The last two weeks have been a very busy, yet interesting mix of fun and work. Last week, I had to suspend all my experiments to prepare data for lab meeting. In the course of two days, I had to take hundreds of pictures from a fluorescence microscope and quantitate the data, before finally pulling an all-nighter and presenting at lab meeting last Friday. Saturday was my day of recovery, as I started out with some lunch at Dunster house and meeting my pre-med advisees there, followed by an afternoon matinee show at the Hasty Pudding theater, a Hawaiian dinner and luau at Quincy house, and finally ending with a late-night St. Patrick’s Day party at John Greenland’s place. The Hasty Pudding theatrical show this year, entitled “It’s A Wonderful Afterlife”, was both visually stunning and gut-wrenchingly hilarious. Particularly memorable were the name of the characters: Curtis Interruptus, Lyla Kadog, and Werma Hosat. The luau was enjoyable as well, though reminiscent of last year’s show. Finally, we arrived at John’s apartment, which featured green decorations and green drinks. A few friends and I tried to spice up the party a bit by converting his sitting room into a dance floor, though we were too tired to stay for long… While Saturday was my day off, returning to lab on Sunday provided me the horrible reminder of my departmental journal club for today. So in the last few days, I pretty much spent all my time preparing the powerpoint presentation and reading up on background materials. Yesterday, I actually practiced my talk with four different people in lab, including a grad student, two post-docs, and of course, my PI. Fortunately, the presentation this morning went very smoothly, and I was especially flattered when one of the audience members came up to me and told me that my talk was the only one she stayed awake in since January. The afternoon was much more relaxing, as I got to listen to Kevin’s thesis defense seminar, attend an after-party in our lab kitchen with cake and ice-cream, and have dinner with my lab at Sichuan Garden in Brookline Village, which served some authentically spicy (maybe a bit TOO authentic) Szechuanese cuisine. Hopefully, I’ll have a little time to relax this weekend before re-embarking on my course of experiments.