update

The past week has been pretty busy.  My project in the lab has picked up quite a bit.  The rats arrived last week and began settling into their new home.  On campus, there is a separate building where all of the research occurs.  Our lab is one of many different ones in the Foothills Science Center.  In the middle of the building, there is a separate area where all the animals are housed. My rats are kept in the "physiology rat room", where they live with a couple of sentinel rats that detect any pathogens that might be floating around.

This weekend, I had to go and practice placing the rats into the restrainers that are used to take their blood pressures.  This was to get them used to being handled and placed in the restrainers.  The rats are actually really sweet and friendly.  They like being held and are cuddly and soft.  They really don't smell (unless their cages are dirty...and thankfully I don't have to clean those).  I can understand why some people keep them as pets.  I'm trying hard not to get attached.  Luckily there are a lot of them, so I don't get to spend much time with any particular one.  I finally remembered to take my camera into the lab with me, so here is a picture of one of my rats in the restrainer.  They don't like being in there very much and show their displeasure by making a bit of a mess inside the plastic tube.  I can't tell you how much poop I have cleaned out of the restrainers in the past few days.  (The rats also manage to smear it all over too, much like little kids do.  Taking care of all this rat poop makes me not too thrilled to have kids!)  However, being restrained doesn't hurt them.  Some of them even fell asleep in the restrainer, which makes taking a blood pressure easier.  Taking their blood pressures is a slow process, because the machine is super finicky.  The rat has to stay completely still and not shake the cuffs off their tail.  Their tail also has to be just the right temperature, so you need to but their butts under the tail warmers until their tail is warm enough.  Here is a picture of the set-up.  The tail warmers are the 2 columns in the background.  The box on the counter the the BP machine that is hooked up to the computer.  You can see the BP cuffs on the rat's tail.

In other news, I attended my first house party since college.  I thought it was hilarious because I definitely felt like I was back in college again.  It was a "lean like a cholo" theme party, so we were all dressed up as hispanic gangsters.  We did college things like play flip cup.  I especially love that my friend Vicki, the "one flip wonder" came with.  We dominated flip cup, and it felt JUST like college.  Wonder how long I will still be able to act like a college student (on occasion).  Is 25 too old?  30?  35?  Anyway, it was good times.

My friend Mindi also hosted another potluck this weekend.  And again, I was very impressed by the cooking talents of my friends.  This week we did gourmet burgers.  Mindi also introduced use to some of her favorite "Jew foods" such as kugel and mandel bread, which were both delicious.  We also had a very tasty corn dish, broccoli bacon salad, pesto pasta salad, and some mighty tasty sugar cookies.  Then we played Apples to Apples.  (If anyone wants some Christmas list ideas for me, I would love to have some board games.  They are all the rage here in dental school!)  I think we are going to turn these potlucks into a regular thing.  Rumor has it next up will be homemade pizza night in celebration of one of our classmates getting engaged.

Well, I suppose it is bed time for me.  I have an early morning date with some rats and a BP machine tomorrow.