I did it!

I booked my plane tickets for Eastern Europe in September! This is HUGE. Why you ask, it's just a little vacay. It's so much more than that. I am leaving September 12th, on my way to Istanbul and leaving from Budapest on October 15th. That is 33 days of being in Eastern Europe. There is no way I would be allowed to take that much vacation from work, so the fact that I just booked it means I am definitely going to be quitting my job! I just got to the point that I was so tired of talking about it, I just wanted to do it. So now since I will be quitting my job, I will definitely be moving somewhere. I didn't want that to become something I talked about always wanting to do and never did. Until I booked the plane tickets I could always chicken out and decide to only spend 2 weeks and just visit Eileen in Ukraine as opposed to doing the whole touring around Eastern Europe thing, then come back to my job. But now it's done, I will officially be in Eastern Europe for over a month. I will officially be quitting my job. I WILL be moving out of Northern Virginia (for a while at least). These are huge steps in my life and I look forward to what adventures the future will bring.

Sometimes I wish I had a job where people knew what I did

Now I like biology, don't get me wrong, after all I did get a degree in it, but sometimes I wish I had a job where people know what in the hell I did. Accountant, salesperson, engineer, whatever. I think the single most asked question I get is...so what do you actually do? And here's the answer: I work in quality control for bacteriology at bioresources company. What does that mean? Am I curing cancer...no. Am I making drugs...no. Here it is in hopefully understandable lingo.

My company is a production based company, we make products for other companies/people to buy and use. The department I work in makes bacteria. What the hell do people need bacteria? We sell to research institutions (so people can develop vaccines and what not), clinical (hospitals and what not), pharmaceutical, universities, food industry, etc. The production department grows the bacteria and then vials it, then it is freeze dried. Before we can send this product to the customer, it has to come through me. I check to make sure everything is A-OK. I make sure that if we are supposed to be sending them E. coli, they are getting E. coli and not Salmonella. I make sure the culture is viable, that when the customer receives it, it will grow. This requires a bunch of testing via different methods, biochemical testing, genomic testing (through DNA and RNA), etc. Then if I say it's ok, I pass it and it gets sent out to whoever wants it.

What kind of things do I work with? E. coli, Salmonella, MRSA, Streptoccous (cause strep throat), Neisseria gonorrhoeae (cause gonorrhea), Bordetella (whooping cough), Mycobacerium (tuberculosis), Helicobacter (cause ulcers), Vibrio (cholera), as well as bacteria that cause meningitis, botulism, tetanus, lyme disease, etc. We also have (but I don't work with) anthrax and plaque. As well as working with a whole range of non-disease causing bacteria.

It's sometimes hard for people to understand what I actually do and why I do it. That can get soooo frustrating. Why do I bring this up? I bring it up because me brother Craig works as a store manager of a high-end shoe store. My mom and dad went into his store a couple weeks ago to visit and buy some shoes. My dad already always talked about how he was at the number one store, then they moved him to a store in trouble and now he's turned it around and made it the number one store and this is how much he sells, and profits and numbers and blah, blah, blah. Now that they've been to his store, my dad raves to people about how he was so great with customers and diffused a tense situation and even go this guy to buy another pair of shoes. It's all about numbers. This makes sense though, people know about this. Everyone's been to a store, everyone buys things. It's easy to explain about numbers and how the profit it going and seeing how the employee's work with customers. Therefore my dad is always gloating about how great Craig is doing in his job. I swear if I hear about how great he is one more time, I am going to shoot myself. I never hear about my dad gloating about how I finished 10 work orders this week or got that difficult Clostridium to finally grow. That's why I say sometimes I wish I had a job where people knew what I did and understood it and could appreciate how much hard work I am putting in and what difference I am making. Because when people don't know what you do or why then it's tough to explain and get that recognition and appreciation that I'm sure all of us crave at some point in time.

I hate when people ask you how you're doing

This is my beloved cat, Tomahawk. On Thursday June 12, 2008 we had to have him put to sleep. It was one of the saddest days of my life. He was the love of my life, my lovey, my cuddle buddy. It was something that had to be done though. He was 16 years old and age was finally getting to him. In the past 6 weeks, he'd stopped eating, except for a few bites here and there. Sometimes I could get him to eat tuna fish out of my hand, but it was never very much. Then he started walking awkwardly, like he was drunk. Very unsteady, he wasn't able to jump up to the couch or beds anymore. He just laid around all lethargic and with no spark in his eyes. Then in the past few days, he stopped drinking water as well, which he had been doing up until then. We decided on Wednesday that is was time, we couldn't bare to see him like this anymore. And on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, he was so weak, he couldn't even walk anymore. He just looked so sad and uncomfortable. He just wasn't the cat we had loved for 16 years. He had wasted away to practically nothing, you could feel every bone in his vertebrae. So we took him in on Thursday morning to bring an end to his misery. Of course I couldn't go back to work that afternoon. I am devastated. I feel empty and so alone. I just didn't want to talk to anyone.
It made me think. I hate how when you see people in passing they say hi, then out of courtesy , people ask you how you are. What in the hell are you supposed to say to that? Most people just say fine or good. Or perhaps state some common feeling, oh, I'm tired or So glad it's Friday. What are you supposed to say when you feel like your heart has broken in two? You can't exactly say, oh, I'm fine,because your NOT. You can't exactly respond with, well actually I'm heartbroken, I feel like I just want to cry for 5 hours. How do you think the person would respond? That is obviously not the response they are looking for. And if you do tell them you feel crappy, then they may want to know about it and maybe you don't feel like talking about why you feel like crap, because it just hurts too much. In all honesty you know the person doesn't really care anyway how you are, it's just something we say to each other to pretend like we care, I bet half the time the person asking doesn't even pay attention to the response. So why do we say it, why do we ask how another person is? The majority of people don't genuinely care. There, I hate this question. I wish we as a society could find something else to say to each other then a half-hearted "Hi, how are you?"
On a side note, today was my 3rd anniversary at ATCC, fell on Friday the 13th. Anyone feel like this is an omen. Everyone was shocked I had been there 3 years (4 if you count when I started as an intern, but of course I didn't work for the full 12 months then), because 3 years is forever to stay at ATCC in Bacteriology. I am the second most senior person in my area. I have been there longer than all the people in BioProduction (I'm in QC) and longer than the majority of the people in R&D. I am in charge of my area, it's kind of crazy (although I'm not getting paid to be in charge but doing the work, boo). When I started I said I wanted to work here 2-3 years, get me experience, then move on. Well we're at years, but I am working on a plan to get out of here. As I may have mentioned earlier, I would like to move abroad for a year or so. That's always been a life goal, to life abroad, so now that I made my goal, it's the time to do it. Anyway, happy anniversary to me!



RIP Tomahawk Ferguson June 1992 - June 12, 2008 I loved you more then I could ever express and you will always hold a place in my heart.

Johnny Depp...still hot

Here comes a really random statement. I'm watching the MTV Movie Awards and they are presenting for best comedic performance and the winner is announced as Johnny Depp. Well, one would think, yeah, he's probably not there, got better things to do, being a "serious" actor and all. Well you wold be wrong, he strolls out on stage to accept the award. Gets a huuuuuge standing ovation, apparently everyone there loooves him. My first thought is, damn, does he look goooood. His hair was a little uh, but he was actually clean shaven and I swear looked like did back in the 21 Jump Street days. He looks so much better clean then when he's sporting the beatnik off the street look. It definitely renewed an appreciation for him. So anyway, just wanted to say, Johnny Depp...still hot after all these years.