reneena davidson’s Neighborhood

Today was a very relaxing day at The Aerie, and I realized that since Penny came to be part of our pack on the day after Memorial Day, that today was her first holiday at home.

There was plenty of resting…

And a little curiosity about the gardening we did

And a little curiosity about the camera

And finally, a nice Happy Hour hanging out with a good drink and a good book.

Happy Independence Day to all!

It’s a nice calm easy Independence Day weekend at The Aerie this year.  In addition to our national holiday, the weekend is always one of the biggest for tennis fans – this is the weekend of the Wimbledon finals.

So, to honor, I’m sorry, honour our nation's forefathers and tennis heroes alike, we made a very good cocktail from the latest issue of Imbibe Magazine.

The English Afterthought

3 oz gin
¾ oz St Germain liquor*
1-tablespoon fresh blueberries
1-tablespoon finely chopped ginger
Ginger beer**

In a Collins glass or large tumbler, muddle the blueberries and ginger.  Fill the glass with ice and add gin and St. Germain.  Stir and top with ginger beer.  Garnish with a skewer of blueberries.

This drink is very tasty and effervescent – perfect for a relaxing summer afternoon.   The mix of the tart blueberries, sharp ginger, sweet liquor and aromatic gin make for a great drink.

Cheers!

* St Germain is an elderflower liquor that has a very light, sweet honey-ish-but-not-quite taste.  It rocks.  In a pinch, you could probably substitute Drambuie, but I’d use less, I think.

** Ginger beer is a carbonated ginger soda that has a more intense ginger flavor than ginger ale.

So, when I was a young scientist, I didn’t work on drug targets or diseases or anything remotely seen as practical.  I worked in a fairly esoteric field – protein folding and protein stability.   Why?  Well, because I thought it was cool.  No, really.

Anyway, everyone outside of certain parts of Kansas and Louisiana knows that DNA is the genetic material that makes us what we are.  However, DNA is BORING.  It sits in the nucleus under essentially cellular lock and key.  How come?  Well, mostly because it’s so important that you don’t want it out in the cellular milieu because it could get damaged.  And in the good-bad scheme of things, that’s bad.  So, DNA does what any good manager does, it delegates.   And it delegates nearly all the cell’s to-do list to proteins.

Proteins are long chains of amino acids that fold into three-dimensional structures in the cell.  This structure dictates what they “do”: whether it’s be an enzyme, a receptor, a structural component, a messenger, and so forth.  In the 1970s, it was shown that proteins could reversibly fold and unfold – but the “whys” and “hows” of that were still a mystery.

So – I worked on some of that.  Why some proteins folded more readily than others and what made some more stable than others (those two were not always correlated).  But what was it good for my wise mother would ask me?  And I’d tell her,  “Errrr, well Mom, it helps our understanding of biophysics and blah blah woof woof…” until her eyes glazed over.  Later, I became disenchanted with the “academic” aspect of protein folding studies and moved onto real-world drug discovery and got into anti-infectives and endocrinology.

Guess what?  As it turns out over the next decade or so protein folding (or mistakes in it) have been implicated mechanistically in several diseases – including Alzheimer’s Disease, cystic fibrosis, mad-cow like diseases and even some cancers.

Today, I came across a paper in which scientists in San Antonio examined differences in the behavior in proteins between mice and bats.  Why mice and bats?  Well – no offense to pigeons – bats are essentially rats-with-wings and genetically very similar.  One difference is that bats live a lot longer than mice.

As it turns out, proteins from bats are more resistant to oxidative damage than their murine counterparts (oxidation is linked to age-dependent damage and disease) and their protein folds are more stable, too.  

Go figure.  Rather than blather on to my mom about biochemistry and biophysics, I could have told her I was working on the Holy Grail of biology: Longevity.  In essence, the Fountain of Youth!

Oh – and guess where the bats from that study live?  Florida.

This past week, we had some friends visit us at The Aerie for a too-brief visit but there was still a good collection of quality San Diego vacationing.  On Sunday, we all trooped over to the beach for a great day (even if it was a little over-cast and breezy).

Monday, our guest family went over to Sea World to visit with Shamu and yesterday, we all went to the San Diego Zoo.  For me, this was a nice bookend on the day the Beloved and I had to the Wild Animal Park a couple of weeks ago.

It was a gorgeous day at the Zoo and we arrived pretty early to try and beat both the heat and the crowds.  Tourism seems like it’s off a bit around here, because it was a pretty light crowd for what is usually a pretty busy place.  As always, I just loved walking around – watching the animals and have them watch us, too.

Going early is good, because more of the animals are active before they get onto some serious settling down in the heat of the midday and afternoon.

One of the hard parts for me is seeing the great apes.  I mean, I know they are being slaughtered in their homelands in Africa, but the gorillas always seem so sad when I see them.

There was also a lot of munching to be found – camels eating hay and polar bears eating carrots.

As always, the Zoo is a great place to stretch your legs and get to see some of our animal cousins.

