Southwestern Cell

One of the great things about my job is that I have an outlet for my lifelong interest in merging science with the creative arts. And I occasionally get paid to do things that are fun & silly but still science-y.

I'm teaching intro bio this semester, and one thing I really struggle with is helping students develop a mental 3D conception of a cell. So after lecturing at them about cells, quizzing them on cell structures & their functions, and having them use microscopes to locate various organelles, I offered them the opportunity to build their very own cell.

Two groups took me up on it - I'd provide the molds and 10 liters of gelatin, and they'd bring the "organelles." I encouraged them to choose items that both looked like the organelle in question and had some functional feature in common. Behold - the resultant animal cell:

There's a definite Southwestern theme here - jalapenos for the mitochondria, habeneros for the peroxisomes, tomatoes for the lysosomes, black beans for the ribosomes. And for desert - an orange nucleus.

I also really dig the snow peas linked together to make the Golgi complex.



Yes, it's not exactly in proportion. And the smooth and rough ER are made of totally different materials. And the sectioning is a little wierd. If you think you can do better, I want to see it.

(There was also a plant cell group, but 1) they were a lot less organized, and 2) we learned an object lesson in why plant cells have cell walls when we took the cell out of its mold.)

Innaccurate profile photo

It's finally occurred to me that my profile photo isn't very accurate. (Well, it isn't very accurate anymore. It was spot-on when I put it up.)

However, over the summer I donated the bun to Locks of Love, and am now sporting a much shorter 'do. Evidently it is technically impossible to chop off the bun in situ, so it was actually a braid that got the chop.

It's a little weird to have a chunk of oneself just lying around the house.


And it's even weirder to re-envision myself as a person with short hair. So for now, the profile picture stays.

Birthday Lobster

Can you tell which is the real lobster?

Crested Butte: Year-round playground

Pardon me if I sound like a tourist brochure, but a lot of winter sport areas look like bomb targets in the warmer months (see: Vail).

Crested Butte is fairly spectacular 365 days a year.

My parents and my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew visited during my first weekend back. We took the Tater Tot on his first chairlift ride, which he loved. He called it the sky couch. He couldn't wait to get back on. This bodes well...he's the perfect age to instill a lifelong addiction to snow sports. Mwahahahahahaha!

Alas, since he lives in LA he may be beyond my auntly clutches.

It was uncharacteristically cloudy for our trip and it even sleeted a little at the top! Actually, it was coming down as snowflakes, but they melted right away. Winter's coming!!!! YAY!

There's a little leftover snow in this picture - just above the Tot's and my brother's heads. At this point it's just a breeding ground for cyanobacteria, but it's a fitting momento of a great ski season.

My brother is trying to get the Tot to take an interest in the pika on the rocks there, but the Tot was pretty fixated on getting back on the "ride."

My favorite blogger over at sievkins would have something clever to say about this.

Art no more

Alas, the Art has been reclaimed and is presumably being proudly displayed at the Potato Farm.

Speaking of art, in a slightly odd gender twist, the other three apartments in my entry are all occupied by male humanities/art types. I am the lone female and lone scientist.

Yesterday Phil the Photographer wanted to get me to participate in decorating the entry. While it would be great if the entry had a more inviting mien, I have no aesthetic sense and am therefore the wrong person to ask.

If he wants to know if that wierd dark red stain on the floor is blood (and if so, whose) then I'm in.

Scratch and sniff

Among the reasons I've become a lousy blogger is my inability to communicate non-visual aspects of living here. Like the smell of the sagebrush after rain. Yesterday we had a few rain showers - short, still-sunny, rainbow riddled affairs. Afterwards, the smell was unbelievable - I wanted to go roll around in it. (This is unwise for a variety of reasons). The system finally moved through around sunset, so the hills were bathed in perfect rosy light and everything looked so beautiful I wanted to take a thousand pictures and cry. Not necessarily in that order, but both would be about as effectual: the pictures would come out hazy and unfocused and the crying would make any observers think I'd gone nuts.

Sagebrush, for you flatlanders out there, does not smell like the sage you cook with. It is the same color, and the scent is pungently herbal (like cooking sage) but it's deeper and fresher.

It's refreshing in the same way stepping into a pine forest on a summer day is. Actually, the smell is a little piney, or at least reminiscent of pine.

Today there's literally not a cloud in the sky (and we have a lot of sky here) and it's that insane deep blue that you only get at altitude. Denver & Boulder have the cloudless days, but you have to climb a hill (well, mountain really) to get the true Colorado blue above the city haze.

Okay, I promised to blog more...and then I got distracted with the to do list.

Anyway, when Mr. and Mrs. Original PotatoHead visited Gunni back in April, they bought some Art at the center downtown. Because they were on their way LA, they left the Art in my tender care. So now the Yellow Bedroom has a nifty addition; something I like to call, "Geopolitical Struggle Hung At Trepaning Height In The Guest Room".

If you have other ideas...I'd love to hear them.

Incidently, the GSHATITGM is actually now in the main bedroom, where it clashes even more with the ambient decor but does allow one to get in and out of bed without embedding a copper plate in your skull.