Where I spend my days....

So it occurred to me that most of you don't know how I spend my days at work. I won't bore you with the details of what we actually do in the lab... I've found that telling people I'm a biochemist is one of the fastest conversation killers ever known. Most people just smile and nod, or say "oh, wow", and then change the conversation to something else. Occasionally the brave soul tries to actually converse with me about my job, and ventures a question like, "What do you actually do, what do you study?" I usually make it about 2-3 sentences, including words like Ubiquitin, protein degradation, or enzyme kinetics, before their poor little eyes glaze over, and I lose them completely. I can almost hear them thinking ..." what will I eat for dinner tonight?" or "boy, I hope my TiVo is recording Grey's Anatomy" or "I hope the star of my fantasy football team didn't get hurt today".
So like I said, I won't bore you with the details. But since everyone likes pictures, here's a few of the lab where I spend my days.....

Lunar Eclipse

I read about the lunar eclipse on Monday, and had every good intention of getting up at 5am on tuesday to see it. However, because I like to sleep so much, I decided not to set my alarm for it. I figured since I've been waking up just about every 1/2 hour between 1am and 5am every night anyway (oh, do I miss the days when I was a heavy sleeper... now if I hear any little noise, I sit up wide awake, and then toss and turn for the next few hours), I'd wake up for it anyway.

So I fell sound asleep around 10:30, and was sleeping the sleep of the dead ... when I was jolted awake by violent coughing and gasping at 4:30am. Jeff, who is still fighting off bronchitis after a full month, 2 rounds of antibiotics, a week's worth of steroid treatments, and several visits to the doctor, was sitting up on the edge of bed trying to breath and failing miserably.

So after a couple minutes more of wheezing, gasping, coughing, and turning red and then purple, he finally got some air in and settled back down. By this time, I was wide awake, ready to call 911 in case he stopped breathing all together, and there was pretty much no going back to sleep.
I glanced over at the clock and saw that it was around 5am ... time for the lunar eclipse! So I put on some flipflops, and wandered out to the patio to watch the show. I took some pictures, but they didn't turn out very well since my camera only has a 3x zoom... but here's what it would have looked like with a better camera or a telescope....

I was pleasantly surprised to have some company out in the yard, when Jeff, Baxter, and Sake all came out to sit on the patio with me. Though it was a pleasant night, no wind and no bugs, I found out something about Louisiana after hot, humid days and steamy nights.... It Stinks.... Literally. Our yard smelled like a combination of sewage and swamp. So much for the pleasant smell of ginger and jasmine, both of which are growning in our back yard... and what about that lavendar growing on the patio in my herb garden?!?

Funny how I've never noticed that smell during the day. The sun must burn the stench right out!

An afternoon of hard work ... and a lot of sweating.

On Sunday after brunch, I decided to tackle the issue of our messy shed, which has been on my to do list for at least a month, starting back when I bought a pulley system to hang mom's bike from the shed ceiling after seeing Chuck and Erin's bike's new home hanging from their shed ceiling. So I finally opened the box from walmart, assembled my pulley system, and headed out to the shed to get started.

I lasted all of about 10 minutes standing on top of a table in the shed, which was about 120 degrees, before heading back inside to change into shorts and a sport bra. Once I had the bike hung up, I figured I should just continue with the project, despite the heat, and get it done.

So about 3 hours, and 5 lbs of sweat, later, here's the final result.....

If you look closely, you can see our hockey sticks and snow shovel on the shelf in the back. We also have two pairs of ice skates stashed in here. I'm not sure why we are keeping them, but my minnesota man didn't seem ready to part with his winter gear.