TCM = August with stars = "movies this weekend"

TCM (Turner Movie Channel ) has this thing this August; a star a day. Today is Ingrid Bergman. And tonight I can watch Notorious (spy story in South America with a touch of Nazis). If I was awake in the middle of the night it will be a showing of Gaslight, in case you are interested in a very fascinating story on how an evil man wants to drive his wife insane before electricity was as it is now. And I guess I'll record Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde due to work hours, since she is quite remarkable in that one too.

All that talent and that face... she might be one of the most gorgeous women of all times... she managed something that was, especially in that time, quite extra-ordinary. She and an Italian director (yes, Rossellini) had an affair while both of them were married to other people. Although, I guess since they ended up being married to each other for 7 years, having three children (among them the beautiful Isabella Rossellini).

It got her on the bad list, took a toll on her career; she didn't do much between meeting R in the middle of the 40ies and early 50ies, even if I'm sure the children surely took some time. She was "too much of a risk" in Hollywood, not to mention what the intended audience thought... box office, ticket... revenues... But she got back in the game and made Anastasia, got an Oscar (then got divorced the year after that... in case someone is interested in counting all female recipients who get divorced after reciveing their Academy Award - a side note) and kept making movies until her death in 1982. Murder on the Orientexpress is another one of my old faves (closet Agatha Christie fan, that'd be me - kept a list and didn't stop until I'd read them all. It's like 82 books or something like that. Side note again.)

To me she's always been mixed in with Ingmar Bergman (no relation at all!) since they both were Bergmans, Swedish, famous and known by many outside of the little country in the north. If you can, watching her movies is lovely. Granted, I get envious about that face a lot of times. She made quite an impression in the start of her career since she filmed without much makeup at all - she had clear skin and a healthy appearance!

And tomorrow is Errol. I can enjoy Robin Hood in the afternoon (that fighting scene in the stairs is one of the first ones I remember seeing. There is that one and the Ivanhoe - not with Errol - from 1980 that I am quite certain triggered a slight interest in medieval reenactment and acting in general.)

Then it's a comedean Sunday; Bob Hope. Can't say I have even been a great fan of comedy but "I'll take Sweden" looks interesting, although it is Sunday morning but who knows? Maybe that movie from 1956 fits perfectly with waffles and a slow Sunday breakfast? I have to admit that I haven't seen it but the story about a man who moves to Sweden to stop his daughter from marrying a beach bum (in Sweden? in the 1950ies? Maybe the writers mistook California and Sweden...) ah well, it sounds like it could be a fun movie.

Monday has Warren Beatty and then after that I haven't picked all the movies to drown in. It's going to be a lot of options... Kathryn Hepburn, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Olivia de Havilland, Lauren Bacall, Peter O'Toole and many many more. It looks like I am going to have lots of diversion from everyday life, which might be a good plan.

Dream a little dream with a movie... and prolong the nightly dreams.

Now, time for work!

brain death vs heart death and DNR

This story "What broke my father's heart" in the New York Times made me cry when I read it. I remembered a feeling that I had many years ago, when I watched my grandmother in her hospice bed.

I remember talking about the guilt for a long time afterwards. The feeling that I had that "it has to be over soon" ... and I wasn't even talking about a long time, not in comparison to others.

And this story reminds me about another blog post about Alzheimer's (as well as about a friend of mine whose father had early onset Alzheimer's and what that did to her family). And the whole issue of "living the life" and what we humans can create nowadays.... now, when we have lovely medicine that help so many so much. But sometimes it creates these problems. And the decisions that are made, maybe not intentionally but they turn out to be "for our own good"... rather than the good of the other one.

I'm not trying to say we should stop invention or use of modern medicine. But just maybe, sometimes we should slow down.. and make the decisions a bit slower when we are allowed to think about the consequences of our decisions.

And if nothing else, that we all should contemplate the "Living will". If something were to happen to you, what do you wish would happen to you? Resuscitation? DNR? Organ donation? Medical research? All organs intact? And even more simple decisions what would happen with the body.... cremation or not? Spreading of ashes? Or not? Church services? Where? What?(And here where I am currently living they have a tradition of open casket and a viewing.... yeah... It's very non-familiar to me.)

I have had these talks with my parents. I mean, they have told me what they want for themselves. Actually, we have talked about it a bit too often for my liking. Funny enough (it's not funny at all but I can't think of another word), when I voiced my thoughts they replied "but you will not die before us so you need to write it down for someone else" (at the time I silently wondered who would be the one to take my thoughts and wants... since I did not have someone who had shared my life for 30 odd years like they have). I guess it will be someone involved with my life in the future when I finally die? That said, I made my first will when I was 23.

Why? Well, I was abroad in a foreign country and a few of my close friends back home came (well, come, I guess since it is still true) from not so fortunate upbringings and did not have too much money. And I didn't think my parents would want my savings and funds... (As it turned out, they both really want me to give my life insurance and other funds to someone I care about, and not them. As earlier mentioned, they really don't want to contemplate that I might accidentally end up dead before them. Since it is not "natural" I guess.)

So, along with all the other strange things I hope people talk about with their friends and loved ones - will and organ donations would be among that.

If you were in a car crash on the way to work tomorrow - would your wishes be known to your close ones? If not, please take a moment and think about it...

[on a side note, my Itunes turned on Placebo "Protect me from what I want" when I was in the middle of the post. Sounded fitting somehow.]

the thing with PCRs... I don't fancy at the moment

If you forget to change the flourophore [spell check wants it to be froufrou now wouldn't that be more fun?] to the one you will use in the RT-PCR protocol that the machine uses as a default setting, it doesn't matter what you did because the whole thing is read wrong and no, it can not be changed afterwards.

