Weekend sans adventure

This was my first full weekend in Faro since I moved to Montenegro…coincidentally everyone I know is away this weekend or working furiously to finish some deadline. I am sitting here sipping a cup of white wine, thinking about my week. What a crazy week. I got back late Monday night from paradise (which I now call CP) for 4 straight stressful days of dna and waking at 3am wondering if my samples were degrading as I slept. I just did some more serial dilutions today, this time freezing them between each level, which will hopefully provide a method that will start to give us some repeatable results. I have to admit, this work is a lot harder than I thought. I realize I am a bedroom geneticist (if I am using the term correctly, I wonder how many fictitious terms I have passed on so far in this country?), doing it on the side. This is not something you can do on the side. Everyone I am surrounded by has been doing it for years and actually understands why you add all those products to your PCR reaction…and what P.C.R. actually stands for…(just kidding Filipe). My understanding does not even compare. Give me a Petri dish and some media and I will grow you some kelp, but dna? That is one elusive little molecule. I haven’t thrown in the towel yet though. I know there is a lesson in all of this. It’s a challenge, and I can learn. Who knows, this may lead me in a direction I had not anticipated. But I kind of miss growing kelp right now….

To start off the fim de semana, I popped open a bottle of Nico white wine (thanks Tania!), sliced up some peaches and really nice Portuguese crusty bread, a little olive oil with sea salt. So nice. I am truly having a Jarrett moment. He would be pleased to see me sitting at a table for more than 10 minutes (I made it for 30 min) savoring a glass of wine and a light meal in the late evening sun on my back patio (ignoring the kid staring at me between the points of his tennis match from across the fence), surrounded by my Mac products (ipod and book…what a dork I am, and a hypocrite considering I have always made fun of Mac users. That is, until I bought one, and now I know I was just jealous). Is it wrong to think of your computer as your friend? Is that wine or just loneliness? No really though, I pour my heart out to this laptop and I think it is an unavoidable bond for any writer.

*Just a side note: I am so glad I brought my ipod with me. I almost never listen to it at home. Here I listen to it on my morning walks to school now. On shuffle, which has got to be one of the best features of any music player, but especially for ipod because….well, my ipod really knows me and always plays what I want. For example, the other day on my walk, ipod started off with Iz’s “somewhere over the rainbow”, then went onto cyndy lauper and finished up with a little bluegrass. It was the perfect walk. However, I have had my ipod for almost 4 years now and I guess since I use it so rarely, it has worked great. But now that I am loving it so much, it is starting to make weird clicking sounds and pauses songs randomly. Is this Apple rearing its ugly head? As soon as the ex-PC user sees the light, the device breaks and you find yourself at the Genius Bar looking for answers.

Ok, another side note: Most of you know me as a very clean person, almost obsessively clean. I cannot stand to have empty plates on a table or crumbs on a counter. But, I have never lived alone and I have come to the conclusion that most of my behaviors are driven by guilt because in Portugal I am a slob (well at least by my standards). I leave dishes in the sink sometimes for 2 days! It really doesn’t matter at all because I am the only person who will need the sink. I have no guilt. Quite freeing really. Another thing that is different is that I am getting a ton of exercise here. I jog almost every morning and then do some yoga in my sunny tiled living room and usually bike or walk to school (that’s right Jason, not even a bus anymore!). I have never in my life had the capacity to lose weight while traveling since, as you all know, I experience life primarily via my taste buds. But Portugal is key.

*monetary exchanges have never been made between the author of this blog and Apple (well, except for all the money paid out for the plethora of accessories required to operate an ipod these days).


Sunday afternoon DNA UPDATE: I have bands! The serial freezing worked because I have bands (although faint) for the test primer loci for 13/14 samples I just ran. Filipe's samples still look better than mine but at least I know I have dna that can amplify. Picture to follow.