Went to the lab even though it was Saturday. Shadowed Rachel for a few hour. She showed me how to start the PCR. First the sample a lyced to make the DNA available. Then the sample is run through a filter a couple of times to remove the dna from the rest of the sample. Then the DNA is washed off of the filter. That DNA extraction is as far as we got and the whole process took about an hour and a half for 8 samples. She said it normally takes twice that but we went faster because Lee and I were helping. Looks like I'm going to be putting in some long hours in the lab to process the 100+ kissing bugs that have been collected.
After we got back I skyped with Ben for a while. He was so sweet. When the video chat opened up he was wearing a lab coat and google and had his home made railgun ready to go. We talked for about an hour until the area where I was sitting got too loud. I was by a piano and although she said she was going to play softly I could barely hear Ben. The internet in this place is going one of the many frustrating things. It would drive me crazy to live here for more than just the summer. It costs 5 dollars to have laundry done, including a convoluted laundry card scam clearly designed to make people spend as much money as possible on laundry. I made some egg, broccoli and alfrado spaghetti and ate with Lee and Cassy. The kitchen was disgustingly dirty even by my admittedly lax standards. Lee and I had some time to kill before the movie in the theater of the dorm so we soaked our feet in the tub and talked about getting ourselves into and out of crazy relationships. Then when we went to the theater perks of being a wallflower was on but we only caught the last 20 min. Looks like a really good movie so I think I'm going to see if Ben and I can watch it on Netflix. When that was over the Computer science REU came in with 21 jump street. It was really funny.
Just as a side note, I really want to reply to everyone's pm's but I am really busy and it's only going to get worse. I have about 250 kissing bugs to identify to species, photograph, dissect, extract DNA and DNA barcode. So I'm really super busy but I still love you.
After we got back I skyped with Ben for a while. He was so sweet. When the video chat opened up he was wearing a lab coat and google and had his home made railgun ready to go. We talked for about an hour until the area where I was sitting got too loud. I was by a piano and although she said she was going to play softly I could barely hear Ben. The internet in this place is going one of the many frustrating things. It would drive me crazy to live here for more than just the summer. It costs 5 dollars to have laundry done, including a convoluted laundry card scam clearly designed to make people spend as much money as possible on laundry. I made some egg, broccoli and alfrado spaghetti and ate with Lee and Cassy. The kitchen was disgustingly dirty even by my admittedly lax standards. Lee and I had some time to kill before the movie in the theater of the dorm so we soaked our feet in the tub and talked about getting ourselves into and out of crazy relationships. Then when we went to the theater perks of being a wallflower was on but we only caught the last 20 min. Looks like a really good movie so I think I'm going to see if Ben and I can watch it on Netflix. When that was over the Computer science REU came in with 21 jump street. It was really funny.
Just as a side note, I really want to reply to everyone's pm's but I am really busy and it's only going to get worse. I have about 250 kissing bugs to identify to species, photograph, dissect, extract DNA and DNA barcode. So I'm really super busy but I still love you.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
persephone:
I'm doing PCR today, still getting the hang of it 
higgs:
I still have a lot of documentation and dissection to do before really getting into the PCR work but I'm going to be a champ at it by the time I leave. 300+ for my project plus quite a few for practice.