*actual splat*

aaand cause karma's a bitch, i drove my bike through a pothole monday night cause my reaction time sucks, and sprained my elbow. no bike for me til i get back from houston :(

*Splat*

Life update!

I spent a half a months pay and then some on this:



Appropriately for me, it is made by the company Giant. I am in love with it, and it is my baby. I've been biking and enjoying it soooo much. I ride with a group of women on Wednesday nights, we go on a 21-mile loop at about 15-16mph. Last week I got ballsy and went on the Monday night ride out of the same bike shop, which is a way more intense, co-ed, 27-mile ride that goes considerably faster... I finished about five minutes behind the pack and was damn proud of myself... I hit 40mph on my bike. So screw running, I'm biking instead :)

Also I found out a couple weeks ago that I'm spending two weeks in June at NASA in Houston messing around with altered gravity and space cancer! We put some experiments on a plane that flies parabolas that create microgravity and hypergravity, and see if that affects the ability of cells to repair themselves. Ultimately we want to see if lunar dust is toxic in an altered gravity environment. Also, I WANT TO GO TO SPACE. I had breakfast on Wednesday with a retired astronaut who was a commander on two space shuttle flights (and co-pilot on another). I shook his hand. His hand, that landed a space shuttle. Twice. I also killed some time at work yesterday watching the live feed of the guys space walking it up fixing the Hubble telescope. Cool shite. Can I cure cancer and be an astronaut?

So other than biking and NASA, not much is new. My sister stayed home sick today with definite flu-like symptoms. I'm hoping she doesn't turn into a swine. That'd be awkward.

I can has PhD?

Sooo I found out on Thursday that I officially got accepted to the UMaine Graduate School's Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Molecular Biology program! That means starting this fall I'll be starting my PhD research project in the same lab I work in now, on the campus of USM in Portland. That means, I'm wicked excited. Also, I have sold my soul to science, and Dr. Wise, for the next five to seven years, but that's totally beside the point. It looks like my project will have something to do with depleted uranium and human lung cancer, but there's some wiggle room as to exactly what I write my thesis (i LOATHE that word) on.

Today I decided to give in to the snow and stay home from work. I called in reinforcements that work closer to the lab to help me out, I just wasn't interested in driving to Portland and finding a place to park. I hate that people are way freaking out over a snowstorm in March... anyone remember that one time we had a snow day in May? It's still winter for another couple weeks people. Plus, snow is great for photo-ing:



From last weekend's storm... the snow was heavy and sticky and coated everything from top to bottom... unfortunately we lost a couple trees in our yard but the powerlines looked real cool.The little mound of snow on the left is actually our grill... what's awesome is that we've lost a lot of snow in the few warm days we've had, so it probably wouldve been completely buried had it stayed cold :)

I'm off to Ireland two weeks from yesterday, so as long as the snow stays away that night I leave, I'm fine with it sticking around for a while longer.

In other news, I'm taking my triathlon training more seriously (meaning I'm actualyl going to train instead of winging it), and I joined a running group at Peak Performance in Portland. yesterday was my first run with them, and I made a running friend with whom I ran five whole miles, with zero stops, in fifty minutes. Way more awesome that I could've hoped. I still hated it, but I did it. This afternoon I'm planning out all my training sraight through the Lobsterman Tri in Sept. Wooooooohoo!

I feel a snow angel coming on...

teehee

so i stare at chromosomes a lot. usually they look like this

but sometimes i find really cool ones. like ones that look like a lobster.
it's two number one chromosomes that have split at one end and stuck together. not a very common mutation with the stuff we do, made all the more awesome cause it looks like a freakin' LOBSTAH

i <3 my job

i have the song “我完全没有任何理由理你” by the american-taiwanese musician Leehom Wang (王力宏）stuck in my head...

i need to spend less time perusing foreign youtube sites and more time you know, having a life.

also, what the hell was jay chou thinking!?

sometimes, i wish i could start a really cool blog that everyone would want to read every day.



sometimes, i go running, and then eat a big bowl of ice cream.

Hokay so.

I decided I may keep this thing going just for kicks. I changed the name, unfortunately the url is still 'kellieinchina' which isn't really true, but theres nothing i can do about that one. I guarantee it won't be as exciting as it would've been had I stayed in China (damn, i'm so good at advertising).

SO I'm re-employed at the lab I spent the last two summers with. John, the P.I., emailed me asking if I might want to come back once I told him I was coming back from China. Obviously I jumped at the opportunity, and I went in Monday to work out some details. They almost doubled my salary, which kicks ass like whoa, and I'm gonna be working on some cool stuff, like curing space cancer. I'm going to be working on growing cells in microgravity to simulate spaceflight, and seeing how the altered gravity impacts the cells' ability to repair DNA damage from toxic metals. Schweeeet.

Now that I have a job, I can start working on grad school applications again. I'm definitely applying to UMaine and Tufts. If I were to go to UMaine, I would end up working in the same lab I'm in now, which I wouldn't mind since I love the people and the lab and the projects... but I'd have to stay in Maine. I would move to Portland, but I would 10000x more be in Boston. Tufts is harder to get into, but has awesome labs too, and I could be in Boston... but I don't know any of the people in the labs or the projects yet. So I'd have to make that decision if I actually got into both. No big deal, just a matter of where I spend the next six years. I also may apply to BC, but I haven't decided yet. Maybe I'll go get to work on that.