What am I talking about? Well, today is the start of lab week! Well, technically, it started yesterday but since I did not work yesterday, I will count today as the start of lab week. And you know what else today is? DNA day! And it’s appropriate, since today is also our lab director’s birthday. And I work in a genetics lab.

Normally, I would be complaining right now. I do not have fun at work anymore. It seems like everyday being at work is a chore now. But today is different. Slightly. Well, that’s a lie. I did have fun at work today – at least for an hour.

To kick of lab week, and today being DNA day, we decided to extract DNA from strawberries! We had Teams on, so whoever working remotely who wanted to join can join. There were only a few people onsite but it was still fun. Actually, come to think of it, I do prefer not having that much people in the office so yeah, it was definitely fun.

All you really need are strawberries, water, salt, dish soap, cup, coffee filter, and rubbing alcohol. Here is the link for the instructions. Such a good exercise to be honest. I have done labs in school, I took biology classes in school – high school and college, and I have not seen this done.

Being my true self, as I was filtering the concoction of mashed strawberries, water, salt, and dish soap, I lost my hold of the ziploc bag and the filter. Yeah…mess. No surprise there. The strawberry DNA photo is below. Yes, that white floating thing. That’s the strawberry DNA. I heard you can do it with other fruits as well, but the experiment just works so well with strawberry because of the high DNA content.

I finished Bad Blood: Secret and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. Yeah, the book annoyed me. Well, not the book. The book was well written and definitely covered all the points that needed to be covered. And I loved it. But my annoyance stems from the actions of the CEO and COO to make this science fiction of a machine to be available commercially. The lies. The cover ups. The embellishment. The exaggeration. It was horrible. And being in healthcare since I started working, I can’t believe how far this company got. They were testing patients for crying out loud! I do have opinions about this of course. But I think I want to make a separate post about it.

I am now in a hunt for my next read. I do have Forrest Gump by my side. I might continue that. But since I do read multiple books at a time, I might start reading My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress by Rachel DeLoache Williams. I am kind of drawn to it right now. I might also give The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood another try. I had to stop reading this one just because of how many times how tall this guy is was mentioned. Yes, I stopped reading at Chapter 3 or 4. We’ll see.

Tomorrow is another day. I think we’re having cupcakes delivered for the onsite team. It’s sports gear day on Wednesday. Wear blue day on Thursday. And a potluck on Friday (which I still have no idea what to bring).

I think that’s it for today. I’ll see you tomorrow.