Finally! A new post!

Every few weeks, I think about how I should post something, but somehow I never get around to it. My bejeweled high score is up to 191,000 though, so at least I'm using the time well ;)

Otherwise, life has been a long series of workdays for both of us. D is certainly glad to be working, but logging 14-16 hour days is getting a bit much for him. And my work seems to skip along a series of deadlines, so that I have to drop working on some projects to get a poster, or talk or paper revision done. I do feel like I'm accomplishing a lot, but it's hard not to look at everything that hasn't progressed lately.

My paper is almost ready to be published, and I don't see any reason that it won't be published once we submit it. I've pretty much finished analyzing the preliminary data for my dual fluorescence project, and hope to start imaging my data in December. I think the analysis will be pretty quick on that once I actually take the pictures, so that will be done by February.

My last project is really the pain right now. I'm having trouble generating successful cases, and it's always a different problem. I think I have finally figured out a staining problem I was having on my tissue. And I really want to finish all of the staining soon, so I don't risk more antibody problems down the line.

I have no idea when this will be done, but I would hope that I won't be doing any more surgery after January. Then it will be a lot of photographing and counting, and write the paper. I think that will give me a few months to write/defend my thesis, and still be done by June.

In the meantime, I have a job interview for a post-doc in New York City this week. The last week has been all about putting together a 30-minute talk on my work, which is both easier & harder than it sounds. I'm glad that I've already presented some of each of these projects, because I've created most of the graphs, tables, and image panels before, so that hasn't taken too long. And my work on dual fluorescence stuff has generated quite a few as well. Still, I'm amazed at how long it takes to change the colors of the bars in an image. I have almost no blank slide left to fill, but I may have to cut some (I've got 37 slides for 30 minutes right now, so something is going to have to go - or I'll have to talk for 45, which I don't really want to do).

Everything else in my life involves household chores, so not very much that's exciting there. Maybe I'll remember to bring a camera to NY with me, but even if it's pictureless, I'll post when I get back to let you all know how it went.

Good night!