It's my birthday! I spent the morning doing molecular biology, preparing 3 plates to run PCR on. The plates will be done in an hour and then I get to run some gels. It has been fun learning all these techniques- I thought it would actually be a bit harder, but really so far it is just a bunch of "recipes". After today, I'll be able to tell for sure which salamanders were infected with virus and which were not. Before, I would just look to see if they looked diseased- but now that I am big time we clip a piece of the tail, extract the DNA from it and amplify a particular region of DNA that the virus has and the salamander does not. If nothing shows up in the gel, no virus. If something does- it has it. Not sure if you care, but there it is.
Yeah, so been pretty busy. Running an experiment and now analyzing it, writing up the doctoral research, creating a lab web site, applying for jobs, learning molecular biology techniques, reading up on disease ecology, and having a family. Pretty much had no time to relax. It is fun though and I am enjoying myself. The weather here is going to turn soon apparently. Tomorrow's high is in the 50s and it will stay that way through the weekend. Windy too. I had to break out pants today... ha. I know I am going to totally geek out when it snows here. People are going to have to calm me down. Anyways, got to grab lunch now (I get to eat out for my birthday!). And lasagna for dinner tonight... mmm cannot wait!!!