April makes me happy.

Washinton, DC's got nothing on Wooster Square.
Originally uploaded by littlee.

April makes me happy because it's the month when everyone goes insane. Things turn green, warm breezes begin to replace cold ones and wild horses could not drag my roommate into lab on a sunny Saturday. Actually, Diana does still diligently attend to science on weekends, but she complains of a deep longing to wander slowly through tree-lined parks or sit on the porch drinking Mint Juleps instead.

April also brings the cherry, crab apple and pear tree blossoms. Though I've been in The Haven for four years, this is the first year I made it over to Wooster Square during The Great Blossoming. This year's viewing almost didn't happen either - at 5 o'clock this past Friday evening, my labmate Shira rushed into my bay,

"Quick! Come with me and Uri to Wooster Square to see the trees. It's supposed to start raining in 20 minutes and it's not stopping all weekend. The whole thing will be gone!"

Samples were thrown in the freezer, bleach was squirted at things that needed to die and we were off to see the cherry blossoms. This is how spring affects people around here. Experiments? What experiments? Laundry? Grocery shopping? Bother me not with such dull, daily matters. It's WARM outside. Flowers are BLOOMING. I even got excited last week when I got my first mosquito bite...

April also means my birthday and my birthday means, well, that my driver license is about to expire. I was very crabby about having to actually go to the DMV to renew my license this morning. I seem to recall simply having to mail a check in California, no tedious DMV lines required. But here, the DMV employees like us so much they want to see us and take new pictures every few years. I wasn't ready for my close-up at 8 a.m. and once again, the face staring out me from the surface of my shiny plastic license is looking a little more serial killer-esque than I might prefer.

Jeffrey, a just-turned 16 year old in front of me in line, didn't seem to care that his mug shot wasn't all that flattering. After he was called up to the desk to get his newly-minted card o' freedom, he and his father immediately bent over it, inspecting its holograms and smiling at the enormity of its meaning. My sense of Jeffrey, given his buzz cut, his torn sagging jeans and the sweatshirt hood that obscured his face constantly except for his brief photo-op, is that he's like most 16 year-old boys. He probably normally just greets his dad with a grunt and a sullen expression before loping off to hang with his crew. This morning though, he was too excited to be cool and he didn't seem to mind that his dad actually HUGGED him in front of God and everyone in line at the CT DMV. Ah Jeffrey, just another victim of spring fever.

"We are the union! The mighty, mighty union!"

Steeeee-rike!
Originally uploaded by littlee.

The lecture for WGSS 355 was almost empty this morning. To be clear, sparse attendance is the norm for this time slot - at the astonishingly early hour of *gasp* 9:30. Also, as a last minute alternative offered to relieve the 10:30 lecture space crises for an over-enrolled class, this meeting time doesn't fit into many students' schedules. About 50 students usually attend, stumbling bleary-eyed into SSS 114 and dropping in clusters throughout the 500 seat auditorium. Each morning, despite the low energy of the small, groggy audience, Professor Summers diligently puts on the whole show for the early risers, knowing full well that he will repeat every word about an hour later to a room stuffed to capacity.

It is now late in the semester, only one week left before exam period begins. Everyone is dragging, even Professory Summers, who at a recent TA meeting, mentioned the possibility of showing a movie or two to fill class time. And like I said, this morning's 9:30 crowd was particularly thin. Maybe about 25 or so straggled in, many of them quite late and some with visiting prospective Yalie frosh in tow, padding the numbers. One couldn't fail to notice the increased echo of Professor Summer's microphone-amplified voice against the wood panelling of SSS 114. As he lectured on about dubious scientific studies examining correllations between brain anatomy and sexual orientation, the minimal energy with which he'd begun his lecture all but vanished.

I was also a little lazy and distracted in my usual third row seat. Notetaking had lapsed within the first few minutes, the last entry on the page reminding me simply to download the lecture's powerpoint file from the class server later in the day. Without the task of recording lecture material to hold my attention, my mind wandered... meandering outside of the classroom into the streets of New Haven where several hundred TAs from Yale's humanities departments were marching on picket lines for the second day of their one week strike.

