Getting ahead of myself

The pacific ocean.

The view from our "guest office" at MBARI

I have been slacking in blog-land recently, but I have something to report. I want to move to California, at least for a couple of years... like for a post doc. Now all I have to do is finish my PhD. I spent the last week out in the Monteray area working with collaborators at the Monteray Bay Aquarium Research Institute. By "working with" I mean that I was being shown how to use a very complicated instrument that we will eventually get to play with in our lab and bring to sea. I am (mostly) confident that when said instrument arrives I can tinker with it without breaking it. Using this instrument is going to test both my molecular biology skills as well as force me to learn some basic computer programming. As usual, I am looking forward to the challenge.

This was my first school-sponsored trip in this grad program, and it was certainly exciting to learn about this cutting edge technology. I really did try to come up with a less cliche way of saying "cutting edge". My advisor gets serious points for deciding to send my science-partner-in-crime along with me for this training. It cost him some extra money, but the two brains being better than one will certainly hold true when the instrument arrives.

So... back to CA (ah... if only I could go back). The folks at MBARI seemed to really enjoy their work, and why wouldn't you when you got to have the above view from your office each day. I grew up in New England where we like to think that the weather makes us tough, and we are stronger for it. This leads to the mindset that "those Californians can't possibly appreciate all that nice weather, how could they get anything done?". I am certainly willing to go give it a try, and report back!