I spent the week after Mom left in Durham, North Carolina learning lots about the new Vitek instrument that is sitting waiting to be used in micro. We have had a Vitek since I was a student, but they just keep getting smarter and smarter. What is a Vitek you say? It is an instrument that when a pure isolate of a microorganism is put on it with appropriate "cards" can identify the bacteria and give sensitivities to a variety of antibiotics. Now what do I do you say? I look at the report and approve what the Vitek says is the ID or look at it and say, "Are you kidding me?!" Nothing is fool-proof you see and sometimes you get a "junk" answer like Sphingomonas. So sometimes you have to do other tests or further workups or send it to the University of Washington to have it's DNA ripped apart and replicated until they can tell what it is. Ultimately the Vitek is a miniaturization of tube tests that your profs in college made you do, plus a computer that can analyze those and compare them to known reactions to give you an ID. The newest thing is the sensitivity software. They use a sort of fingerprint of resistance to certain antibiotics to extrapolate what mechanism of resistance a microorganism may have. That means that when we have a really resistant gram negative rod it may be an extended spectrum beta lactamase producer, or a carbapenemase producer, or an AmpC resistance and the Vitek software can tell us the most likely resistance mechanism. This become important with emerging resistance mechanism that used to be able to fall through the "if, then" statements that were used to flag resistant organisms. I just looked back at this paragraph and maybe I should paraphrase a bit better. It does cool stuff to help me tell your doctor what drugs to give you. There, that's better. I tend to get a bit excited when talking about microorganisms. :)
Here's a picture of our classroom with an instrument for each of us...
And a picture of the break-room and coffee maker which was of utmost importance to those of us still a bit jet-lagged...
And some pictures of the wonderful people in my class who made the week a ton of fun!
I flew home on Friday and got into Yakima at midnight. Mom picked me up and I went home and slept 4 hours and got up and went to work on Saturday. That's right, I'm dedicated! But really it's almost impossible to get a weekend off and I had asked my supervisor if she would work Sunday for me. I thought it was only fair that I get my butt to work that Saturday since she was being so gracious. The reason I needed Sunday off was because my cousin Justin was graduating from high school!!
I can't believe it really. I was 12 when he was born and still think of him as "little" sometimes. My Mom and I still say "railroad track" the way he did when he was little whenever we drive over one. And I remember the good times, like when he was annoying and wanted to get his hands all over the computer. I shoved him a little and he fell backwards onto his diapered bottom and started to cry. Grammy yelled down from the kitchen table, "What happened?!" And I yelled back, "He fell!" Well he did...after I pushed him. He's grown into a really fun and down to earth guy and I'm sure he will continue to amaze me.
So besides all of that the sour cherry trees decided to give us a bountiful crop of beautiful fruit! So in my free time (haha) Mom and I have been going out and picking the dickens out of the trees. The birds found out how good cherries tasted before we could put up the scare tape so we had to cover some of the trees with net so that we could get in on the crop. The birds ate the tops and we picked the bottom, which we both found copacetic. We've made a couple of pies, some cherry muffins, a galette, and freezing many bags for later. Mom is also juicing up quite a few so that we can make sour cherry jelly, which is something I may never get enough of!
We also have quite a garden growing and have already picked plenty of strawberries. The zucchini and peas are starting to get some mature veggies on them and the pumpkins vines are slowly taking over the long beds. We planted garlic last fall and now they have some interesting flowers on them...wonder if I need to do something about that. But they look like modern art!
My tomatoes look like they may have gotten frozen after we set them out. :( But we bought a four pitch hitters at the store in case mine never recover. (Those are the ones that look green in the last picture...) The tomatoes that I started are coming back slowly so we'll have to see if they catch up.
So yeah! Life never seems to slow down around here! I also have been knitting occasionally and here is the shawl I had with me in North Carolina. It was going to get it's own post, but no time!
First riding in the car...
Then waiting at the airport...
And here's some fun pictures of random things from my travels...a cell phone tower disguised as a tree...
The Camden Food Co. (They like delicious smoothies too!)
And a reassuring sign as I entered the bathroom at the Memphis airport...
Check back later! I'll have tons of fun posts coming up...