Yep, that's right. As I sat in my moribund lecture, being a teaching assistant, several hundred other teaching assistants were beating on drums, blowing on horns and raising their voices to tunelessly, but enthusiastically sing union anthems a the top of their lungs. They wore signs demanding all sorts of reasonable but rare things: dependent healthcare, pay equity, a fair and transparent grievance proceedure. As they marched passed Becton Hall and circled around the corner of College and Grove, their honking, drumming and general merry making seeped through the thick stone walls of my lecture hall and into the ears of comatose Yalies.

Professor Summers (towing the party line of the administration) lectured straight through the din, pretending that nothing that GESO, the grad student union, could do, not even an orchestra of tamborines twenty feet from his grand podium, could interfere with the effective education of Yale's precious undergraduates.

I really really wanted to go outside and bang on something. I could see through the window that a guy at the front of the line had improvised, making a very effective drum set with two spatulas and a frying pan. I was sure I could dig something out of my massive school bag that would make some noise. Like a good TA though, who for strategic purposes wasn't being asked to strike, I waited till the lecture was over before bolting for the exits. I followed the sound of joyful mayhem and found my fellow union members a few blocks away. In the blink of an eye, I had a sandwich board-style sign hung around my neck displaying a giant cartoon of a cell yelling "Scientists for GESO!" and I joined in the game of bull horn-aided call and answer...

"WHAT DO WE WANT?!"

"CONTRACTS!!"

"WHEN DO WE WAN'EM?!"

"NOW!!"

*honk* *honk* *bang*

Whoa! This is fun!

I'm gonna miss these little guys...

Yalies in repose
Originally uploaded by littlee.

One of the things I've come to really enjoy about this here blog thingy is that it is a place where I come to sit and ponder for a bit about the strange, happy things that wander across my path here in The Haven. Predictable things like my yearly bout in mid-March of deep skepticism that sunshine and flip flop weather will ever come again. Spontaneous and totally unpredictable things like the post-Easter trail of marshmellow Peeps along College Street that guided the scientists of the Medical School towards their work like little sugary trail markers. I spend most of my time rushing, overscheduling, cramming and hurrying to the next thing and I am glad that I Little e's Big Adventure puts the brakes on every few days for some proverbial rose smelling.

Which brings me to my students. I love my students. Today I taught my next to last section in WGSS355b: The Biology of Gender and Sexuality. Next week will be it and I'm already starting to miss Max and Brandon E. and Sydney and Abby. Earlier this morning when I realized how close I getting to the end of the semester, I felt the completely opposite but totally equal sensations of relief and panic washing over me. Relief, because as I have complained to many, my outlay of time and energy for this class has taken a toll on me this semester I never could have imagined. I jokingly said that rather than burning the candle at both ends, I'd just have to chuck the whole thing right into the fire and go. I don't anyone thought my joke was that funny then, and I certainly don't think it's funny now. Just want sleep... so... tired.

But the sense of panic is greater. I love my Yalie undergrads. Every one of those 45 point-grubbing, greek-quoting, way smart or way out there little weasels. I won't miss the stress of Thursdays from Hell, but I will miss the crazy energy these kids have even late in the afternoon in cramped classrooms in the basement. I don't want them to fade back into the anonymous masses that choke the sidewalks between classes, forcing me to walk in the street if I'm unlikey enough to be heading to lab during passing period.

In my panicked, nostalgic state, I took my classes outside yesterday. (I admit, I do want them to remember me as The Cool TA who let them have class in Sterling Quad during nice whether.) I told them that in return for the scenic classroom, they had to let me take a picture of them for my blog. One of them asked if they should make it an action shot - to pose and frown as if they were learning a lot. As I was about to take the picture, I told them to look as if they were participating the most genius, thought-provoking section of their Yale careers, thanks to the brilliant guidance and planning of their TA. The class broke out laughing just as I took the picture.

And now to relief and panic, I add the sensation of nervousness. I am nervous because I don't know why they were laughing. Because of my lame, self-flattering joke? Because they think my sections are the farthest thing from genius and scintillating and they were laughing at the irony of it all?

Ugh. Maybe it'll be good to go back to the bugs full time. They don't laugh and they certainly don't point-grub...

Wine and cheese make everything better.

Laurent hard at work.
Originally uploaded by littlee.

