Of Mice and Men

I hit some combinations of CTRL-letter and it switched my keyboard to Greek. Kind of cool.

On Music

I had a profound disinterest in popular music for the first sixteen or so years of my life. I was musical. I played flute and piano and sang. I was only interested in the music that I was playing--in other words, classical. I knew I didn't like Mozart, and that I did like Beethoven, and that was about it.

I never wanted to get into popular music, performance-wise, and I usually resented being asked to play more modern-sounding composers. My musical goals included symphonies, but never, ever, a band.

Music used to play a very important role in my life. But I think with the advent of college, and being valued for other of my skills than my musical ones, its importance has dropped off.

I have never, really, cared about popular music. I know that it was fashionable to dislike boy bands. But honestly? Music is not that important to me. I find it difficult to care what people like and dislike, and even harder to foist music into unwilling or unknowing ears.

Perhaps it's that when in college I found a group of people who were, really, into music. I just didn't get it. I still don't, really

To me, it's just music. I can happily go days without my iPod (never at the gym, though) and don't miss the radio in the car. I don't often crave new music, and aside from a few artists to whom I am loyal, I don't particularly seek out concerts.

The thing I really don't get, in any form, is proselytation. I've been known to shove poems under people's noses, yeah. But I've stopped doing it because most people don't like poetry. I'd rather not share something than have someone resent me for it.

I've finally hit the point where I really don't care what people think about my taste in music. I know it's random, and I know it's scattered. It's just hard for me to work up the energy to battle the indifference.

On Literature

I have always, always been a reader. In the bathtub. While cooking. At family gatherings, to my mother's dismay. At sporting events, to my father's. In between classes at college. During classes in elementary and junior high school. I've said it before, but I can rarely remember being told "no" in a bookstore. I have quite a collection at home, and quite a few up here with me.

My friends freshman and sophomore year--music was important to them. Literature is important to me. It's what I do when I get a chance--I read, and I think about what I've read, and I talk about it with like-minded people, and then I read some more.

I know that very few people read like I do. I loved The Scarlet Letter. I love Hawthorne in general, and Steinbeck, and Poe, and all sorts of books that are required for people to read and hate.

And I love poetry. Today's reading as I image cells will be Shakespeare's sonnets. (I'm looking for more things to put on my poetry pants) And people, generally speaking, do not like poetry.

This is all just fine by me. It'd be a dead dull world if we all liked the same things.

On Work

Speaking of things I love...I'm imaging my own cells today. Cells for my personal project, not cells from my personal self. And they are beautiful. They're rat cells, and we've never worked with rats before, so we weren't quite sure how they'd turn out.

They're hardier than the guinea pig cells, much harder to kill. They express their fluorescent proteins (literally) brilliantly--it's hard to look through the microscope at them, they just blaze away at you, so brightly.

I got into work this morning an hour early to get a head start, and ended up being right on schedule, as there was a fire in the basement today. Still no word on what happened, or if the animals stored there are okay.

I am surprised at my enthusiasm for this project. I'm personally interested--it's a refreshing break after having no clue what I was doing or why last summer. Simply put, as I say once or more a day: I love my job.

In case you're curious, I'm working with beta adrenergic receptors in the heart cell, which are responsible for the production of a signaling molecule (cAMP) that helps regulate the calcium channels in the cell. What I'm doing now involves stimulating all beta receptors, then blocking one specific type, then blocking the other type, just to get an idea of who's responsible for what here.

I love making the solutions, mainly because I love chemistry. Also, the beauty of adding one clear liquid to another and being able to see them mix--try it with a concentrated sugar water, or a clear alcohol, and water--never fails to amaze me. I love culturing the cells. I even love the dull parts, because back here in the dark room is where science happens, science that can one day improve life for all of us.

In the future, never let me have caffiene. Particularly after having given blood. It is very bad for me.