I am here, but not for long.  I have not caught up on anyone's lives, either via facebook, eljay, twitter, vox, etc. And I won't until probably late next week.  But hello for now?

It's been insane.  Since I last wrote, we opened & closed the show, my parents have all come & gone (my sister is still here!), I've been to the Boundary Waters & back, etc. So much awesome that I don't have time to properly document.  My sister leaves Friday and once I'm done crying under the covers about how much I miss my family, I'll probably start sorting & uploading pictures of our trip and maybe even write something about the overwhelming awesomeness of the past two weeks. I hope everybody out there is doing well! Enjoying the summer! Etc.!

Sometimes I find that the books I read tend to cluster – for example, this time last year I found myself reading a bunch of post-apocalyptic fiction.   Recently, I’ve been reading a few mystery-thrillers, and in particular what I would have to think of as the very narrow sub-genre of Murder Mysteries Involving Missing Children in Northern European Locales.

In The Woods by Tana French is an Edgar Award (2008, Best First Novel) – which follows the investigation of a slain child by Detectives Ryan and Maddux in a small town outside Dublin.  The case is fraught with ethical and emotional problems for Ryan as he was the lone survivor when two of his friends disappeared in the same area when he was about the same age as the victim.   Very well-written and with better characterization than in most mysteries, this was a very interesting read – with lots of interesting questions:  Are the two cases intertwined?  Do you want them to be?  Is Ryan a liability to the investigation?  And of course, whodunit?   This book is very deliberately paced, and early on I longed for a little more action, but after a bit I settled comfortably into its dour mood.  In a way, the slower pace helped build the suspense – and unlike many mysteries everything doesn’t necessarily get a tidy clean-up at the conclusion.

Echoes From the Dead by Johan Theorin was also an award-winning first novel.*  Set on a lonely island in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Sweden, the story follows a mother’s quest to find some peace after her only son disappeared on a foggy day many years ago.   Not a typical detective story, the daughter and her estranged aging father investigate a current death that may have bearing on their own tragic family history.  This story does a wonderful job of creating the desolate landscape of island and the quiet dour people that live in its remote towns.   This is also a story that develops slowly and steadily becoming very engrossing at the end.  Theorin also did a good job of keeping me guessing throughout and even springing a couple of surprises that I didn’t see coming.

*My library seems to specialize in Scandinavian mysteries (this won a Swedish Mystery Writers' Award) and I’ve read a couple previously set in Sweden.  This has been my favorite though.

It has been an entire year (and then some) since I've last updated. I guess I've been ridiculously busy. It's a wonder what a difference a year can make in one's life. I'm in grad school and just finished up my first year. It was one of the craziest years of my life... I have never been so stressed out in my entire life (I'm not sure if a 4.0 was worth that amount of stress... and I don't mean to gloat, but you have to be able to be proud of something that almost killed you!). Stress aside, though, I've met some of the most wonderful people in the world. I have made so many friendships and am surrounded by so many kind-hearted, amazing people. The school psychology department at UA is very small so we have all grown to love one another and are like family now. :)

This time in my life has been such a transition... I feel like I'm turning into a responsible adult... and it is scary. In less than two years I will be completely on my own, with a career and real bills to pay (I'm paying bills now, but using student loan money doesn't really feel like I'm doing much, ha). Even though being completely on my own is scary, it will be nice to be completely free and to do as I please. And after.. what?... almost 20 consecutive years of schooling, I will be SOOO happy that I will finally be done with school. I'm considering just staying and getting my PhD but I don't think I have the will or energy to stay in school any longer than I need to. Maybe I'll be telling a different story a couple years from now. Another thing that is nice about this "adult transition" is that in 2 weeks I'll finally move into my own apartment- a one bedroom! I am extremely excited that I won't have to worry about bothering or being bothered by anyone else!

So what else is new? I am in love! For the first time in a really, really long time. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to be in love. It is absolutely wonderful!! I'm sure I'm making plenty of people nauseous with all my "happy/love talk", but I'm trying to enjoy every second of this. I can't recall a time I've ever been happier. Vinny is such a great guy :) He's three years younger, but it really doesn't seem like it... and it really doesn't matter, ha. Well, I've finally updated and will try to keep doing so instead of waiting another year.

Life is great.

What prevents your city/town from being the best place in the country to live?
Submitted by Cherney.

Ummm.... let me think.  Oh, that's right.  Nothing.

Happy Summer

I was thinking the other day about where my blogging mojo has gone... time has been spent with Penny and the piano, but really I think all my mental energy has gone to playing Word Twist.

Of course, it could be a good day for a nap.

A close look will see that my teddy-bear (creatively named Teddy) had some physical trauma that resulted in the loss of an eye.

We're also having guests come into town and stay with us this week (starting tomorrow), so maybe we'll spend some quality time at the beach.

I wonder if I can still get a pair of hexagonal shades?

There's that old chestnut about people eventually looking and being like their pets, and I think Penny and I are off to a quick start.  It's pretty apparent to all that we're both white with orange spots.

And another thing we have in common is that we both like playing with tennis balls.

Of course, she likes the camera in front of her more than I do...