Tuesday, October 12, 2010

A Day in the Life of My Scientist

Malaina needs to use big girl words now that she is an official Ph.D grad student.  Malaina works in the lab of a really famous Dr. , only I can't remember his name.  She is fortunate that she only has two classes, but they are extremely hard!!!  Like in the 700's hard.

Malaina works in an amazing time for scientific advancement.  She tried several times to explain it to me, but I only got the gist.

I like how Malaina has to use her special id to use the elevator and get into buildings.  It is super top secret.

Malaina is growing e-coli bacteria, very hush-hush.

Malaina wears a white lab coat and everything!  She uses those tools like they do on CSI.


And here is Malaina's corner of  the lab.  They gave her a small desk with a real computer of her very own to use!  I love that.  They care about my girl.



She told me not to touch anything or I would get cancer.  I did not touch!!!

Saturday, October 09, 2010

Sponges and Chop Houses and a Fox

So tonight Malaina and I went to the Arroyo Chop House  in Pasadena tonight.  It is L.A. Dine Out weekend, and I was impressed to make a reservation at the only restaurant in all of L.A. that serves Prime USDA beef.  All participating restaurants have to have a 44 dollar menu.  Oh boy, we picked the right place to go.  We had the most incredible steak we had EVER tasted; not a single piece of gristle, fork tender, and cooked to perfection.  I have to say, the chocolate souffle' was so wonderful, and large, that it was enough to share.  So Malaina had two desserts, cheesecake and my souffle'.  We will be back Arroyo people!

It was also Pasadena Art Night Out.  There were many locations of local and regional art to peruse.  Malaina was cranky tonight, but she went along with my plan anyway.  We began at the Art Center of Graphic Design in the beautiful hillside of Pasadena.  There was a brilliant display of art in the graphic sense.  Items that could be marketed for sale, and new ways to look at everyday products.  For example, there was a great idea for reusable packaging. It was dishwasher friendly and completely "green".  Why hasn't anybody invented that before?  However there was one piece of art Malaina and I couldn't quite understand.  It was a household sponge, laser cut into the exact replication of a female vulva.  Hmm..  as we thought about this sponge all night long we wondered what the creator was thinking.  Was there some correlation between the sponge and the female genitalia, that he was trying to connect?  Did he think the sponge was a cleaning product that needed to clean up the dirty state of the human psyche?  Did the sponge and it's human shape represent that a woman's place is in the kitchen/laundry room? Or did the artist resent women and their ability to "soak up like a sponge " the life juices of creativity out of his  everyday existence ?

And thus we ended the day watching the "Fantastic Mr. Fox".  The way Malaina drove home down the hillside after the sponge incident, we were lucky we didn't kill any foxes along the way.

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