When Life Hands You Tomatoes

As soon as I hit 'publish' at the end of this post, I fully intend to turn off the computer, breathe an enormous sigh of relief that I survived the day, and fall straight into bed.  It's just been one of those days, you know?

I spent over eight hours between yesterday and today doing an experiment in my lab called a 'Western blot.'  I know that doesn't mean anything to anyone.  Before your eyes glaze over, I will say this much: the point of a Western blot is to separate different proteins by their sizes.  It's a long and detail-filled process.  It requires a lot of precision and exact timing.  And it was the first one I'd ever done by myself (after having only watched someone else once.)  The blot I did was for someone else's thesis.  She's been having a really hard time getting data to write her thesis, and the tissue I was using for this blot was kinda important.  So no pressure for my first solo, right?

These are what Western blots are supposed to look like after you develop them:

And this is what the film I developed today looked like:

Hmmmm....one of these things is not like the other? Just for kicks, lets get a close-up of that top one especially:

And that, my friends, is what an epic fail looks like. No lanes. No bands. Just large, nebulous blobs of nothing. Definitely no protein of interest.  Remember in my last post when I said my enormous ego would be back to normal after a few failed experiments?  Actually, it only took one.  Consider my bubble burst.

So I did what any self-respecting failure of a scientist would do.  I moped.  And then I cooked.  Because when life hands you tomatoes, make tomato soup.  With basil.  And use this recipe.

I also baked chocolate chips cookies. Baking cookies always makes me feel better.

That, and knowing that pretty much everyone who matters in my life has no idea what a Western blot even is, regardless of how much I try to explain it. So in the grand scheme of things, whether or not I'm good at it probably doesn't even matter :)

{Except it might matter for the next two years while I'm trying to gather data to write a thesis, but other than that....nope.}