So, the cat began to get clingy by saturday and co-dependent on sunday. He accidentally raked me across the chest as he jumped up into my lap. That's really the problem with deaf cats: you can't bitch them out. I tried anyway.

Things at the Dr. Zivago's lab are going well, although we're still stuck in the same place. We have alot of issues to get around, such as:

Issue #1 - We were able to get rats "depressed" with a drug that activates the immune system and one that messes with dopamine, serotonin, etc. The effects of these two drugs actually interacted too for "late-stage" depression. Trouble is, the rats we used had never gotten sick before; they were "immuno-naive". When we tried the same experiments on rats with active immune systems, we got nothing, less than jack.

So now we need to get back our effects. Originally, rats had something called Parvo virus. We think that the continual low-grade infection keeps the immune system on its toes (though none of know much about immune function). So, with these new rats we want to get the same virus somehow, get them sick and then dispense the two drugs I mentioned above.

The only major problem with this idea is that University policy nearly everywhere in California mandates that you must have a clean colonies of rats and if you don't, you get to pay thousands of dollars to clean them up. Dr. Ziv thinks this is horseshit, along with some other professors. After all, can you really study the immune system in rats when it isn't even functioning? It isn't realistic. All animals get infections at an early age.

Solution: there's a facility across the way that's been vacated for awhile. We're going to make the place a Bio-Containment Level 1 structure so we handle that virus. Hopefully we can get back our effects, get on with the main thrust of research and eventually develop our "instantaneous" cure for depression.

Issue #2: The tech jocks up on the [floor] charged L an arm, a leg, two nuts and a few third world countries to install an IO (Input-Output) card into an old computer. All of us know those bastards are trying to scrap money together, but some of the charges are hellacious.

For example: the guy who does our work gets paid 49 dollars an hour, which for a computer mechanic is outrageous. He then charges us for three hours due to "crashing the system", a hour for a sentence-long email and other charges like that. On top of everything, the IO card costs twice as much as he said it was going to be. Suffice it to say, Grettle and Dr. Ziv want this guy's nuts in a vice. They're trying to cut some of the charges off, since if we have to pay the full amount then L won't have the cash to finish her experiment--and won't be able to get her master's degree.

A techie getting paid 49 an hour. Even a senior research scientist barely makes that much.

Otherwise, for issue #1 I have to write a proposal to the animal rights committee on campus justifying our experiment and why we have to use infected rats. On top of that I'm researching the past 16 some odd years of literature on the 1987 experiments that I'm writing up for a paper. Also, I need to start breeding rats we've gotten sometime this week and get the generations going.

It sounds like alot more than it is. I only go in Monday, Wednesday and Friday, sometimes working on stuff when I'm not there. All in all I feel like I'm accomplishing something in the lab.

As far as job searching goes, though, I haven't found anything yet. I wonder why I keep bothering but maybe, just maybe a nice part-time job at Mt. University or somewhere in Torrance will pop up.

And now, I eat pizza.

previous - next