I'm tired, but I'm happy. One month and 13 days.

Hey people,
I just had another 12 hour day and I'm still thinking about experiments. If I haven't said it before I'll say it again: moving to my current lab is the best thing that has happened in my short career as a scientist. I am really loving what I do. Is it bad to dream about experiments?--I do! Having a great mentor means that someone is there to encourage you and gives you the freedom to enjoy your work--I'm really blessed. Now that I know that I like benchwork (when it works, ask me again when it doesn't work), I need to find a way to make it profitable.

Postdocs (post-Doctoral fellow) start at 35-37K --benefits vary from school to school and lab to lab in academia and at Genentech, a leading biotech company, they start at $46K and with actual benefits!--but that's $46K in the Bay area and I'm thinking that it won't go far. If you become a faculty member, you're a slave to governmental grant funding (and we've hit a dry spell). If you're a scientist at a company, you're subject to layoffs. I'm thinking that if I'm going to work 60 hour weeks for someone, it should be for myself. So I'm thinking about exploring job opportunities with start-up companies. They are far more risky, but your contribution and worth are far greater. I haven't ruled out the other options, but I want to explore this one a little bit more. Any suggestions?

Hey Look!

This is my first perfect plate of tetrad dissections. It's a long story but the punchline is that it took me almost two weeks and lot's of blood, sweat and tears to produce a plate like this. Now I can dissect yeast like a pro! I had to share (:

Toodles,
Chi(:

I'm no longer oppressed by my president.

I don't know about y'all, but this midterm election was like a breath of fresh air. I felt like I was living in a monarchy without the ability to control our government. In the past six years, I've been made to feel as though I was wrong for criticizing the government, for speaking out against our president (remeber the Dixie Chicks) and for not just "going along" and "trusting our president" because he has access to more information than I do. I was so tired of hearing that speaking against the war is "un-American" and I could not STAND the fact that the former House and Senate gave Bush and Rumsfield all of our money to waste. What I hate most is how the adminstration hid what they were doing by making generalized statements about "spreading democracy throughout the world" and the gross and abusive use of the word "freedom".

In these past six years, I have never felt more helpless and unpatriotic in my short life. And on tuesday, I received a present that was long overdue. I heard the president come to heel when he announced the resignation of Donald Rumsfield. He made nice with the Democrats and was held accountable for statements that he made during the campaign. On election day, the American people (or a little over half) snatched the carte blanche that he so carelessly abused. And it couldn't have come sooner. Unfortunately, most people became angry at the wrong time. I wish the anger over the war and the administration was timed for the 2004 Bush's re-election campaign. But beggars can't be choosers. We can finally put the brakes on Bush and I feel a little more safer (he often used fear to sway voters) and a lot more patriotic. Thank God for our democracy!

Note--if the election went for the Republicans, I really don't know what I would've done. Probably seethe quietly in the corner until 2008. But I honestly was ecstatic on Tuesday because the people spoke and we were heard and we pretty much said, "Your carte blanche is revoked! Heel Bush Heel!"