Overdue trip to the dog park.

It took a three day weekend for me to put time aside to take this puppy to her favorite place. She had a great time, as usual. Although, there were no playmates available that could keep up with her pace. Feisty, girl.

Meika is a 2 year old Shiba Inu. We took her home when she was 8 weeks old and it's been an adventure ever since. She holds paper certificates from The Uncommon Canine School that states the completion of puppy kindergarten, Obedience I & II, and Agility courses. It was like paying tuition, but worth every penny. In the beginning, I knew I was in for a ride when the obedience coach suggested I read The Art of Negotiation by D. Trump. And I thought I was prepared with, The Art of Raising a Puppy, by The Monks of New Skeet. But, no. I still need to sharpen my negotiation skills to effectively deal with her. Otherwise, she will write our itineraries and make sure we follow it!

Aloha! It's Wednesday

So our room is looking out west towards the mountains in the background. And behind those mountains is where I spent my childhood.

The Ihilani resort represents the best in Hawaiian vacations.

Miles away from the busy Waikiki lifestyle.
Private white sand lagoons.
Award winning spa services.
Great food.
Shark and sting ray pools. I know, cool!

7am stretch by the sea group class.
8:30 ukulele lessons (still not good at this)
3 mile path around the resort grounds.

Bacteria that read palindromes

circa 1970.

We learned that bacteria can be infected by viruses. Since people have developed a way to fight infections, so did the bacteria. We have white blood cells that phagocytize foreign objects, bacteria have enzymes that can cleave DNA at specific sites.

Foreign DNA, cut into pieces, happy bacteria. We've named these enzymes Type II restriction endonucleases, and the sites that they recognize, and therefore cut, are called palindroms.

You know, a word or phrase that reads the same backwards or forwards. Llike, "a man, a plan, a canal, Panama!" is a palindrome. A palindrome in DNA is defined as, " a segment of double-stranded DNA in which the nucleotide sequence of one strand reads in reverse order to that of the complementary strand."

One bacteria which we derive these enzymes from is E. coli., and the enzyme is called EcoR1, which recognizes the sequence:

G-A-A-T-T-C

C-T-T-A-A-G

Then snip, snip. Clever little guys. Oh, by the way, we've kinda exploited this system by utilizing their enzymes in order to employ cell-based DNA cloning and further our knowledge in molecular biology. Cheers to e. coli for showing us this little trick!

Why I love Virginia Woolf..............

...."yet she could not resist sometimes yielding to the charm of a woman, not a girl, of a woman confessing, as to her they often did, some scrape, some folly. And whether it was pity, or their beauty, or that she was older, or some accident - like a faint scent, or a violin next door (so strange is the power of sounds at certain moments), she then undoubtedly then feel what men felt. Only for a moment, but it was enough. ....a tinge like a blush which one tried to check and then, as it spread, one yielded to its expansion, and rushed to the farthest verge and there quivered and felt the world come closer, swollen with some astonishing significance, some pressure of rapture, which split its thin skin and gushed and poured with an extraordinary alleviation over the cracks and sores!"

SIX. Number of times I read this excerpt from a beloved book before going to sleep.

Observations from 35,000 feet above ground

Delta flight 4338 from San Diego to Akron, OH (via Atlanta, GA):

found a nice, little quote in the Atlantic Southeast magazine. It was in the section that advertises timeshares and flyfishing excursions, after the crossword and Sudoku puzzle pages:

The World is a Book

And those who do not tavel

Read only one page

-St. Augustine

hey, makes me a feel a little better about being away from home....