Also takin' names

Kickin' ass; takin' of names also goin' on. Yup.

(Hee - hi, classmate Kat! hahaha! I will simply say, "Loverboy. Red leather." and run away while one of the worst videos ever made plays in your head, mwaahahahaha)

Been a kick-ass kind of day. I seem to have perfected the "no available time ever" trick, at least this week, but it's been an absolute blast. First thing (groan, much toooo eaarrllllyyy) we held "Show Us What You've Got" aka auditions for "The Tempest" - and god, the kids were great. Really fun to see. We (um, MK and M and I) meet tomorrow a.m. to make our casting decisions and then send it all out.

Classes tonight were a hoot and half. Thursday is when I have a grad seminar on brain and psychology, after which I have lecture on neurodegenerative diseases. Today seems to be "me knowing the answer to stuff" day - professor in seminar paused, asked does anyone know what the Plato's cave thing is? And well I read all of Plato, yes of course I remember the cave story...

Then in lecture we had a weird bit of serendipity, 'cause somebody in class asked if the new multicolored tagging could be used to tag dopaminergic neurons, and the professor was all "huh?" and I was all "oh! you mean brainbows? I have that article on me..." which I did, 'cause I printed out the whole thing with supplements just because it's really cool and pretty - it's the November article from Nature, with all the beautiful colors. I had it with me because I was discussing it with some kids at the homeschooling coop who are really interested in Extremely Cool Science stuff, and I get access to tons of stuff through Harvard's library system (thank you, Harvard and the enormous fortune you spend on subscriptions to everything). Anyway, the professor hadn't seen it so I gave her my printout during the break and we had a small group "oo ahh pretty" - and back in lecture she asked "okay so these neurons were tagged with antibodies for tyrosine hydroxylase because...? hm?" And it took me a second, but I went "oh! because that's in the synthesis pathway!" (uh, for dopamine). Thank you, neurobiology professor. Yowza! Hot damn. I can't remember the last time I thought about neurotransmitter synthesis pathways, but it was in there, somehow or other.

(so, yeah, sorta getting in gear with things, here. it's way big fun. srsly. o yah. i luv when i am not lost and i get it. man, that substantia nigra loop is craaaaazzyyyyy, but we did it in neurobio and it was such a bitch to figure out that i'll probably never forget it ever ever ever.)

For fun I get to finish reading some Freud for the Tuesday class, then I want to look at the Kandel & Schwartz chapter on the damn substantia nigra motor loop thing, to see what the fiddly bits are that I never learned the first time through. I'm finding that in my down time, my default is to work. This means, paradoxically, that although I am overloaded beyond all reason, I am less behind. The downside is that I can't seem to remember what day it is, oh and I really REALLY have no life, but the neuro stuff feels so much like oxygen that I'm just taking deep lungfuls of it and getting all happy.

Breathe in, breathe out. Tra la. Happy, happy, happy.