I should be driving right now...

Well, I'm being lazy and not driving to Nebraska just yet, so figured I'd do something moderately worthwhile although the only thing I want to do right now is take a 4-hour nap. Also, should be writing a rough draft to a paper, but got the research done and started on the paper. That counts for 1/2 points anyway.

Went to the doctor today to get a current TB test and a tetanus shot. No worries, just for my internship. Also have to get the Hepatitis B vaccination done too. Decided not to get the shots today since the twit who made my appointment was wrong when she continually assured me that it could be read on Monday morning. WRONG!! Would've been read on Sunday and I would've wasted my money as they wouldn't have been able to do squat on Monday. Luckily, my nurse has a brain in her head and had me reschedule. Have to get the Hep B at the County Health Dept., so that kinda sucks. It's three shots over the course of 7 months, so I better get on that SOON! The official dates of the internship are in June and I may not make it, yikes. So, next week I'll be starting on that and hope that I'm just crazy and have miscalculated the time. Wish I would've known about the three shots before. Maybe I did and just forgot.

Been asking questions to a source about a stalker case I'm investigating with another group in class. I've decided I think I suck at asking the "right" questions. We're no where near having a clue as to who the bad guy is and the paper is due on Dec. 3rd. Figure we've got one more round of questions and then we'll have to figure it out, but so far every answer we've gotten has only confused us more.

We'll be submitting another publication for review at work soon. This time we're going for the big dogs and shooting for PNAS, one of the top publications. It's a pretty darn good story and no one has ever said the things we're going to propose, so that should shake it up a bit. Basically, we've "proven" that crystal structures may not always tell the whole story as a protein we tried to get a structure out of for two years through NMR (and never got), tells us one section of the protein is basically unfolded, but the crystal structure we just got, says it's completely structured in that region. Happens to be the "important" region too (that section is basically for Dr. Laura, since she's familiar with geek speak, haha). So, we're proposing that crystal structures, due to the very nature of the procedure, in essence, lock in the protein, giving a false sense of structure to regions that in solution are actually unstructured. Don't tell anyone about that until it's published, or I'll have to hunt you all down and slap you silly!!

Well, I need to stop being lazy and get in the car and drive up to NE so I have time to finish up the paper. No sleep for the weary, sigh.

Love,
B