Saturday, May 13, 2006
KaBoom
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Today started off in lab. I don't work every weekend, but when there is work to be done, I'm usually good about going in. Grad school is all about figuring what schedule works for you. I really didn't have that much to do today. I'm trying to delete two genes that I think may play an important role in how Francisella survives inside of human cells.
The first step is to design the DNA that will replace these genes. Bacteria are little DNA-making machines and so we use E. coli to make a ton of the DNA we want. In the picture right, the white colonies of bacteria are making our DNA while the blue ones are not.
By lunchtime I was done and back at home to enjoy the nice weather with some barbecuing. I enjoy few things better than marinated meat cooked over an open flame. Today was boneless chicken thighs, which I had never seen before in a grocery store.
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The cooking didn't end there, though. I'm not much of a baker, but Lacey and I made desserts for our trip to the city later in the day. I guess puppy chow (chex mix, peanut butter, melted chocolate and powdered sugar) and rice crispy treats aren't really baking, though, but they sure are addictive.
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As I mentioned earlier in the week, there was a concert sponsored by KFOG, the one of the local classic rock stations, in San Francisco today. Not too many things in this area are free so my friends and I knew we had to take advantage of the opportunity. I live right on the CalTrain line that runs from the South Bay up to the city and so I was fortunate to not have to drive. Plus, train rides with a big group of friends is always interesting.
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When we reached Pier 30 where the concert and fireworks were, it was a sea of humanity. I guess everyone had the same thoughts on free events as me. There were three acts playing, but we only showed up in time for the third one, Los Lonely Boys. I'll have to be honest, that I only know one of their songs, Heaven, but the festive concert atmosphere was still a lot of fun.
Plus, it was a great opportunity to just sit around and hang out with friends. My friend Eric, who I went to high school with, came over from Berkeley which was a lot of fun.
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| Here is as close as we got to the stage | Its hard to see in the picture but a whole section of people were throwing tortillas into the air like frisbees. | The Bay Bridge from our seats | ||
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| Pre-fireworks chilling | ||||
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The fireworks show was one of the best I've ever seen, not just due to the sheer number or the choreography with the piped-in music, but because they had shells that I'd never seen before.
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| Jon with his 3D fireworks glasses he got at a Giants game | My poor attempt to photograph fireworks (trust me that they were really cool) | |||
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For a better view, check out the KFOG KaBoom website.
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After the fireworks, I must say I was impressed with how quickly over 100,000 people got out of the pier. The walk back to the train station was interesting with thousands of people flooding the Embarcadero along the bay and hundreds of motorcycles weaving between them. My classmates, Lacey and I were lucky enough to all get seats together on the train even though it was at capacity. Lacey promptly fell asleep as evidenced here.
Not able to talk to her, Jay taught me a movie trivia game where the first person names a movie and then the next person names an actor in the movie. The third person then names another movie that actor was in and so on. Having worked at Blockbuster for three years this was my kind of game and Jay, Reija and I played all the way back to Palo Alto.
The downside was I was really awake and alert when we got off the train, making it impossible to go to bed. So here I am typing at midnight. Good thing I don't have to get up early tomorrow.
Posted at 11:49 PM
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