Fire, Cake and Music? Sounds Exciting!

The valley has been blanketed in smoke all week from the many, many fires burning all across the state.  Usually this isn't a problem for us because a) being surrounded by farms in all directions is kind of like having 50 miles of "defensible space" around the town, b) summer fires are usually fed by wind, which dissipates the smoke before it gets too far, and c) lightning is pretty rare, especially in the summer, but that's what caused most of the fires burning right now.  Here's a view from the 6th floor of the UCDavis Genome and Biomedical Science Facility.  Normally you'd be able to see mountains reach about 1/3 of the way to where the sun is, and I wouldn't be able to look directly at the sun without blinding myself at this time of day, but I did, and my vision is intact.  It's also pretty bad for people with respiratory problems, and nobody should really be doing any outdoor activities, but I still see people running outside, midday, when the air quality is poorest... dumb.

My fellow scientists surprised me with birthday cupcakes yesterday, made by Jacquelyn.  Usually we celebrate birthdays at lab meetings, and since we have no meetings this month, I didn't think I'd be getting one.  It all reminded me that I never ended up getting/having a cake for the actual celebration on Saturday.

I've finally made the decision to go to the Inaugural Outside Lands Festival regardless of who's coming with me, or how expensive it is.  I just don't want to pass up the opportunity to see Radiohead, Beck, The Black Keys, and Cold War Kids in one relatively cheap ($90) show.  From listening to some samples of the other acts, it sounds like a recipe for funk, with a side of raggae... not exactly the shows I look for, but the ticket price more than makes up for the aforementioned main acts, and at least it's something you can dance to.  Check it out at SFOutsideLands.com.

The Treasure Island Music Festival on the other hand, I had always planned to attend.  After an amazing lineup at last year's inaugural event (M. Ward, Built to Spill, Sea Wolf, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Spoon, and Modest Mouse) I was pleasantly surprised to find an equally amazing, if not better, lineup for this years event.  This year features Tegan and Sara, Okkervil River, Tokyo Police Club, Dr. Dog, John Vanderslice, and the Raconteurs, plus two of my absolute favorite bands, Vampire Weekend and The Dodo's!  Better yet, you get all this music for the low price of just $67.  And that's not all.  You also get to listen to this music in one of the greatest festival locations available, Treasure Island, nestled in the middle of the San Francisco Bay (see below).  Check it out at TreasureIslandFestival.com.

If you want to join me at any of these Festivals, let me know.  I'm buying tickets soon.

Best... Birthday... EVER!

The housing crisis is over; my friend Negin managed to get us an apartment in The Colleges at LaRue, which is one of the many on-campus apartment complexes that are nearly impossible to get into.  Unfortunately we can't practice at full volume in an apartment, but I'm sure we'll be able to figure something out.

One of my college roommates, Brandt, started his job in Sacramento this week.  I helped him move into his new apartment in the middle of midtown, which appears to be a pretty happening place in the city.  I had gotten so used to everything in Davis being 5 minutes away, that I didn't realize the trip to Sacramento is equivalent to getting anywhere in Atlanta.  I guess I'll be hanging out with him more than I thought.

The best part of the week was Saturday; my birthday.  I must have said the phrase "best birthday ever" at least a dozen times.  It's going to go down as one of my most memorable birthdays, along with my senior years in high school and college.  Sorry this next part is so long, but it's a story that needs to be told.  If you're reading this, you probably have my phone number, so just call me to hear the better, funnier version.  Here's how it went down:

1pm - A few of us went to the swimming hole in Winters.  It's located at a collapsed dam just outside of town.  The rope swing was unbelievably fun, and the 60 degree waters complemented the 100 degree heat very well.

3pm - Slurpees at the 7-11 back in Davis.  Yet another great, and delicious, way to beat the heat.

7pm - Dinner at Maykadeh persian restaurant in San Francisco.  Here's where our plans start turning sour.  Under the advice of the guys in my car, we decided it was a good idea to park in between the restaurant and the concert venue (The Independent).  15 blocks later, we barely make our reservation.  Next, we get a call from Farid who was coming to meet us.  His car broke down a block from the restaurant.  Dinner kept going, but with half the table missing.  Later, everyone was taking shifts between eating and waiting at the car.  But it was still a great dinner, and we all had fun.

9pm - The restaurant is in little italy, so we got gelato and started on the walk back toward the venue.  Halfway through the trek, we concede that there's no way we'd make it on foot, and decide to drive once we make it to the car.  The girls fell behind with a block left, so I hid around the corner and nearly scared the life out of Mona... classic!  45 minutes later, we squeeze 7 people into my car a head for the concert.

10pm - We make it to the venue just before the main acts, and meet up with three more friends.  I'm excited to hear Frightened Rabbit and Oxford Collapse. Then we find out the show is 21+, and two of my friends can't get in.  We end up scalping all 12 tickets, taking a $4 loss on each one.  We head into the cafe across the street to get some drinks and plan our next move, except they're out of coffee!?  We finally decide to go bowling at some alley in the Presidio.

11pm - 

As I assume is the case with most WWII era decommissioned military bases, the Presidio is pretty creepy at night, but the old buildings makes it feel like taking a trip back in time.  Once we find the alley, the estimated hour long wait for an open lane turns out to be just 10 minutes.  It's the first thing to go right the whole night.

3am - Make it home and  I decide to keep Dan company until his 5am shift started at Starbucks.  We pass the time by trying to, and succeeding at, breaking into Omid's room to use his TV.  I finally went home and collapsed into bed, just as the sun crept over the Sierras.

Sorry for the lack of photos, but I forgot my camera and I'm in the process of getting some of the pictures my friends took that night.  Thanks to everyone for their birthday wishes, and a special thanks to all my friends that came out that night to make it such a blast!

This is the funny card my friends got me.  It was a talking card, featuring the voice of a fellow Baha'i, Rainn Wilson, aka Dwight Schrute.  It said "Women are like wolves.  If you want a wolf, you have to trap it... you have to snare it.  Then you have to tame it, keep it happy, care for it, feed it, lovingly, the way an animal deserves to be loved, and my animal deserves a lot of loving."  A very weird, but I guess perfectly Dwight-worthy, birthday message.

Housing and Hybridomas

Today was my turn to present at lab meeting.  I had been working with Anna Peter, an MD/PhD student rotating through our lab, so she contributed some slides and explained most of our experimental methods.  The meeting went well, and I got some good feedback.  This led to the decision to use one of the frozen hybridoma cell lines we have in lab either as a positive control for my cell cycle and proliferation experiments (because they grow like crazy) or at least use them in optimizing my cell cycle stains.  This is really great news to me because at least for the next few experiments, I won't have to isolate mouse B cells (a whole-day process) to run the analyses.  To spice up this post I added a figure showing the working model for my project below.  See if you can figure out what it means.  Maybe I'll explain it (i.e. my entire project for the next 3 years) in a future post, but for now, just be content with confusion and bewilderment.

On the housing front, the realtor from King Properties stood us up when we went to see the house in South Davis.  It was very frustrating, and surprisingly unprofessional.   With a vacancy rate below 1%, most students, ourselves included, are getting desperate to find a decent place to live.  Decent houses are hard to find, but we refuse to settle on an apartment and sacrifice our band's ability to practice freely.  We remain optimistic, especially now that it's the summer and most undergrads have migrated back to their hometowns. I feel our chances will improve a bit, and I'll be able to tell you about our future home shortly.

The song I can't stop listening to this week is Horny Hippies by The Dodo's.  Email me if you want a copy.