New Stylish Blog

Well I just put in a couple hours on this blog template and I like what I've done! I made the "alphageek" logo on a pretty cool website: typoGenerator. You just type in a word and it randomly generates a logo. Another cool site I found was ACME Label Maker which allows you to make labels from a bunch of nice fonts. I think the best find of the day, however, was the Mandarin Design page which is full of amazing CSS tricks. People who change their blog templates every other week (Dana) should definately check this site out!

In other news, I am having a great time at work lately. Although this is the exact same research position as last summer, I seem to be much more relaxed and carefree this time around. I think its a combination of being more comfortable with the lab equipment and staff, as well as not being in the process of applying for med school and not wanting to screw up letters of recommendation :)

...in other news
I am having a great time
at work lately...

Either way, I'm having a great time in the lab: getting lots of experiments done while still being able to chat and crack jokes with my co-workers. Our lab is investigating the cell-signalling involved in the FliC (a protein from E. coli which makes up its flagella/tail) and human TLR5 (a cell receptor in the gut which recognizes the tails of bacteria and then causes inflammation) interaction. I get to play with all sorts of cool equipment including fully mechanized fluorescence microscopes, digital cameras which cost 1/4 million dollars, -80 degree freezers, tons and tons of E. coli, human cancer cell lines, insect cell lines, and all of the protein/DNA purification you can shake a hat at.

Well thats all for now, hopefully it will stop raining soon!

Long Time No Post

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted. Lots of things happened... I'm trying to think about which ones to write about....

Well first off, the reason I haven't posted in a while is that the Med2008 website went down. This website has been my source of photos which I've been posting on this blog. So I just kept telling myself that I would post again as soon as some photos came back online, because I know there are some good pics out there. Alas, the photos are still not back online, so I'll just have to describe events with my remedial english/journalism skillz.

In summary, I finished off my first year of med school concluding with a nephrology (kidney) exam, a thorax anatomy bell-ringer exam, and a couple of practical patient-interview exams. All went well. I think...

The day of the last exam (also known as my birthday!) was awesome. Quite a sense of relief.

...I find it
incredibly difficult to not
discuss exams...

Immediately after finishing the exam (in fact while some of my friends were still writing), a bunch of us went out for lunch at Earl's. I find it incredibly difficult to not discuss exams after I'm finished writing them. I find myself constantly asking people what they put for question 27, how many "C"s did they put on their answer sheet!? But now that classes are pass/fail I should stop stressing myself out like that.

After lunch I went and bought a "victory cigar" with a couple of buddies. From there we went down to a local park where a med barbeque was happening, where we were able to fill up on free food and play some soccer with the boys (the girls played in net, with approximately 11 goalies per team).

From there, Zac, Ryan, and I drove around getting fancied up for the evenings. While at Ryan's place his mom fed us, so we stayed for a while sipping red wine and watching a bizarro animated film: Waking Life. This film is basically a series of lucid dreams in which the main character discusses a variety of philosophies of the mind with the people he runs into. The animation was amazing! Very dream-like. They filmed the whole thing live action and then painted over every single frame. Be warned though, its a very abstract movie.

After this was the bar scene. The meds had arranged to all meet up at Halo downtown Edmonton, which was the strangest bar atmosphere I've ever been to. The music was somewhat random, including: The Beatles, Elvis, Sublime, various Punk. It seemed like somebodies random MP3 player playlist, not much of a club scene at all. The people hanging out at this club were all of the "alternative" type. Dressed all grunge/punk style and not interested in dancing (hence the non-dancefloor areas were absolutely packed).

From there the night becomes a bit hazy in my mind, but basically involved taking off to a different club (with a tip that there were tons of med students there), only to find a couple of med students there making out in the corner. So the 3 other people I was with just danced the night away with me until the place closed and we wandered home.

Ok this post is too long. I'm stopping now.