There is that...

It's again been a while... slacking off after only two months of blogging, it is shameful.  However, I have a compelling excuse (or rather a laundry list of compelling excuses, including laundry, as described below):

- Two weekends ago I was back in Canada for Mike and Larisa's wedding.  It was a spectacular weekend to be in Muskoka and it is always great to see two friends find happiness in each other.  It was also fun to see a lot of Hamilton people again and catch up - it is neat to see how, even after two and a half months "out of the loop", it almost seemed like I'd never left.  Four of us stayed together in a "cottage" (I use the quotations since no building up near Lake Joseph is really a "cottage", just varying levels of full home luxury) with beach access and a ton of activities, which we got to enjoy only partially on Saturday and Sunday morning.  I did, however, find the one leisure activity I apparently am not that talented at playing - shuffleboard.  This upset me a little bit since, as a curler and leisure activity enthusiast, it seemed like the kind of thing I would dominate in, but alas not (redeemed myself in horseshoes though, so it all ended well).   I suspect that when I become 70 my shuffleboard skills will be revealed to facilitate leisure activity dominance in all phases of life.  I have never understood how weddings are so exhausting when all you are actually doing is sitting around watching and eating, but this one was no exception to that rule - plus, no matter how great the ceremony is (excellent!), how tasty the food is (very!), and how happy you are for the married couple (extremely!), when you are 28 and single at a wedding, there is a little part of the day which is just not fun.  However, I would not have missed it and it was terrific fun to be back in Canada for even a couple of days (congratulations Mike and Larisa!).

- Airline rant: on the way back to Boston on the Sunday night, my flight was delayed an hour because (and I quote the pilot) "there are too many planes in the air over Boston".  Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this something that somebody, say a scheduling guru at the airport, could have figured out ahead of time?  You know, count the number of airplanes coming in and going out per hour and compare it to the number of gates?  I volunteer to take a look at the schedule for future dates I'm flying to give them a hand with these complex mathematics.

- Suspiciously three days following my flight (Air Canada strikes again!  I think blaming Air Canada for everything that goes wrong in life is a key part of Canadian culture), I came down with a very nasty cold/flu combination which forced me to take three days off work and really knocked me on my rear end.  To be fair to Air Canada, getting sick at this time of year is pretty much a tradition for me - my body senses the equal hours of sunlight and darkness at the autumnal equinox and doesn't like the prevailing trend (or something like that).  Even a week and a half later I am still having the occasional coughing fit from it, but life has been much better for the last six days or so (i.e. I can at least function as a member of society again).  The only moderately entertaining part of the experience: when you work primarily for a surgeon and are told to go home due to sickness, you can literally say you are leaving work on "doctor's orders".      

- Also from the "fun part of working for a surgeon" file: this week, I heard what was probably the strangest sentence ever directed at me.  I have been working on a formulation for a hydrogel containing the drug bupivacaine, which acts as a nerve blocking agent to anaesthetize the area in the body to which it is applied (or systemically if it is injected in the blood).  The idea is to have a material which can be injected into the body through a syringe (i.e. is essentially liquid outside the body), solidifies inside the body to form a gel which entraps the drug and controls its release over time, and then re-liquifies after several hours to remove the material from the application site and eliminate the anaesthetic effect.  Anyway, my lab experiments were suggesting my formulation was working reasonably well, so my most immediate boss and I had this conversation:

Me: "blah blah blah" (boring scientific explanation of cool properties of material which makes me think it might work)
Him:  "Sounds good.  Order the rats"
Me: "Um... OK"
Him: "Yeah, order the rats"
Me: "How does one go about ordering rats?"

Never did I think the phrase "order the rats" would be the scientific equivalent to "good job".  Anyhow, even though sewer work in Back Bay (across the river from me) has apparently stirred a large population of mutant giant rats into the streets which we could acquire for free, we are going ahead and ordering the rats ($12 each I am told) to test this material.  Although it won't exactly be earth-shattering science if it works, it is certainly enough for a paper (and something that may very easily see human use since all the materials used in my formulation are already approved for human use in other forms). 

As a side note, in order to do animal experiments, a highly extensive list of protocols must be followed in order to minimize the discomfort of the lab animals.  This is obviously a very good and worthy idea.  I have somewhat mixed feelings over doing animal experiments where you are actively hurting the animal (prior to trying to fix it) and ultimately sacrificing it to find out what effects the material had not only where you inserted it but also on other parts of the anatomy.  This is particularly true with rabbits, a favourite animal model in my lab, given that my pet as a kid was a lab rabbit rescued from a genetics experimental lab at the University of Guelph.   However, it is absolutely true that there is NO other way to find out if something may be medically useful without having to put people into very real health danger - you could do lab bench or even cell experiments until you are blue in the face and still be totally unable to predict what may happen in the body.  So the practical options are (a) do animal research as humanely as possible (b) use human subjects and potentially cause immense side-effects in the process or (c) be satisified with current medical technologies and not worry about easing human suffering to any greater extent.  Given the choices, I can accept the need to do animal experiments.  Anyhow, the point of all this is that in order to perform protocols on rats or rabbits at MIT (or, I suspect, most other institutions), one must both provide toys for the animals in their cages and - I kid you not - provide them with music 24/7 for their listening pleasure.  Apparently rabbits really dig adult contemporary music (throw on some jazz and the experiment is ruined I tell you!).  Some may argue that this is another form of "inducing cruel or unusual suffering" but let's let that pass.  The thing that struck me when I learned this is that this is a whole market that music producers are just not exploiting.  I envision this conversation in the board rooms of studios everywhere if this news gets out:

Music Executive #1: "So, the new CD has pretty much tanked in both the U.S. and Europe radio markets"
Music Executive #2: "Yeah, yeah, but let's get to the key issue - how are we doing on the "Small Rodents" chart?"
Music Executive #1: "Top 10 baby!"
Music Executive #2: "Sweet!  Plan the follow-up album!"

- I have had a busy weekend this weekend as well - a little lab work, a little work on papers from my PhD (7 published, 1 submitted, one to submit tonight (in theory), and 4-5 more to go... woo hoo!), but also a little fun.  Saturday was Smithsonian Museum Day here in the U.S. of A., which meant that 4000 museums nation-wide were offering free admission, including the Museum of Fine Arts here in Boston.   So, sensing the price was right (regular admission was $15, which is a little rich for my blood), I went with Courtney and Brett to check it out.   Lots of nice stuff and a fantastic building to boot.  My favourite part was the musical instrument room and, in particular, a guitar which was played with keys on the side which, when pressed, would induce ivory mallets to pop through the hole in the guitar to strike the strings.  Why bother with such a contraption?  So women could play it without breaking their fingernails - of course!  I also had a good time at a welcome dinner for newbies at my church last night (at the pastor's house - he has 8 kids, so it was hardly noticeable when the 20 guests showed up in terms of added activity).  It is nice to have a home cooked meal that you don't have to prepare, and I ended up meeting a lot of nice people to boot.  The church is small, but the thing I like most about it is that the vast majority of the people there really "buy in" - that is, they just don't show up on Sunday for the service and then take off but are active throughout the week in other ministries, small groups, etc.  It's much harder to be a passenger in a smaller church, which is why I enjoy it.  I played on the worship team again this week (and apparently will be weekly for the forseeable future, which is quite OK since it is a lot of fun outside of the 8:15AM starts on Sunday) and start in a small group this week.    

- Unrelated side note:  Dunkin' Donuts Munchkin donut bits are tastier than Tim Horton's timbits.  There, I said it.  Go ahead and start the Canadian citizenship revokation process.