The Attachment Style Test

My Results for The Attachment Style Test ...

The Free Agent

19% Anxiety Over Abandonment and 28% Avoidance Of Intimacy

You like to be independent, to play by your own rules. You're not terribly interested in finding a partner and settling down, and it makes you nervous to imagine that someone might depend on you for anything. Were you to find the right partner--someone as independent as you, probably--you'd not be too put out about sharing your adventures with him/her.

Fictional characters with whom you might identify: Han Solo (Star Wars), Beatrice ("Much Ado About Nothing")

To find out your Attachment style, go to: http://www.helloquizzy.com/tests/the-attachment-style-test

Wishing I was home already...

I broke up with my boyfriend a couple of weeks ago.  Turns out he's verbally abusive which has really shown through the last couple of weeks since I refuse to take him back.  It's gotten worse the past couple of days - I suppose because I talked to him, which gave him hope but the talk turned into a horrible mess, and now I refuse to answer his calls or even read the texts he sends.

Petrol perspective

I know you all are going into shock over the rise in fuel costs in the U.S.  But you don't realize fuels is cheaper in the states than in Canada, which is cheaper than in Australia which is cheaper than here in New Zealand and we get it cheaper than in the U.K.  And cost of fuel is rising here just as it is there.  I did some calculations from NZD to USD and liters to gallons...petrol costs over 6USD/Ga here and diesel costs about 5.50USD/Ga including the extra road user charges us diesel owners have to pay.  I know the sudden rise is a shock, but adjust your frickin' life style!  If you bought one of those largest SUVs to get that Bush tax write-off, you might be thinking that wasn't such a great idea now.  Get a more fuel-efficient vehicle, walk to the store, learn how to ride a bike again, combine several errands into one trip!  It's good for your pocket book, the environment and your bum!

The U.S. is neglecting diseases of the poor

Summary of a news article from msnbc.com:

9 parasitic diseases afflict 10 million Americans, predominantly  minorities living in the Mississippi Delta and the American South, in disadvantaged urban areas, along the U.S.-Mexican border and in disadvantaged white populations in the Appalachia.  The diseases include Ascariasis, the most common human worm infection; Toxocariasis, a roundworm transmitted in dog feces; Strongyloidiasis, another roundworm; Cysticercosis, pork tapeworm; Giardiasis, or beaver fever that causes diarrhea; Cytomegalovirus, which causes deafness and mental retardation in infants; Chagas disease and Dengue fever.  These are not killer diseases but instead cause people and children to be anemic, weak and unproductive.  With global climate change and increased flooding many of these diseases will be promoted.  Yet the U.S.  tolerates these diseases of our poor while spending $1 billion per year preparing for outbreaks of diseases the have not occurred, including smallpox, anthrax and avian influenza.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25352442/

Videos from the trip

Videos of my trip with Leah and new albums to the right...really Leah was with me even though I don't have a single photo of her!!  Every photo I took of her was with her camera, and I didn't always have my camera so Leah has heaps more photos, especially from Milford Sound when we took her disposable camera, but I probably won't get those from her until I come home...

Jack's Bay in the Catlins


Purakaunui Falls, Catlins


"Moving" picture of me in front of the falls


Moeraki Boulders - the Maori legend is that gods came to visit mother earth and when leaving one of them messed up the chant and came crashing back to earth in his canoe, New Zealand is the canoe partly upside down with the ridge of the canoe forming the mountains. The food baskets spilled out of the canoe and these boulders are those upside down baskets...


Dunedin Railway Station

More penguin videos from Sand Fly Bay...

Can you see the 3 fur seals laying on the rocks behind this penguins?

And another sea lion video

Round and round the South Island I go

I have soo much to share!

The first week of June I spent doing fieldwork with Dave from my lab and Andy, another PhD student in my dept. We went north and west over the mountains to Lake Poerua. I wanted to collect snails from a creek that runs into the lake and a student from Indiana U told me these snails were highly infected with the parasite I work with. Well, we get there and the creek is dry - damnit! So I collected snails from another creek and 3 locations of the lake. I'll be screening these snails this week to determine if they're infected. We stayed in Shearer's quarters on a farm on the lake - a complete shit-hole with mouse turds and faulty heating and no hot water for the first day - I took pictures. The good thing was we had easy access to the lake since this farm was on the lake. Then we drove down the west coast - absolutely beautiful! - to Haast area for Andy to collect some fish. The drive was windy and up and down...horrible when you're in back pain and want to lay down but laying down makes you carsick! Yes, I was in back pain when we left for this trip, then I spent the week sitting long hours in the truck or bent over collecting snails. By the time we got back Friday night, I couldn't sit or stand very long. I had a ticket for a whiskey and chocolate tasting for Friday night. Haseeb in my lab put together the tasting and the chocolates were designed and made by his wife who is a chocolatier. The chocolates were made with the whiskey they were paired with...ahhh, whiskey was great for the back pain....until Saturday...I could barely move - I couldn't even sit up in bed, I had to roll over and roll my legs out so my knees were on the floor and then stand up. It hurt to sit, stand, walk, so I spent most of the day in bed...then something must have happened in the middle of the night because Sunday morning I felt great, just had sore muscles and by Monday I was feeling perfect - weirdest thing.

So good that I felt back to normal cause Leah arrived that Monday. I had to take care of my snails so they'd live while I was traveling with Leah and she mostly rested on Monday since she had vertigo from traveling. Then Tuesday we made a couple of stops in the Catlins and then headed to Te Anau and stayed at a backpackers. We went to the glow worm caves - they were pretty cool - insect larvae that glow to attract other insects upon which they feed....they have these little sticky fishing lines that insects get caught in. On Wednesday we went kayaking in Milford Sound - that was the highlight of the trip for me! Kayaking is sooo much easier than canoeing. I got to try Sea Urchin, raw, for lunch - very, very salty! Thursday we shopped for souvenirs and drove to Queenstown, which we decided was too commercial and touristy so we continued on to Wanaka via the Crown Ridge road over the mountains. Spent the night there at another backpackers and on Friday we had lunch and a tasting at one of my favorite vineyards, Mt Difficulty, which has incredible views of Central Otago. Then we drove like hell to get to the Moeraki Boulders on the east coast and we arrived there just at dusk and in time to take a couple of pics before it was too dark. We had dinner at Fleur's in Moeraki, a place many folks have recommended - it's a run-down looking place with the best food ever and the fish on the menu were caught that morning! And finally by Friday night we were back at my place. We spent Saturday going to the Farmer's Market, shopping, and Rachel came over for dinner and we made Roasted chicken and vegetables, then we headed to town for a few drinks - the latest Leah stayed up the whole time she was here! Sunday I drove her around for some sight-seeing and then headed to Sandfly Bay for the penguins. There were heaps of sea lions and fur seals so I didn't know if we'd see any penguins. We saw one right away but I was worried that was it until right before dark and two more popped up over the cliff and then another two popped up on the rocks. Leah was so excited and said that was the best experience of the whole trip. And Monday I saw her off at the airport...talk about a whirl-wind of a trip!

Albums and videos will be posted shortly...

Now I'm trying to get back to the swing of normal life. Still haven't been able to infect my fish...argh. But hopefully I screen these snails and find infected ones so I have more parasites to sort out the problems I'm having with the infection procedure.

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...