Graduation and good data

YEA!!!! John defended his thesis today!  The changes don't look so bad at least from what he tells me so we are looking good.  I am so proud of him.  He has worked so hard and done so much.  He deserves this PhD so much.  I think Emily was right when she said that I felt like it was me up there with him.  I just wanted him to show everyone how smart, intelligent, and incredibly wonderful that I see him as.  I've never seem him give a talk on his research so well.  It was clear, concise and just overall great.  I guess if you are going to give the best talk about your research it should be the last one you give, right?  I just can't explain how proud I am of him.  The corrections will hopefully go smoothly this weekend and soon this whole bundle of stress will be behind us.  Then it is just finishing up the research (you know only research that should be easy right?!).  I'm really happy that Peg and Dave were able to make it down.  I know John knew they supported him but having them there I think made him feel even better.  Having my family here was also great.  I know that the whole science thing isn't their forte but having them there here means so much.

It is weird that all 5 of us (Chandra, Emily, James, John and I) are all done.  When we first joined forces with the dissertation support group, I could only imagine the day when we would all be done.  Now 10 days and 5 defenses later, its over and pretty surreal.  I don't think I'm ready for us to all go our different ways.  It is kinda funny that we are all heading west (Emily and James to Idaho, Chandra and James to Montana and us to Texas/California).  We're already talking about Vegas trips (which will be super fun since John's sister Sara is living there now) and meeting in different places.  You know I'm glad to finish with graduate school but I'm going to miss Athens and all the people and places here.  Speaking of missing Athens, man am I going to miss the food in this town.  We went to Harry Bissetts tonight and it rocked.  Last Resort, Aqua Linda, Mellow Mushroom, DePalma's, Caliente Cab (and its variety of other names), etc.  It definitely shows on both of us that we are good eaters and in this town we definitely haven't starved :)  

AND...my recent squid data that I've been so worried about finally is plated and the data held true.  The complementation works and returns the phenotype to wild type and the parental plasmid doesn't effect the mutant phenotype.  I sent the data to EVS and am now hoping that that will be my last squid experiment maybe forever.  You never know where things will lead so I can't say for sure that I never will end up in the squid field but I would rather not have to work with squid for awhile.  They are cute but only when your graduation doesn't depend on them.