mmmm, baked goods make problems seem less severe

As I write I'm devouring a chocolate croissant from the corner bakery...it's horrible that these temptations are literally right around the corner. I have cut back on how often I indulge though.

Indiana Jones was great! Very classic and corny and has the same 80's essence of the others. I loved it and so did the 6 others that I went with.

So I'm still problem solving with my experimental infection procedure. I'm now down to using only 5 ml of water (just enough to cover the gills of the little fish but not the dorsal fin) and am trying different numbers of parasites. For the first time I was able to observe the parasites on the outside of the fish...Houston, we have contact!! Woo Hoo! But over 20 hours later many of these parasites are still on the outside of the fish, damnit! They are supposed to get into the fish and I'm not sure if they still will or if the ones that haven't made it in will die on the outside. So now I wait a few days before dissecting the fish and seeing if the infection worked. But there's a problem with needed more parasites to infect a fish...the snails just don't produce that many parasites in a day so I wouldn't be able to get all the fish needed for an experiment infected in a timely manner. That means I need more snails...this has been a problem for a while...I had thought I finally had enough but no. So another PhD student from Indiana is working with the same system. She has collected from areas on the north part of the South Island and found a couple spots with high prevalence (10 and 22% of snails are infected). It just so happens that one of the places is also a study site for a couple other folks in my lab and we are now planning a trip. It's a ways to go and through the mountains and not the best time of year...the pass was closed over the weekend because of weather. So it's looking like I won't have this experiment started before I leave for home...that sucks...but I'd rather wait and be able to have an experiment with a good number of parasites in the fish so I can have solid results (meaning that I want it to be good so I can publish the findings). In the meantime, I'll keep plugging away at trying to figure out the infection procedure and start one of my field projects and head back to the genetics lab.

And I've started my training for the half marathon now that basketball is over and I'm not injured most of the time. I've gotten up and been to the gym by 7am 3 times in the last week and gone for a couple runs outside and am heading to pump class tonight. I can tell my body is certainly not used to all this working out...on Saturday, I never even bothered to leave the house...I did some chores and watched Indiana and the last crusade (getting ready for the new one) and Wayne burned Heroes Season 2 so I watched a bunch of those too. But hopefully I can keep at it!

Happy Birthday Tammy!

Welcome to 35!! Ha! Totally wishing I was there to celebrate...9 weeks until I'm home and I can't frickin' wait! For those that don't know, I'll be in MN Jul 24 - Aug 10 and in LA Aug 10-12 before heading back to NZ. I can't even express how excited I am!!

Deanna, Wayne and I had a party Saturday night. We had a great time! We fixed some apps and I couldn't believe how quickly all the food disappeared. Mostly folks from my department came. I was waiting in anticipation of my supervisor showing up so I could talk about my problems with my infection procedure (more to come on this). Most folks cleared out between 12-12:30 and the last handful left around 2am...I was thankful Dee didn't want to cleanup until morning! It didn't take long...lots of recycling and glasses to wash. Wayne and I hung out and watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom...a bunch of us girls will be heading to the new one next week. It comes out on Thursday, but Tuesdays are cheap night so it will only cost $9 instead of the normal $12 for a Uni student (yes, the $12 is a discount for students).

I'm in a lull work-wise yesterday and today. Still not getting my experiment started...surprise! Now that I'm working on figuring out the infection procedure, I'm discovering some issues. So first I put my infected snails in an incubator with a light for a couple of hours, this causes the parasites to leave the snails. I pipette up the parasites that are swimming around (problem #1 is that I don't get as many parasites from these snails as I had hoped...means I probably need to go after more snails yet). Then I transfer them to a fluorescent dye solution for 1 hour and then put them through a series of rinses. By the time I'm finished with all of this, most of my parasites have died before I can even get them to a fish. These fish are most likely already naturally infected with this parasite so I have to dye mine so I can distinguish between them. Tomorrow I get to play around with dying them for a shorter time, maybe at a higher concentration (which could also kill them) and learn how to use the fluorescent microscope to look at these guys after I dye them. Also, I'll get to look at one of the fish I've infected to determine if the infection procedure is working at all. In the mean time, I've been shopping with my research budget...getting some glass pipettes and a new keyboard so I can put my laptop on a riser thingee so it's at eye level. And I've been organizing my desk and files and articles and heaps of crap...taking out the recycling...working on the huge reading pile on my desk...

Cheesecake and strong men

So yet another birthday passed yesterday. I had to give a presentation to my department...telling them what I plan to do for my PhD. It went very well and I was quite happy with the talk. Rachel and I went for lunch and I headed home. Folks came over for a potluck last night and we had a good time. Deanna made me cheesecake that was absolutely fantastic! I didn't contribute a thing but there was more than enough food. Other than having boy troubles it was a great day.

Went to my first rugby game on Sat night with most of my lab and others from the department...15 of us in total. We (Highlanders) lost, but it was great to finally have a few rules explained. I find it to be such a strange game but it's THE sport here. I'd love to go to an All Blacks match!

Rules of Rugby video

Still here

Ok, so I didn't die. In fact, playing the entire game was not as hard as I thought it was going to be. But I couldn't play this week cause I hurt my back and was laid up in bed on wednesday...I hear we won and that the other team was a bunch of kids. Been calling home a lot...trying to get my work done so next week I can book my flight home for July. Went to 3:10 to Yuma last weekend...western with Russel Crowe as the bad guy - weird but good. Out for Japanese on Tuesday night and we sat on the floor (on little chair like things without legs) and I think that's what did my back in as it had already been bothering me. Tomorrow is Shannon's birthday...not sure what we're doing - something cheap - but I am cooking him dinner and baking a cake and got him a great present! K, back to work now...