Thursday, March 12, 2009

Retired

The field trip to the SBRI was a lot of fun. I had no idea it was the leading biomedical research institute in the country (or was it the world?). After seeing the equipment they had and the sort of work they were doing, I can believe it. But the people that worked there? They were so young! Like, recently graduated from high school or dropped out of college young. And they were all so pretty! I know that they hire a lot of students, and offer a lot of summer stuff for high school students, but that was pretty ridiculous. Do they only hire models as well? Apparently, you not only have to be a genius to be a biotechnitian, but you have to be gorgeous as well. Top of the food chain.

We dissected mosquitoes at the end. A lot of what we talked about during the tour had to do with mosquitoes infecting people with malaria. We pulled off the head of the little bugs to see the trachea and saliva glands, pulled out their sex organs, and then pulled off their back ends to expose the gut. All under a microscope. It was a little awkward to get used to the absolute lack of depth perception, but because of the way you had to use two hands to do the job, it really just seemed like a videogame.

I am experiencing two problems that are attacking my self confidence right now: My hair and my fish.

I noticed today that most of the ends of my hair are totally damaged. Split and splitting and kinking breaking all over the place. This explains why my hair has been looking so sick lately. The easy solution is to just cut it all off. But I don’t want to lose all of my hair. And I don’t know if it’s possible to get just a trim when your hair is layered. So: Not feeling so great about the way I look all of a sudden. I shall get this fixed soon.

My goldfish has been floating nonstop all week. Usually, if I don’t feed him, he doesn’t float. So if I see him swimming around the tank all happy, I know it’s time to feed him. And when he is floating around all happy, he should be left alone. He has been floating all week, and consequently has not been fed until a little while ago. But today he didn’t look happy so much. More frustrated, really. I think he may be really sick, and I think it may be my fault. I gave him some (floating) food, and he ate it with total desperation. Tomorrow, I’m giving everything in his tank a total scrub down, and he will be spending some time in my bathroom for frequent water changes.

I’ll just have to keep the bathroom door shut so the cats don’t get at him like they’ve been getting at my hair bands. I hope Othello will be okay.

No comments: