Fun, rabbit, fun!

Posted on April 13, 2009 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I got to be the Easter Bunny this year, and if I do say so myself, I think I did a stellar job of making the eggs just hard enough to find.

My mother-in-law has an amazing property. She has a cozy house that her late husband built,


a beautiful formal garden,


a small patch of 2nd growth forest,

and my favourite, the sea lion rock.


I did briefly consider hucking an egg or two into the swamp to see exactly what a nine year old boy will do for chocolate, but you’ll be glad to hear that I thought better of it.


We saw the usual deer come on through, which was great. My MIL hasn’t seen a cougar in years, but the bear still visits from time to time. But the scariest wildlife was spotted at about 11 am on Easter Sunday:


The hunt over, the pack of wild nephews animals retires to its den to gorge on its prey.

Posted in family, food glorious food, gardening, nature, photos | 8 Comments

Pop quiz

Posted on April 10, 2009 by Cath@VWXYNot?


The person who patched this piece of road is:

a) a musician
b) a cell cycle biologist
c) a St Louis Blues fan
d) oblivious to the above connections that his/her handiwork forges in the brain of passing geeks cyclists

(Sorry about the dodgy angle of the photo, I had to take it upside down from the sidewalk to avoid being run over).

Posted in music, photos, science, silliness, sport | 5 Comments

Love birds

Posted on April 10, 2009 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I found some crows that I actually like!

“Hey, honey, shall we dive bomb this cyclist?”

“Oh, grow up”

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Woe is me

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Cath@VWXYNot?

The shower room is out of commision because of (ironically enough) a flood. They wouldn’t even let me in to grab stuff out of my locker. It being a cold and rainy day, I’m sitting here with my frizzy unwashed hair and unmoisturised face, wearing all the warm clothes I can muster, and hugging a mug of hot mint tea.

Boooooooooooo.

Posted in rants | 11 Comments

Lab daze

Posted on April 8, 2009 by Cath@VWXYNot?

People often ask me if I miss working at the bench. The answer is a resounding “no, not even a little bit”.
It’s not that I hated it at the time – there are much, much worse ways to spend a day, after all, and I’ve experienced some of them during a variety of soul-crushing summer jobs. The routine and repetition of doing 24 minipreps (a full rotor) for the fourth time in a week did get to me on occasion, and I always hated resuspending pellets and pHing solutions, but good labmates and music would offset the worst of it. And I had decent hands, it’s not like I was bad at it.
Well, not usually.
Everyone has off-days, and in fact a recent conversation in the pub turned to mistakes that everyone is entitled to make ONCE in their lab career without (too much) ridicule from their colleagues. We came up with the following:

  • retrophoresis (running a gel backwards)
  • using the wrong secondary antibody for your primary
  • discarding the supernatant and keeping the pellet when you meant to do the reverse
  • labeling the tube caps instead of the tubes and getting them mixed up
  • setting a gel without the comb in

The last one made me laugh as I remembered a particularly ridiculous day in Glasgow…

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 37 Comments

Random career bullets

Posted on April 7, 2009 by Cath@VWXYNot?
Look what I got!

And it only took a year and a half…
  • The sign serves a very important purpose that has nothing little to do with massaging my ego. I sit at an open-plan desk right outside my supervisor’s office, in the exact place where his former secretary (who has never been replaced) used to sit. Combined with the fact that my boss was away for my first week on the job and so was unable to introduce me properly, a lot of people assumed that I was his new secretary. This assumption has been very difficult to reverse. Even now, his many collaborators from other departments often drop by to ask me to schedule meetings and do other secretarial tasks. (And on the frequent occasions when there is no-one else around, I usually end up doing them, because otherwise they won’t get done). Even when I am able to refer the person to a colleague, the constant interruptions really break into my day. I’ve mentioned the problem several times, and things have got gradually better as a result. But when it came up again during a recent performance review with the department’s admin manager, she suggested that we order the sign. I spent ten minutes or so on Friday deciding on the best position for it, and it’s now directly in the sight-line of anyone who makes it past the filing cabinets that we moved in front of my desk to give me more privacy.
  • The environment in my industry job was quite rigid in some ways, one being an outright ban on wearing jeans (in our department at least, the lab people were allowed). I maintained this dress code in my new job for, oh, maybe a couple of weeks, before tentatively wearing jeans one Friday. No-one commented (I doubt that anyone even noticed), so I started to wear them more often. I now wear jeans two or three times a week. It’s great. I love how academia recognises that what you wear bears no relation to how well you do your job. I’ve also noticed a relationship to the first bullet; when I wear nice trousers or a skirt, I get treated more like a secretary, and when I wear jeans, I get treated more like a scientist.
  • Other things that academia recognises to be unrelated to job performance: turning up after 9 am, and listening to music while working. I no longer have to dash back early from the gym to avoid the disapproving 9:02 comments. And the first time my boss saw me listening to my iPod at work, as I yanked the buds out of my ears and apologised profusely, he said “why would I mind if you listen to your iPod?”
  • My last job really did mess with my psyche. Prior to the aforementioned performance review, I had filled in my form in industry-sanctioned levels of detail, mentioning every single mistake I’d made and how I’d dealt with them, and ticking off the “I have met this standard most of the time” boxes rather than the “all of the time” options. The admin manager thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen, and suggested severe edits. The second version was almost unrecognisable, and much more flattering.
  • The sun has got his hat on, hip hip hip hoooray! It’s warm (20C, five days after it snowed – April is weird), people are smiling more, and a complete stranger even started a conversation with me in a coffee shop yesterday. This never happens in Vancouver and I think it’s about time that changed (although this girl was actually a bit over-friendly, even by non-Vancouver standards, almost to the point of weirdness). Yes, this is work-related; what other reason could there possibly be for my boss to use a smiley face emoticon in an email yesterday?
Posted in career, personal, photos | 22 Comments

The Auld Enemy

Posted on April 3, 2009 by Cath@VWXYNot?

So. We meet again.

Let battle recommence…

Posted in Uncategorized | 25 Comments

ZOMG!

Posted on April 3, 2009 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I am in heaven.


They’re sweet, but not overly so, and with a definite tea taste. They are also very addictive, and surprisingly strong.

Woo hoo! TEA CANDY! YEAH! CAFFEINE AND SUGAR! YAY!

Posted in food glorious food, photos, silliness | 17 Comments

Confusing bilingual packaging

Posted on April 2, 2009 by Cath@VWXYNot?
How can this be??!!

Cat food sans nom?

Google and Saba were confused too:


“We iz not noing Fwench, but smellz abit fishy. Erm, iz for nom?”

But eventually came around:


“Om nom nom nom nom nom”

All is well.

Posted in furry friends, photos, silliness | 11 Comments

Mission: impossible?

Posted on April 1, 2009 by Cath@VWXYNot?

Legendary Newcastle striker Alan Shearer will manage the club until the end of the season.

Presuming that the BBC isn’t playing an April Fool’s joke, that is.

The local hero, who has an almost God-like status on Tyneside, is the fourth manager this season (!!!) and has just eight games to keep us in the Premier League… with the first one being against Chelsea.

I’m excited and terrified in equal measures.

Good luck Alan – you’ll need it. But don’t worry, we’ll still love you whatever happens!

p.s. I know no-one cares, but if I didn’t “tell” someone, I’d explode! I’d usually call my Dad, but he’s on holiday in Malta.

Posted in embarrassing fan girl, sport | 10 Comments