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...

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!

Kiwis really know how to celebrate Easter!

The good news last week was I finally scored during a basketball game! Woo Hoo! Bryan is the greatest for planning that out for me :) And I'm still eating cod!

Sadly, today is the last day of our 5-day holiday weekend. I haven't been up to much...worked a wee bit and relaxed most of the time. Friday Shannon came over as soon as he got back from working in Wanaka for the week. We hung out and fixed cod again. This time I coated it in flour, then egg, then a breadcrumb seafood mix and boy, was it yummy! Again I fixed potatoes and onions...yes all these potatoes are coming from our garden. And Shannon made the lettuce salads with all types of yummy toppings. Deanna made Self-saucing chocolate pudding (pudding here means cake with a sauce)...it was delicious, and she made it in the microwave - amazing! Saturday morning I spent browsing Susanne's blog and all her wonderful recipes she's been posting for the last couple of years. I was looking for ideas since we had a few pears left that hadn't fallen off the tree and rotted away and our cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen. Saturday night Dee, Kathy and I ordered curry, and using a recipe from Susanne's blog, I roasted the pears with honey, red wine and cinnamon and served with ice cream...roasted pears are way better than I thought they would be! And we watched Pirates 3. Sunday, I made Susanne's Avocado and Grape tomato salad using the cherry tomatoes to accompany some left-over cod, and it was delicious! And yet again Shannon and I talked about going to see the glow worms but ended up watching Casino Royale instead. Oh and I also worked a wee bit on my manuscript. Easter Monday and New Zealand is still in holiday mode...Kristin actually went into the lab and dissected fish - which she should have been doing all weekend... Monday night played poker at Shannon's. And today is Otago Anniversary Day, meaning another holiday! I slept in, did laundry, made deviled eggs for the pot luck and headed to Haseeb and Stephanie's for shark bbq. Yes, that's right, shark. Last weekend there was a local shark fishing tournament and Haseeb was given some of them to dissect for parasites. Well, there were heaps of good meat going to waste so Haseeb kept some to bbq. They cut off the tail behind the dorsal fin and slice for steaks. Shark tissue is full of ammonia and urea so you have to soak it for a day in salt water and lemon (or milk or salt water and vinegar). Then Haseeb did all these different types of marinades that I can't even begin to describe how good they all were. And we tried blue shark, 7-gill shark, dog fish and taupe shark. Shark meat has the consistency of a steak...much firmer than you'd expect and the 7-gill was very firm. It's been a great holiday weekend - relaxing and eating - but I have heaps of work waiting for me...

Best day in NZ yet!

So Saturday I went cod fishing with my flatmate (Wayne), 3 labmates (Clément, Rachel, Dave) and another post-grad (Bryan). We had a fabulous time, well everybody but Bryan who got seasick. We fished off a reef about 40 meters deep. Just as your line reached the bottom they were nibbling at the bait and with 2 hooks per line we were reeling 'em in like crazy! And from 40 meters it seems like you're reeling in forever. We mainly caught blue cod, but also some Jock Stewart perch (aka sea perch), trumpeter, tarakihi, pink wrasse, parrot fish and a red cod. Sorry to say I was either too busy fishing or taking pics of birds and thus did not take very many pictures of the fish (photo album on right). The birds were incredible even though no Royal Albatross showed up. The bird list: NZ White-capped mollymawk, Buller's mollymawk, Cape pigeon, Sooty shearwater, Black-backed gull, Red-billed gull, White-fronted tern, Artic skua, Black shag, Spotted shag. To top it off, dolphins showed up and since it was my first time seeing them in the wild, our guide marked our spot, pulled anchor and drove along with the dolphins for awhile. I climbed around to the bow and took video of them swimming under and along the boat. It was incredible! There were Bottlenose and Dusky dolphins. Glad to say I did not get seasick...I didn't take any thing cause I wanted to find out if I would. And driving a jet boat was pretty cool...you have to anticipate the boat drifting in one direction and turn the wheel the opposite way...takes a minute to get the hang of it and if you over compensate then you keeping zig-zagging back and forth. I've had cod for almost every meal since. Saturday lunch Wayne and I fried some in butter. Then for dinner I fried the cod in butter and made potatoes and onions and a lettuce salad for me and Shannon...he says it's the best tea (Kiwi for dinner) he's had in ages. Amazingly there were enough left-overs for Sunday and Monday lunches. And Sunday night I coated a couple fillets in egg and cracker crumbs and fried them. Our guide said it's best to wait a few days before battering them as they're just too wet...so I'll try that tomorrow night (going out for St. Paddy's tonight). I'm over my homesickness now!

I know there are a lot of videos but most of them are quite short.

Clément catching a trumpeter and a pink wrasse. See how long it takes to reel in from 40m!


NZ White-capped Mollymawks going after the fish we throw back


Bottlenose and Dusky dolphins


You can see the dolphins swimming under the water


Our guide filleting the fish...video taping made him nervous so this was Take 2


Filleting a Jock Stewart perch


Birds flying around the boat as scraps from filleting were thrown out


Me driving the jet boat