Week 9 (according to Canvas)

I find it difficult to keep track of the weeks as time marches on. I guess if its week 9 then we are axactly half way through the semester. Now we all just have to hold on, bear down and get throught the last half. I'm pulling for you all. 

This week in lab I felt like I was really productive until earlier today. I finally finished and turned in my abstract for the Estrella Mountain Conference, attempted to isolate some of the fungal colonies that may be endophytes on my other plates and made more agar. 

However today I realized that the water I used to dilute the antibiotic in my agar was not sterile (because I forgot and used regular DI water) which means every single one of the plates I made is also contaminated. This puts me behind in a major way so I'm rather upset with myself. 

This week I also learned to melt paraffin wax and pour it into the microtome. Paraffin is stronger than the potato I was using before and has less contaminates. I made some beautifully thin specimens that were a joy to look at under the microscope. Josh found a strange structure in the oleander stems that almost looked like a corkscrew. Matt identified it as a ligated xylem vesicle used for conducting water. Or something.