If you gotta move...

So I've finally found myself a post-doc position. I'm actually kinda thrilled at this one. It requires me to live in Honolulu Hawai'i for a few years, and may lead to a future faculty position at the U of H. I figure if you're going to move away from your friends and family, there are worse places to do it than Hawai'i. In honor of that, I've added two weather graphics to my blog. One showing the current weather in Calgary, one showing the current weather in Honolulu. I feel the need to remind you that that's the weather right now. Like, in December. Fun, huh?

Actually, I'm also excited about this for things that have absolutely nothing to do with invariably good weather,



beautiful sunsets,



beautiful women,



beautiful beaches,



the opportunity to go hiking twelve months of the year,



amazing sunsets (did I mention that already? Well, it bears repeating),



history,



wildlife,



and amazing photographic subjects.



Actually, I'm excited for a whole slew of reasons, but perhaps the most important one is that I'm simply excited by the work I'm going to be doing. The work will still be in the same general area I've been working in for the last five years, but it will be more on the molecular level. A little less cellular biology, a little more genetics, a little more biochemistry, and a little bit more gene-jockeying. I'm going to be doing both the insertion and deletion of genes in mice, working on developing a working hypoxia model in wild-type mice, and studying the expression of genes in the heart specifically, and what genes will show up in these systems. This is a kind of science I've never done before, and it excites me. It means that I get to spend more time in the lab and less time scribbling equations in a lab book. I'm going to improve on my recovery surgery (something I haven't done in a long time, and haven't done at all on something as small as a mouse), my RT- and QT-PCR, as well as running and analyzing microarrays. In addition, I'm going to be working with a mathematician who wrote a textbook that has effectively been my bible for the last five years. By fortuitous circumstances, I'm going to be working with a former classmate of my brother's, he's a nice guy, and I think I'm going to enjoy working for him. I think we have a lot to do and less time to do it in, but I think that this is going to be an amazing learning opportunity for me.

Oh, and the view out of my laboratory window is the Pacific ocean.

Can you tell I'm marginally excited by this?