiff of skunk filled the air. The connection didn't quite occur to me yet, but as I donned my galoshes to follow her, and as the skunk smell grew stronger, I admit the thought that Shiloh had been skunked did cross my mind. It definately didn't prepare me for what I was about to experience, though. As Shiloh stumbled back toward the light by the porch (I lated discovered she was sprayed directly in the face/eyes and so was probably temporarily blinded), the familiar skunk smell morphed into something that is frankly hard to describe. When you pass an area where a skunk has sprayed, the smell is fairly pungent and almost sour. When you stick your face in a dog that has been sprayed by a skunk at close range (as I stupidly did to 'check' if Shiloh had been sprayed), the smell doesn't even resemble that of a skunk. In fact, if it wasn't so overwhelming and the only feasible option, I would have sworn she was sprayed by something other than a skunk. That's not to say it wasn't a bad smell. It was as if I had taken a deep breath in a plastic bag filled with rotting fruit. Really rotting fruit. And the smell permeated everything. My clothes, my nose, the porch. I found myself snorting uncontrollably to try and rid my nose of the smell (Shiloh, incidentally was trying to do something similar and sneezing continuously). I sort of blanked on what to do (besides douse her in tomato sauce, which presented two problems, 1) we don't have tomato sauce, and 2) we don't have a bathtub so the tomato juice would soon be all over the bathroom walls). So, I did the only reasonable thing to do and called my mom to ask her what I should do. She, of course, looked it up on the internet, which I could have done myself since my computer was already up and running, but the sticky smell in my nose was clouding my judgement. According to our internet sources, tomato juice is NOT effective, and most sources recommended a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and soap. I couldn't find enough hydrogen peroxide, so I tried vinegar, baking soda, and soap, but that didn't seem to help very much (my poor dog, at this point, is chattering her teeth because the vinegar was in the un-heated pantry). I was debating how I was going to get to the store without causing my shivering, disoriented dog to have a stress-induced heart attack when I found some hidden stores of hydrogen peroxide. I applied it liberally, twice, waiting 5-10 minutes before rinsing, and it seemed to help. Shiloh's face ended up pretty red, though, which I am not sure whether it's from the cleaning solution (which was making my even hands tingle) or because of the skunk juice. So, I was feeling pretty proud of myself for getting rid of the skunk smell on the dog, and I started to clean up the house and move all of her bedding so that if there was some residual skunk smell she wouldn't get it all over the bedding. In the course of this process, I went down to the basement to get an old blanket for her. When I came back upstairs, to my dismay, the house smelled like skunk. So, I am sitting here with the windows open and fans blowing and the wood stove as hot as it can get since tonight is supposed to be the warmest night over the next week. Here's hoping tomorrow morning the house won't smell like skunk anymore!

Too good to be true

So after having his name invoked ad nauseum during the debates last night, it turns out Joe "the plumber" isn't a licensed plumber, nor is his name really Joe, according to this NY Times Article. I'm just glad I don't have to feel obligated to watch McCain angrily attack Obama any longer now that the debates are over. I think my favorite comment of the evening was when Obama pointed out one of McCain's (many) false accusations saying that 'even Fox News says it isn't true, and they don't usually have very good things to say about me'. From a serious perspective, however, the most telling part of the debate was when Obama was again asked if he thought Palin was qualified and he responded by complimenting her ability to energize the Republican Party, while McCain's response to the same question regarding Biden's qualifications was to attack Biden's position on the Gulf War, among other things. Other than that, the only interesting new information policy-wise to come out of this particular debate was regarding the candidate's position on education. I think Obama's plan for 4000 dollar college credits attached to foreign or domestic community service is fantastic. It may not go far toward covering private school tuition, but I think it will greatly help our image abroad as well as some of our domestic issues.

Christmas visitors

I always tell my friends that they should come and visit me, but invariably I end up living in far away (or, in the case of Ithaca, hard to get to) places and no one (besides one awesome cousin) comes. I'm not the best at visiting people, either: this past weekend I was planning on spending the weekend with my best friend in Boston, only to find that she moved to Colorado two days prior. At least now I have a legitimate reason to go to Colorado. I had also extended an invitation to my friends in Australia, thinking it was even less likely that they would take me up on the offer. However, one of them happens to be stuck in the U.S. on a post-doc with nowhere to go over the holidays so he is flying here to spend the holidays with my family. I know it's a long way from Christmas, but I am really, really excited to get to spend the holidays with him. He and many other people in Australia graciously let me join in on all their family gatherings and excursions and I am really glad to be able to do the same for him. I just have to start planning what cool things we can see while he is here. He's never been to New York City, so I think we will definitely take a train there one day, and there is a ski slope just outside of Ithaca that has really good ski packages (I know it's not exactly the Rockies, but I don't think he has ever been skiing, either). But if anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them. We will be spending some time outside of Philadelphia with my extended family and some time in Ithaca.

