Odds and Ends

It's been a while.

In a nutshell...
New apartment. New ward. New calling.
Old lab. Old friends. Old job.

Regarding School...
I petitioned back in September to be made a PhD student instead of a Masters student. By opting not to finish my MS and jump straight to PhD, and by opting to stay at BYU instead of graduating and going elsewhere for my PhD, I save myself about 4 years. Seemed like a pretty obvious choice to me.

I have been unofficially accepted.... (aka: all the faculty in my department congratulated me and welcomed me aboard as a doctoral candidate, but I'm still waiting on the actual acceptance letter from the university...)

Regarding Research...
The microscope images I spent 9 months on finally worked out. It was a beautiful moment.

Mouse myotubes (C2C12); Mitochondrial staining with MitoTracker Red

A paper I authored was accepted for publication. I will be presenting said paper at a conference next week.

I was introduced to this little gem in a class today, and decided to share it in honor of all the qPCR (quantitative polymerase chain reaction) I've done this week:

So now you all know the truth. That's how I spend my time....

Regarding Everything Else...
I'm going home this weekend to see Andrakay, who will be in town for the Distinguished Young Women of Idaho program in which her younger sister is participating. I haven't seen her since she got married last August, so I'm very excited for that :)

I'm also excited to watch General Conference with my family this weekend! I hope wherever you are, you get a chance to watch/listen/read too!

Getting Close...

I am getting down to the end with this book list. I've been reading other things as well, so it hasn't progressed incredibly quickly. Only 5 more to go!

East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Survivor's Club by Lisa Gardner
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King
The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis
Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran
Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
My Louisiana Sky by Kimberly Willis Holt
Middlemarch by George Elliot
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley & William D. Danko
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Star Girl by Jerry Spinelli
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordin
The Danger by Dick Francis
Laddie, a True Blue Story by Gene Stratton-Porter
Merchant of Death by D. J. MacHale
No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall

Recipe Update

I've been horrible about updating my recipes list lately (and by lately I mean for 3 months...) This is not because I haven't been cooking. With no roommates and no classes it's one of the only things I AM doing these days :)

So here are 13 recipes that I've made, in approximately the order they happened...sortof. Thirteen weeks is a long time to remember, but I did my best

Ice Cream Crunch Bars
Pecan Pie Bars
Homemade Soft Pretzels (really fun!)
Serendipity's Frozen Hot Chocolate (underwhelming...)
Breaded Balsamic Chicken (this one was the invention of necessity...and no official recipe exists)
Nutella Banana Ice Cream (modified from my Ben and Jerry's cookbook)
Breadsticks
Cherry Sherbet (labor-intensive)
White Almond Sour Cream Cake
Raspberry Crumb Pie
Zucchini Ribbon Pasta with Creamy Lemon Basil Sauce (5 stars!)
Meltaway Cookies (totally a grodie recipe...don't try this one)
JDawgs Sauce

I'm sure I'm forgetting things, but I was only behind by 13, so here they are. I solemnly swear to not let myself get behind like that again!

Mad Science

Ladies and Gentlemen! I give you...

MITOCHONDRIA!

This image was taken with a transmission electron microscope in a lab on Brigham Young University campus. It is from a mouse skeletal muscle cell that I cultured in my lab. Muwahahaha!

Grand Canyon, Briefly

At some point I intend to write a more thorough post about our trip to the Grand Canyon, but for right now I just wanted to post a couple pictures.

It was really windy. We all have pretty weird hair in all of our photos as a result.