Last posting before possible death on the basketball court...

Where does the time goes? Last week was very busy...out for Thai on Monday, Mexican (again) on Tuesday, Basketball on Wed, went back to Central Otago to collect snails on thursday, Department Happy Hour and hung at Rachel's on Friday and I spent most of Saturday baking so I could warm up the house! I think I will be baking heaps this winter as the houses are frickin' cold here! In the last few days I've made apple pie, wheat bread, roasted winter veggies, cinnamon raisin bread, apple crumble. We've got a couple apple trees so the apple desserts will keep on coming. Research is going great this week. I was worried 'cause we didn't find very many snails last week...where would they go?...but I found plenty of them infected with my parasite species - so YAY, finally I should have enough snails to get my first experiment started...as soon as I can take a break from working on my microsatellite library - which is going well so far...keeping my fingers crossed as I hear it's quite frustrating. Other exciting news: got my hair cut last night! Woo hoo! I'd let it grow out the longest it's been in quite sometime. Crappy news: only 2 of us girls can play basketball tonight (Rachel's in Korea and Kelly is sick) so that means I have to play the whole damn game...hope I don't die! And I'm sick yet again with another sore throat (5th one since moving here).

Sand Fly Bay

Went back to Sand Fly Bay this weekend...Deanna was playing tour guide for a friend of a friend.

Me running down the sand hill...fun to go down, not so much to come back up... you can see the group of folks resting on their way up the hill.


See if you can find the penguin


Now he's moving!


This pair went all the way up the cliff, over it and then came back down closer to the blind.


They hold out their wings to cool off.


Sea lion pair...some tourists were standing there too scared to walk by, as soon as we started to walk by they ran up behind us to walk by with us....wish I would've gotten video of that - funny people behavior!

Noche de Mexicana

So the Mexican night was muy bueno! We had a house full of people,and the food and margaritas were fantastic. I by far drank the most margaritas but then I didn't have to drive anywhere. I was asked how many I drank and I tried to say an uncountable number but it came out as something like "an uncournerble number". Don't think I'll live that one down. Everyone didn't clear out until about midnight and then Dee and I attacked all the dishes...it totally sucks to have a dinner party without a dishwasher! Friday morning I slept in and then walked to school. Our friday seminar was by a parasitologist...he talked about how salmon farming affects the ecology, evolution, virulence of salmon parasites and how that in turn affects the wild salmon populations. After work, we all went to the staff club for drinks. The staff club is this unmarked brick building in the middle of campus that you go in, up the stairs and lo and behold there's a bar for post-grads and staff and faculty. It's cheap too! My glass of wine was about half the price that I'd pay elsewhere. Almost my entire lab went and quite a few others as well. Then Deanna and I headed home for dinner and we watched Rat Race - hilarious. And finally Shannon got home from Wanaka so I headed over there to hang out with him. Yesterday was chore and errand day. Then I headed out to an Irish pub with Rachel and a couple of her friends for some live music - where I discovered that they think a jag bomb is a small shot of jag and an entire can of Red Bull and was $12! Yikes! I didn't stay out long as I heading to the lake this morning to collect more snails. Rebecca and Yuri went with to help so I got many thousands of snails...with a 0.2% prevalence I hope there's some infected ones in there! Tonight I'm trying out yet another of Susanne's recipes - Lamb chops with caramelized onions and couscous - yum!

So what have I been doing with my life for the past week? Umm, lets see...

Well, we lost horribly in basketball last week. So Bryan and I went to the gym on Saturday so he could give some pointers to work on and lo and behold I pulled a muscle in my leg! I thought it was getting better and I jumped rope on Monday and hell, if it didn't start hurting again. It hurts to even walk up the stairs. To say the least, I didn't play tonight but hear we lost anyway...we should've never won that first placement game.

Last Friday was the department happy hour...lots of socializing and food, and drinks were on Robert because we were celebrating Clément turning in his thesis last week! Yay for Clément! Afterwards, the lab went for drinks at one of the Irish pubs, again on Robert. However the night did not end well as I got food poisoning and ended up with the chills so bad I was shaking uncontrollably even though I had fleece on from head to toe and the electric blanket was on high.

Saturday, I met Rebecca at the farmer's market and then headed to work. I spent the entire day working on extracting DNA from cercariae, larval parasite stage which I get from the snails and I also discovered that only 3 out of my 22 infected snails were kicking out parasites...not enough for my experiments damnit so I'll be collecting yet another several thousand snails! Anyway, by 7pm I discover that the extraction did not work...ARRRRGG!! I was crabby and tired and hungry. I was supposed to go to a party and tried to find someone to go with me...no luck and after fixing dinner and showering it was 10pm and I certainly was not in the mood to get ready to go to a party by myself (normally it wouldn't bother me as I would have know a couple people there).

Early Sunday morn, I was awoken by Shannon, who had partied all night long and was on his way to my place...on foot! It is quite a long walk, especially after dancing all night, so being the sweet, loving person I am, I left my toasty, comfy bed to go get him. We spent most of Sunday together until I took him home so he could get ready for working out of town again this week, hopefully for the last week...I'm so looking forward to him being done with that!

I started working on my microsatellite library this week...using DNA from metacercariae I already had prepared (the cercariae DNA was just a back-up plan). So far so good but I'm just in the beginning couple of steps...digesting the DNA into smaller pieces and adding sequences that we know to the ends...

Monday night I went to Rebecca's for dinner...vegetable curry stir-fry - delicious! And after she dyed her hair, I did the highlights...yes, dinner was a bribe! Tuesday night, Dee and I went shopping and prepped for our dinner party tomorrow night. We are having all the Americans in the department over for Mexican. There is like 1 or 2 Mexican restaurants in town and I hear they're not very good. There are 9 of us in the department, including Dee and I, and 3 of us are from MN! So with partners and Wayne, there will be 13 of us for dinner. Deanna's making enchiladas, we'll fix a salad, I'm making Susanne's Avocado and Grape tomato salad again (still have heaps of cherry tomatoes ripening) and margaritas! And even though we told folks not to bring anything, Jen is making home-made salsa and Lisa is making guacamole. Yum! I can't wait for tomorrow!