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!