You're all the things I've got to remember

Holy cow, it’s already September? I feel like time is going by so fast, and I’m being a slacker and not updating the blog. Such is life, eh? But, since we’re here, let’s review what has happened during the month of August…

I got to add another skill to my resume! We’ve been practicing making paraffin blocks of solid tissue (like breast), the cutting the blocks into very thin sections, mounting those sections on slides, and staining the slides so the tissue looks pretty. We had never done this before, even though our facility should be able to. Blame it on the massive turnover that has occurred since I started. But, we’ve been practicing, and we’ve officially been given The Blessing, our cuts, slides, and staining look good and we can start doing this on important pieces of tissue! Yay!
This may not seem that cool to everybody, but it’s really cool to me. For one thing, all those slides I taught off of while I was a TA I can kind of make now (assuming I have the tissue to use)! For another, when I was looking at our slides of unknown tissue type before the official-type people looked at it, I pointed out ducts and blood vessels and adipose… and the official-type people noticed all the same things! Isn’t that sweet?

This is a picture of breast tissue (sadly, not cut/stained by me, but by these guys, sorry!)See all the dark purple circular areas? Those are the ducts!

Kyler and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary. We went to an expensive Italian place considered to be the best Italian restaurant in SLC and rather enjoyed ourselves. Honestly, we’ll probably never go there again, as there are decent Italian places that are quite a bit cheaper. We definitely don’t regret it, though. Tasty, tasty stuff.

I had a surgeon yell/swear about/at me. He's one of those surgeons that give all of them that stereotype, you know the one: cocky, foul-mouthed, quick-tempered jerks who think they're the center of the universe. He had tissue for us to collect, so the nurse paged us to come to the OR. I rush over, liquid nitrogen and tubes in hand. When I get into the OR, I talk to the nurse, and she tells me that the tissue he has for me is right over there, so I get to work. I'm putting tissue into the second vial when I hear him say, "Are they here yet?" I'm not entirely sure who he's talking about (I can't be the only person they might want in to OR, it'd be selfish of me to think so!), so I continue to put tissue in vials. Then he asks the room, "Where are the damn tissue people? Where is Jan [the research coordinator, and the only name he knows of the TRAC lab]?" I answer him this time, "Jan's not here, but I am." I'm freezing my second vial and starting on the third when he responds, "What took you so long?" At this point, I take a glance at my pager: it's 10:53. I decide not to reply to this surgeon due to his aforementioned magnanimous qualities, and just continue to freeze my tissue and quietly exit as soon as I'm done. When I'm back at the lab, I look at my pager again, and discover that I was paged by his OR staff at 10:47... that's right, six minutes between page and being in the OR freezing tissue, and that's "so long." Self-centered jack... no, I'm polite. At least he gave me tissue. I like collecting tissue.

Kyler started his last semester of his Bachelor’s degree. Okay, this only happened yesterday, but it was still in August and still exciting. He doesn’t seem terribly enthused, but that might be because he had his generals yesterday, with his psychology classes starting today. We'll see how the semester goes for him.

Last, but not least, I am teaching Sharing Time in primary on Sunday. I suppose this isn't August, but I don't care. Deal with my inconsistancies. We're talking about how Bible prophets teach us to strengthen our families. Fun times, eh? If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to volunteer them.

Currently listening to Reel Big Fish - "Take On Me"