J. Michael Andresen

Max has already had two friends of similar age to have play dates with. His first play date was with Griffin, back in July. Max was in a bit of a mellow mood, but Griffin was quite rambunctious! A couple weeks ago, Max met Brennan for the first time. We put them on a blanket together and they seemed to be having a good time. Max is a month older than Brennan, but Brennan still jumped out to an early lead in the wrestling match by grabbing Max's ear. "Ow! That hurts!" "I'm free!" "Now it's your turn, buster!" Brennan is down for the count (but doesn't seem to mind so much). We broke up the brawlers, but Max still felt like taunting Brennan with some of his four-month-old skills, like holding his head up. (Brennan will get there very shortly!) Max then proceeded to amaze us all by rolling over for the very first time! Mom and Dad were very proud! (And thanks to Heather and Ryan for hosting!)

We have started Max on solid foods! We've decided that it's time to start trying him out with some yummy (or not) rice cereal. I fed Max the cereal mixed with a lot of water. (Does a precipitate count as a solid?) A lot got on his bib and elsewhere, but we had lots of fun. Katie fed him some cereal on another day and made it thicker. All the better to stick to his face!

Today at work I was researching the tissue origins of different cell culture systems that we have available to use in the lab. "Cell culture" refers to the process by which we can take mammalian cells and grow them in petri dishes. Mammalian cells are much more complicated to grow than bacteria, and the best growing cells are usually derived from tumors, which have already escaped the normal growth inhibition experienced by most cells in the body. I study the brain, so I was looking up various cell lines derived from brain tumors. For extra background, I looked up information about the cancers on Wikipedia. Neuroblastoma and medulloblastoma are particularly nasty brain tumors that appear most often in children. My career in medical research often requires me to read horrid descriptions of truly awful diseases, and I have become impervious to emotional reactions of any kind when reading about diseases. Today, though, I was gripped with horror as I read the descriptions. Inst