Today was a perfect spring day in New Haven. Today was also the first perfect spring day to fall on a weekend, the other two periods of warm air and bright blue skies materializing cruelly in the middle of the work week. The sidewalks on Chapel Street were packed with people wandering aimlessly from one store front to the next - never going inside for fear of missing even a moment of sunshine. The green in the center of town was well-populated with undergrads trying to play frisbee. I say only 'trying' because on April 9th, "The Green" is still a misnomer. Though it has warmed up considerably over the past week, the grass has only just reached the soft peach fuzz stage, and that is only when you are looking at it from an angle or from a distance. Up close it reveals itself to be wet, sandy mud and the frisky Yalies dashing around after frisbees spent must of their time slipping in the muck and picking gravel out of their flip flops.

Knowing that there will be plenty of sunshine in the days to come, I did what I normally do on Saturday. I went to lab. (Please, this is not a cry for sympathy, I spent most of the morning running around East Rock and lolling about in front of Lulu's, drinking coffee and gabbing.)

The post-it To Do lists on my desk in lab were full of cryptic instructions left the night before. Many of the tasks were merely small things I'd put off all week, but there was one big experiment that would keep my bustling until well past dinner time. With internet-streaming KQED entertaining me, I set up at my bench for the long haul of bacteria lysing, yeast streaking, gel pouring and general science wackiness.

I started messing up almost immediately. Reaching for a glass pipet on the shelf over my bench, my elbow nudged my ice bucket, sending the bucket, the ice, and all my tiny, ordered samples skittering across the floor. Minutes later, ice and samples restored, I edged just a little too close to my lit bunsen burner and put a nice black singe hole through the sleeve of my lab coat. Lost of few arm hairs, but nothing serious.

I took these set backs in stride, too happy about the sun pouring in through my window and the fact that my lab was empty and therefore, devoid of witnesses to my extensive coordination problems. It was when, an hour or so later, I poured the wrong part of my sample down the drain that I started to get a little peevish. By "wrong", I mean that I wanted the part that was now in a small splat of liquid in the sink. I did NOT want the gooey white bits still sticking to the side of my tube. (Sometimes you want the liquid, sometimes you want the gooey stuff. Depends on the protocol. Evidently four years of graduate school isn't long enough to get it right every time. Rats.)

In a moment of frustration mixed with pragmatism, I decided that The Big Experiment would not be happening today. It seems I could not be trusted to do molecular biology and it was time to step away from the bench. The urgency to do this became all the more clear when, while cleaning up the considerable mess I'd made throughout the afternoon, I managed to drop and smash to pieces one flask of sterile tubes and stub my toe hard not once but twice on the leg of my bench stool.

"Stop. Leave. Now." Fortunately, the lab was still sparsely populated and no one was nearby to listen as I began talking to myself in incoherent sentence fragments.

After completing a new set of To Do post-its (the contents of which looked depressingly similar to the ones I'd made the night before) I packed up my computer and hit the road. I festered as I drove away, knowing that for all I'd accomplished, I might as well have spent the afternoon picking gravel out of my toes and chasing a frisbee on the The Green.

The good news is that I was heading towards the apartment of Laurent, a postdoc in my lab as well as the boyfriend of Annie, and most importantly, the guy who was cooking me dinner this evening. When I arrived, before I could speak even a word of complaint about my failure of a day, I found myself holding a glass of wine and munching on tangy green olives. Soon to follow was tasty salmon with mushrooms and rice. A baby arugula salad came next (as it should, AFTER the entre) and finally, in keeping with the cuisine of Laurent's native country of France, we settled into a cheese course with more wine.

Thank God for French postdocs. In his miniscule kitchen, working by the light of a tiny lamp, Laurent had whipped up a simple but totally yummy feast. He and Annie had sedated me with food and mindless, happy conversation and by the time I left, I didn't care at all that I'd stayed two hours longer than I intended. Laundry and grocery shopping will have to wait until tomorrow. As will my taxes. Taxes. Ugh. I'd rather go break stuff and light myself on fire in lab.

To bed to bed...

Stealth Spring

stealth bumble bee
Originally uploaded by littlee.

Each winter, December shivers as it looks at January, February huddles for warmth next to March, and I pass the hours moaning to anyone who will listen about how it is clearly never ever going to be warm and sunny again. Nodding in agreement, my fellow Northeasterners will invariably add that they wish it would either get much colder and snow a lot so we could go skiing or warm up a bit and melt the giant piles of brown, gravel-encrusted snow mounds on the north face of every building. With The Curse lifted from the Red Sox and the NHL season officially defunct, complaining about southern Connecticut's mushy winters has finally moved into the top spot for water cooler conversation topics.