Duh.

That's when you redo things.... and then redo things... (because you forgot something else, or missed something small but since it is real time quantitative PCR it is sensitive... and yeah... sloppy you...) Just button up and redo it. Try not to shake when you pipette the small (minuscule) volumes and make 1000+ dilution series (OK, I might be over exaggerating just a bit).

I ended up designing new primers for sequencing... since it came back "wacko-we-don't-want-to-bind" last time again. Now, I have a new batch of purified fragments (just the idea that I am sequencing PCR fragments makes my tummy cringe but that's what they want....and truly, it makes it less impossible but still...) and should probably send them in with the "semi-old" primers anyway since it doesn't hurt to try - and hope is the last thing that dies, right?!

On the flip side I guess, I've been sort of the boss all this week since my boss is gone on vacation. It's interesting being the newest hire but being sort of in charge. Even if it doesn't increase my pay, or is visible in my job description... really, mostly it's about taking responsibility for things (and do more stuff for others), but it has felt a bit fun.

Now, time to leave soon. Just need to finish that sequence order...

How to drive (some) co-workers insane

Easy stuff…. Some of us are more sensitive than others…and this mostly revolves around open cube land… mostly…

When you step away from your desk to go to your lab or lunch or wherever you might go… please;
* Leave your pager (yes, the one you should wear on you since that is how people can get in touch with you) on your desk and let it have LOUD as signal

* Leave your cell phone with a LOUD ring signal and put it on the desk (not in a purse/desk/bag, although with certain loudnesses this might work too.)

* Never disable the “message repeat signal” so in case someone phones you and leaves a message, the phone can give a [by you preset] signal to remind you [if you were there this is] that “you have a message waiting”. Make sure that you put it on "remind me until I listen to the message, repeat every x mins"

If you are at your desk;
* Never lower your voice when you need to talk on the phone, especially not if you need to use a speaker phone (I mean, after all, it’s much more fun when you can listen to both sides of a conversation, right?) or if you are calling personal/private phone calls from work with some type of [private] comments (about friend/family/co-workers).

* Never reply to an email or a phone request when you were the one initiating the whole “we need to get this done yesterday”. Oh no, not you. Someone else can spend their whole day waiting for you to return something… and then, to further make it funny, please change your mind on what is priority number one and look surprised when this isn’t done. Because you didn’t do anything wrong… you had to run some personal stuff in the middle of the day…

* And as a kicker,(an old classic) if you take the last (second to, third to, anything less than 10 in an everyday item) vial/bottle/thing don’t bother letting anyone know that you did this since then [someone] could order more and actually not be out and having to run around like crazy looking for something vital to do experiments…. But if that meant that we could all go home and have the day off, sure…

Oh and one last thing…. If you can change an important file and save it in a magic place without telling people where you did this – then they might actually remake the file from scratch which will be funny once you tell them that “oh, but that information is already assembled in a file I saved over there in the magic cabinet without telling anyone”…

If you manage to do three out of these things, I know one person who would grow mildly irritated. If you did all of them in one day – yes, I know someone who’d go mental and be planning for an early leave since clearly she’d do more useful stuff at home than in the mad house with ring tones, bleeepings and loud noices.

(and no, head phones are not an option since where [some people] work over head calls are used to contact people when needed… since we don’t know where they are… light sedatives might be an option… maybe… ;) )

friday night rant about science and feminism

So, tonight I watched both "He's not just into you" and "Titanic" and read Scienceblogs. After that session I felt a bit over-thinking. Let's start with the simple.

The first movie is linked as a "girl movie". It started out OK, and let me put this right now - I like the genre, especially on a girly night - , and them it sort of all ends up with all "women want to get married whereas men don't need that confirmation" [yeah, don't think that all the time but certainly hope it's not true]. Apart from that, and all generalisation about men and women plus the fact that the girl who doesn't get it is a blond (Scarlet Johansen), it's a decent movie that made me think about the whole thing of looooove and that "when/if you really love her/him you'd d anything to keep them happy". [again, a simplified version about life ihmo.]

And then Titanic on top of that. This is where I started to think about science since Jack dies in the middle of the North Atlantic and freezes to death. I wondered if Rose actually would survive that much longer on top of that barge (spelling?) compared to Jack. (I also realize why Titanic was such a memorable moment for me since the worst ferry accident in Sweden happened a few years earlier from the movie, and the idea of being in +2C/34F water is quite scary if you have ever taken a bath in 32F/0C water.... since you know the freezing feeling of the brain, the movement of the body etc.)

And then it was the realization that before I moved to the USA, I had never actually seen a female professor give a lecture in a short, nice looking, (sort of sexy) dress. After I moved, there was all confusion in my head. Why? Because all my profs and the others told me was "look good in a [dress pants] suit and don't wear a skirt because this will put emphasis on you being a woman" and then I had all these women presenting in short skirts and tops. I didn't think too much about it until after the time I ended up presenting my conference paper in a nice top (not low cut) and a skirt and the comments I got afterwards was sort of in the like of this "wow, you look like a real women" and "wow, good looking legs" and things like that... but we did never talk about my research.... all my other talks and presentations were me dressed in a pants suit, or a pants and a nice top.

What I wonder is, is this just me? (Since I would love it to be only me and this particular moment.) Or is it the strange thing about being "female"/"womanly" and dress like that and then some scientists (men in this aspect as I am thinking about) are just going for gold?

Just lots of thoughts ... obviously..... a Friday night like this... and won't even go into the Angel episode I'm watching right now.... ;)