Cheesecake and Haunted Houses
After last week, this week seemed a little less exciting. It was stressful with work, apartment maintenance, and everyone just becoming a little cranky (not excluding myself). My apartment-mates and I have been very creative in finding ways to alleviate this stress and tension, however. We LOVE to eat out in Baton Rouge. On Monday I had a really stressful day in the lab because we just could not get certain DNA ligations to occur. The enzymes were not cutting the DNA in the correct places and it was one failure after another. I headed straight for the gym afterwards in order to not lose my mind! I did an hour of cardio and joined my sister for a pilates class. I thoroughly enjoyed the pilates class (I didn’t know I even had some of those muscles!). When I returned from the gym I took a quick shower and opened up the refrigerator to find something to eat. Rita and I looked at each other and had the same idea: Chelsea’s! We got dresses and took Tranole, Kimani, Rita, Naomi and Myself to Chelsea’s for their AMAZING grilled cheese on foccacia and tomato basil soup. Needless to say, it was a great finale to a very bad day.
On Tuesday we had a seminar about scientific ethics such as plagiarism, giving credit where credit is due, and other tricky issues concerning who data really belongs to. It was eye opening because I had not been in a situation where these issues were relevant but it was amazing how in depth these problems were. After another day of failures in the lab, I went back to the apartment and went to bed. I had to call it a night early.
Wednesday brought forth a day of more successful experiments in the lab. The DNA ligations seemed to be working better, but things were still not as clear cut as we wanted them. In addition to my frustration in the lab, our toilet overflowed in the apartment and we had problems getting it fixed in an orderly manner. The frustrating part of LSU Residence Life is that I still have no clue who my RA is and I had to go to the front desk and file a maintenance request. It took FOREVER. At least at Centenary, if need be, the resident has the ability to file their own request and an RA can give them a reasonable estimation of when their toilet can be fixed. It was not a very happy day. Rita came back to the apartment earlier than she usually does and we went to the gym together. We met up with our friend Jamie and did weights together for an hour. I convinced the girls to join me for a PiYo class which is a combination of pilates and yoga. I think they really enjoyed it.
Thursday was another extremely stressful day and still, there was not much data to collect because the experiments were not working as well. I came back to the apartment completely bummed and went to another pilates class after doing cardio for an hour. The LSU Rec has become my best friend. Afterwards, I came back to the apartment and Naomi and Rita were kind of bummed, too. We decided what we all needed was CHEESECAKE. We all got dressed up and headed out to Copeland’s Cheesecake Bistro for some of the best cheesecake we ever had in our lives. I had the bananas foster topped cheesecake and it was the best tasting thing I’ve ever had. We returned to the apartment in a much better mood.
On Friday Dr. DiMario actually said that we had one of the best results he’s ever had in the lab. It made me so happy. However, I felt awful all day at work. I took pictures of dyed tissues with fluorescing nucleoli but the slides were not very good. It was extremely frustrating to have worked all day on making slides and they turned out to be unusable. After work I came back to the apartment and slept for three hours. I was kind of bummed that ALL of my roommates were leaving me for the weekend. Not to mention, all of my research friends were going out of town, too. I was going to be alone all weekend. But, before my other research friends went out of town on Saturday we decided to have a little bit of fun. We got a huge group of researchers together and headed to the Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville.
The Myrtles Plantation has been named the thirteenth most haunted house in America! I have visited the Myrtles on several occasions and have even spent the night there. I was so excited to revisit the Myrtles with my friends. When we arrived at the Myrtles I saw my friend, a Centenary student, Matthew Morris. Apparently, he gives tours at the Myrtles and he was our tour guide! He was a great tour guide and really set the creepy mood of the haunted tour. A lot of the people I went on the tour with were really skeptical, including my friend Tranole. But Tranole had a very paranormal experience while on the tour. In the gentleman’s sitting room, Tranole was standing by a rocking chair. According to Tranole and many people standing by him, the rocking chair rocked back and forth a few times on its own! Tranole figured that someone had accidentally bumped the chair and left it at that. After the tour, Tranole was approached by the many people who were also standing by the chair. They kept asking Tranole if he was the one who bumped the chair. They all looked at each other in disbelief… perhaps the chair DID move on its own.
I am hoping I have more success with my experiments next week. I am looking forward to having my roommates back and to trying out more restaurants with them. Maybe we’ll even have more paranormal experiences…