In support of our theory of permanent winter, this year's spring thaw has taken its sweet time. As we ran around the reservoir a few weeks ago, Tim (a running peep and 30 year resident of New Haven) and I discussed how the reservoir is NEVER frozen over this late in the year. The trees are ALWAYS leafing out a little bit by this time. But not this year, oh no, this year must really be it. Spring is never coming and we have the treacherous, ice-covered running trails to prove it. We ran on, utterly satisfied with the infallibility of our theory of endless winter.

"Fools, all of them," says Mother Nature. "I'll come on all sneaky-like. They won't know what hit 'em."

This morning, I finally left the house after a lengthy scarf - no scarf debate. The wind blowing the bare tree branches next to my window clearly said "scarf." The fact that it's April 6th and I desperately want my winter theory to melt like a snow in a downpour said "no scarf." Scarfless, I stepped out of the house, to be greeted by... a warm breeze? Wuh? (clarificiation for Californians: warm = 55F).

Disorientated and a little weak due to the lack of shivering-induced muscle tension in my legs, I took off down Mansfield, squinting at the bright fire ball rising in a clear blue sky. Crossing Sachem in front of the Political Science building, I cut across the lawn, my uneasy confusing mounting as my toes detected what seemed to by soft LIVING grass underfoot.

And then I heard the buzzing.

Day after day I had sailed along this path, failing to notice that the bushes along the wall were leafing out. Now, I was shocked to find, the bushes were FLOWERING!! And there was a BEE on one of them!

I stood staring at the bushes for a while, unconcerned by the amused looks of people passing by. I wanted to stop them and by way of explanation, point out the fact that there was a real, live insect on the bush I was inspecting.

So that's it then. It happen again. The earth rotated on its axis, cruised around the sun a little further and it got warm. Weird.

Now it's time to prepare for a summer spent sharing tips on just the right way to orient ones fan in the window so that the 85 degree nights feel more like 80.

Beet salad seemed like a good idea at the time.

Mmm... roasted beets.
Originally uploaded by littlee.

It is my experience that most scientists spend far more time in their labs than at their homes (or anywhere else, for that matter.) As a result, my colleagues spend a greater amount of time in the company of their labmates than they do with their friends and family. So when a birthday rolls around, it is ones pipet-wielding comrads who are the first to gather round to tunelessly but enthusiastically sing Happy Birthday while slicing into a store-bought sheet cake.

In the Galan Lab (a Salmonella lab down the hall from mine), they go to great lengths for each lab member's big day. There is always cake at 3 p.m., usually allowing for at least an hour of lounging about in the lunch room. In addition, there is often a field trip out for lunch attended by any and all who can spare a little extra time away from the bench. Bar-restaurants are popular for these excursions - pints are drunk... afternoon experiments are optimistically planned... and then realistically scrapped.

Looks good on paper, but the problem arises every April when the statistically unlikely cluster of five birthdays suddenly renders almost the entire month into a wasteland of mid-afternoon beer buzzes and blank lab notebooks. To economize by allowing for one really long afternoon of lounging about and overeating at the potluck buffet, the Galan Lab has taken to having a April Birthday Bash, which has grown to include spouses and friends with April birthdays as well.

As the caboose and the April birthday train, I looked forward to today's ho-down, carefully planning my weekend experiments so that nothing would interfere with my arrival at Olivia's by 3 o'clock.

In addition, I spent a good number of days pondering what dish I would bring to contribute to the potluck feast. A matter of days may seem a little obsessive when it comes to deciding on one smallish appetizer but I have my reasons for being so perplexed. The Galan Lab, like most labs at Yale, is a mini-United Nations. Swedes, Brazilians, Germans, Japanese, Italians, Belarussians, Chinese, Argentinians, Brits, Spanish... What will all these people eat??

Realizing that I couldn't please everybody, I decided to go with what look yummy at Stop and Shop. And what looked yummy were the big piles of beets. Epicurious.com came to the rescue and ta da! A salad of roasted beets, asian pear, and slivered almonds with a lemony-sugary vinaigrette was born. My intensely pink fingers marking me as the maker of the beets, I arrived at the party and placed my bowl amidst plates of homemade pork dumplings, onion torta.

