A derepressing (not depressing) December

aka How I Got My Brain Stuck in the Alphabet Soup Jar

...and valiantly strove to fish it back out before 12:30pm Monday desperately hoping something had stuck.

Well, except the torture is over, so I'm not actually hysterical and can look back on this weekend with a healthy dose of amusement and sarcasm. In that vein, I invite you to enjoy a photo-essay.

I spent my weekend drowning in a sickly colored stew of enzymes and mechanisms involved in DNA, RNA, and protein replication, repair, processing, etc., with a base of genetics and modes of inheritance, flavored with diseases and molecular bio techniques, with some drugs to taste. My white board at some point said at least part of it best:

 (Ignore the cute doodles, courtesy my friend TQ; if only they were that accurate).

Despite having yet to crack the spines of any of my borrowed CMB textbooks, I felt kind of like Oasis and Ender, crushed under the weight of all that knowledge and despair:

 Raja, on the other hand, looked positively gleeful and extraordinarily pudgy conquering my mountain of textbooks:

I would almost wish to share his sentiments, except it would probably involve an immensely high volume of sugar intake to reach his girth, which is his secret source of power.

Sunday night found me studying the drug list. And consequently musing on all sorts of toxic scenarios therein. In short, I was going a little crazy:

(For the uninitiated, α-amanitin is arguably the most deadly amatoxin, in this case found in Amanita phalloides, or the death cap mushroom. It inhibits RNA polymerase II, causing the cells in your liver to burst, leading to death within a little over a week.)

Luckily, I made it to and through Monday, arguably in one piece, and hung out with a lot of pretty cool people Monday night to glory in our post-exam-ness. And as soon as I got back:

Boy was I tired.