Yeast

It's good for this:

Not good for neurons and cell cultures, which end up looking like this:

Yeast contamination: Biotechniques.com

Gah!

DP01_Day 11-- Baby Data to Date

The long awaited arrival of Baby Girl has finally come (appx. 11 days ago)-- August 9th, 2011 = a little bundle of awesomeness.

Day 0

Day 5

I've been out of the lab for 2 weeks enjoying and adjusting to parent life and the new slave driver's  baby's schedule. It's been great and exhausting. She sleeps in about 2-3 hour intervals on a 24-hr schedule. It's like a continuous time-course experiment; I collect diapers instead of cells and treat with milk instead of pesticides. It's tough during the nighttime. I have some trepidation about starting work again next week because I feel it will be tough to actually get up to go to work when what I really will need/want is at least another 2 hrs of sleep. Unlike a true time-course, however, at least I'm not sleeping on the (disgusting) couch in Roo. [Ask me in a week if I have been napping there during the day.]

Overall, though, things are going well. She's just so damn cute that it's hard to hold anything against her, even at 3am. For awhile we were charting her every move (diaper changes, soiled diapers, feedings, you name it). This made me feel useful and productive, hitting all the right lab-notebook-esque spots for me to chart the experiment's..er.. baby's progress. As expected, she's doing wonderfully-- gaining weight, eating well, and being super cute. C is also feeling well, better and more mobile every day.

Future directions for this project:

• Continue to feed and change baby at regular intervals
• Watch baby grow
• Squeeze baby for being cute and observe response