Several hours later, wine bottles vanquished and birthday cake eaten, I rose to collect my salad bowl and spoon and head home. I tried not to make a sad-ish Eva face when I discovered my salad offering to be largely untouched (and surrounded by several emptied plates). I re-sealed my bowl with plastic wrap and contemplated several lunches of beets in my near future. Had I over-foodied? Was a slightly gourmet item from Epicurious not The Thing for a casual Sunday afternoon affair that also boasted its fair shair of seven layer dip? Maybe people felt like since it was a party, they didn't have to eat their vegetables... Though I tried not to take it personally, I must admit that I felt like a potluck failure, leaving with almost as much food as I'd brought.

As I headed for the door, Oliva - the hostess and a good friend of mine - came hurrying after me.

"Hey! Where are you goin' with those beets! They were gooood and I barely had any!"

"Oh, uh, I was taking them home. There were a lot left and I didn't want you to have to deal with so much leftovers."

"Unhand those beets, woman! That's my lunch tomorrow."

With that, Olivia snatched the bowl out of my hands and scooped its contents quickly into a tupperware, all the while chirping about how much she was looking forward to flaunting her tasty leftovers at the lunch table on Monday.

Having averted potluck embarrassment this time thanks to Olivia's love of beets, I left with my empty bowl, vowing to play it safe the next go round. Cheddar and Ritz all around!

Peep Madness.

Boyer Center Peep
Originally uploaded by littlee.

As I walked down College Street on my way to lab this past Monday, I noticed that there was something bright pink and round wedged into the branches of one of the leafless dogwoods that line the wall by Phelps Gate. A few paces further and I realized that this blob was actually a plastic Easter egg, most likely leftover from the community Easter egg hunt that had taken place the day before. Object identified, existence explained, I headed towards lab without a second thought.

On Tuesday, as I trucked across campus to the jammin' tunes of Death Cab for Cutie on my iPod, I discovered that the grove of dogwoods was now home to two Easter eggs - the pink one having been joined by a blue one similarly propped in the branches high above the passersby. I briefly regretted having left home without my camera, since random Easter eggery amidst dark, wintery tree branches might make for an interesting picture (and perhaps blog entery, too...)

Wednesday and Thursday passed without incident, the two eggs remaining but no others joining them in their perches above the sidewalk.

As I left my house this morning, I frowned as I realized that a) it was much colder than I'd antipated and, therefore, b) I had far less clothing on than would be required to make my hike to school a comfortable experience. Giving into my love of wallowing in self-pity, I took off walking without going back for an extra layer. When my iPod's battery died by the end of the second block, leaving me to walk with nothing by cold wind in my ears, I allowed myself to settle into a deep funk, complete with furrowed brow and stomping stride as I made my way down Prospect Street.

Passing Battell Chapel, I started looking for the Easter eggs, hoping that they might have lasted long enough to perk me up on my distinctly cranky Friday. No dice. The dogwoods were back to their usual wintery, unadorned state, spreading their bare branches over hundreds of daffodil shoots that simply refuse to bloom.

Without the Easter eggs to focus me on my surroundings, my mind wondered to the items on today's lab To Do list. But somewhere in the middle of mentally listing things to buy at the stock room and making a Note To Self to finally talk to Kim about 2D gels, I realized that just up ahead, balanced carefully on a parking meter was a yellow marshmellow peep. Not the original - not the chick peep - but the special bunny rabbit marshmellow peep made just for Easter.

"Weird," thought I, cranky and not willing to be amused by the random and belated Easter objects accumulating on my one mile walk to work.

When I passed the second peep about 30 feet further on, sitting just on top of a guard rail, I couldn't help but slow down a little and smile. Peeps 3, 4 and 5 were each placed well apart over the next few block, on top of a mail box, an emergency call box and a park bench. Peep #6 had not been able to keep steady on top of its box hedge and was now melting quietly in the salty slush on the sidewalk.

By peep #7 (tucked under the windshield wiper of a parked car), I was giggling uncontrollably.

Arriving at my destination, I discovered the eighth (and final) peep sitting confidently atop the card reader at the back door to the Boyer Center. I cannot express in words how pleased I was to discover that the person who took the time to carefully place marshmellow rabbits along the streets of New Haven actually works in my building.

And everyone says scientists are so boring...