Ugh

I am very excited to watch the presidential debates this Friday, so when I saw the NY Times headline this evening about McCain calling for postponement of both the debates and the campaigns in light of the financial crisis, I was very worried. Of course McCain would want the campaigns to cease now that Sarah Palin's charm has worn off and Obama is gaining back his lead in the polls. I also think Obama will be much more effective than McCain in the debates. Fortunately, I checked back in with the Times a few minutes later and discovered that Obama agreed to suspend his campaign in order to be present in Congress while they decide whether to use 700 billion dollars of our money (another issue in itsef) to 'fix' our financial situation but declined the postponement of the debates.

Now, about those 700 billion dollars. Economics has never been my strong suit. I don't completely understand how the value of businesses and goods are based entirely on what people happen to think they are worth and not some intrinsic value. I also don't entirely understand how our monetary system became unlinked from gold such that we spend our entire lives paying for things with bits of paper that also have no intrinsic value, or how the treasury department 'keeps' their value by rationing how much of them they print. Regardless of the possible fate of our financial system, I don't think that taxpayers should have to support independent banks that are now failing just because they screwed up so badly they are threatening our and possibly the world's fianncial system. If we are going to save them under the auspices of saving the financial system, I think taxpayers should absolutely get a substantial stake in the companies.

On a slightly related topic, while the dollar has drastically dropped against the euro, it has unfortunately not done so against the Australian dollar. It seems that the Australian economy is just to closely linked to ours so that as our dollar has dropped worldwide recently, so has the Australian dollar. I only mention this because I closed the account I used during my year in Australia today. If I had been more on top of things and closed in during the summer, when the exchange rate reached a high of 0.97 AUD to 1 USD, I would be receiving a lot more money than at the current exchange rate of 0.83 AUD to 1 USD. Oh well, I think I better just stick with biology.

big school, small school

I've just started my third week of classes and already the differences between classes here and at my undergraduate school are stark. It's not because I'm taking graduate courses now. In fact, most of the classes I am enrolled in are technically undergrad ones. They are big lectures where half the students don't attend class and a good portion of the other half falls asleep. There is no participation, no discussion. The professors don't even attempt to learn names. With all of our assignments limited to quizzes and exams, it's no wonder why so many science students have difficulty writing. While this different style does mean that there is a lot less work needed per class, I miss the engaged classrooms where students talked to the professor and felt comfortable asking questions and where your professor would call you by name.

Ithaca weather

Here is a clipping of the weather forecast for Freeville tomorrow afternoon, courtesy of wunderground.com. Since when does the National Weather Service forecast a "definite" chance of rain?

luck

for some unknown reason, I have been really, really lucky with all things science this year. Everything I've tried works, or at least works with minor issues. Yesterday, I managed to get a fairly decent western blot from a new antibody that isn't very homologous to my protein (it's only 70% with the recommended minimum is 75%). To add to all that, the antibody was held up in Australian customs for a week without refrigeration, so I really had no idea if it would work at all. And, it even works when it's really diluted (1:50,000) so I don't have to worry about using it all up. All in all, it was a good day.

Translation: a western blot basically allows you to identify proteins. You grind up tissue in a special buffer with things that keep enzymes from destroying your ptoteins. Spin all the non-protein junk down to the bottom of a tube, figure out how much protein you actually have in your tube using a very cool assay that changed from green to purple when it finds protein. Then you load your proteins onto a gel to separate them according to size, transfer all the proteins on the gel laterally onto a membrane using an electrical current, then apply your antibody to your membrane. Unfortunately, you can't see what your antibody is binding to at this point so you have to apply another antibody, called the secondary, that recognizes a little tag on your first antibody. The secondary has its own little tag that can be made to give off light. So you expose your membrane to film and develop it and you have a western. If an antibody is 70% homologous it means that the chunk of your protein that the antibody binds to has 70% of the same amino acids. The more amino acids that are the same, the better the antibody binds.
Now you can all call ourselves molecular biologists. Funny enough, there's also Southern and northern blots. East was left out of the party, but we can save that lesson for another day.