Thursday, September 24, 2009

A Megan Week

As I'm sure you all know, Caley is out of town this week for Collegiate Track Nationals! This means I pamper myself all week long! :)
To date I have:
eaten a chocolate cake
had a fire in the fire place
had wine with dinner two nights in a row
slept late
journaled
watched a few silly girl movies
etc...

Anyway, it's been nice, but a little lonely...Sebby would be offended by that statement I'm sure:)

Apparently they've done really well this week, I haven't gotten the official updates yet for today, but the past two days have been very successful!

I'm really starting to look forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas!! Hopefully the damn mosquitoes will be in a place where I can leave them for a few days of relaxation.

Also, Caitlin comes to visit in a little less than a month! I've got to think of some cool stuff to do, and try not to be at work until 9pm...highly likely for that Friday I'm afraid.

Anyway...not much going on this weekend, maybe some studying, maybe some breakfast at Uncle K's..we shall see!

-Megan

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Fall Time!

Happy Fall Everyone, keep fingers crossed for snow soon!!!




p.s. I've had this weird eye twitch all day, it's getting really annoying and I'm sure I look kind of weird :) Hopefully it goes away after a good nights sleep!

Thursday, September 17, 2009

I would like to go home now please.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Stupid Mosquitoes

So, because my mosquitoes are not maturing at a quick enough rate, I probably won't get to go up to Beaver Meadows this weekend! :( I hate mosquitoes. For any of you who have gotten the erroneous impression of late that I may have started to get fond of them, you are WRONG! I still hate them, I still hate the sound of them buzzing in my ears, and I wish I could be done with them all right now! Unfortunatley, I'm getting to the most labor intensive part of my project as far as mosquitoes go. In the next few days, I have to isolate individual pupae from each of my six hatches (as many as I can) and wait for them to emerge as either male of female. I then have to set up as many single family pairs as I can with those isolated males and females (crossing females with males from a different population and collecting the eggs from that cross). This breaks down to A LOT of tiny cages for individual pairs of mosquitoes. Then I have to make sure each female in these pairings feeds well, mates and lays eggs. Then I start the whole process over again, and repeat four more times. I'm sure at this point I won't be done in November. I should probably email my counterpart in Mexico to let her know...but I won't do that until I can get a good estimate of when I'll actually be done, no idea at this point, but after I get eggs from this first cross I'll just extrapolate.
Aside from the crosses, I am doing insecticide resistance assays as well. I won't go into details because it's too complicated to explain, let's just say it's going to involve an extreme amount of counting larvae/adults, and extreme amounts of dish washing, and extreme amounts of time. It's not part of my project, but helping out another person in the lab...I'll be doing the same for my mosquitoes later, so this counts as practice. In any case, I'll have help on this part, but I'm not at all looking forward to it.
Also, (let's just get all of the complaining out of the way shall we?) I am beginning to feel like a blob. My right calf and thigh are already super tiny and wasted away, and I haven't had any exercise for 21 days!! At least I know I'll be super motivated to get going once this damn boot comes off, but for now, I think my mood is being affected by the lack of physical activity.
My mood today:

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Sebby Went Missing!!!!!

Last night Caley and I got home after a wonderful afternoon of coffee with friends, some beers, bike polo, and a great barbecue with the team to find that we had forgotten to close the porch door, and our dear Sebby cat was gone!! Usually he's really good about staying on the porch and we've left him out there before, but maybe he spied a lady cat this time or something, anyway, it was horrible! This prompted about 2.5 hours of searching with the flashlight, making up fliers and posting them, knocking on doors and calling the 24hr missing pet hotline that has his microchip information. We discovered knocking on doors that he actually ran into our downstairs neighbors house and hid under the bed, but instead of keeping him safe, they chucked him back outside! Poor scared kitty!! The lady on the hotline gave us the tip that if we stuck his litter box outside, it's like a "smell lighthouse" and he might be wanting to come home, but just couldn't smell where we live! We did as told, and seriously, it was miraculous! In about five minutes I saw him run across the grass right below our porch! Caley was already outside hanging up posters so I quick called him and he got back to the house in time to catch the little bugger before he took off again. We were soooooo relieved!!!!!
We've had Sebby for almost exactly a year now, and I can't imagine our little apt. without him! So, moral of the story, Sebastians porch time is going to be seriously limited!
Here's a picture from when he was a new member of the family...he's grown a lot since then!

Monday, September 7, 2009

A Couple of Pics from the Past Month or so

From a hike with Emily, Brenden and Cricket up to Mount Bearstadt(sp?) It was cold up there at 14,000 ft above sea level!


Camping with the team up at Beaver Meadows is always focused around eating at the picnic table!


All set to go as the official water bottle holder at the first xcountry race of the year up in Wyoming!


Post race in the car, sad that I didn't get to ride, but happy cause it was a GORGEOUS Fall day and everyone did so well!

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Tour de Fat!!

Tour de Fat was AWESOME I'm super glad we stayed in town and participated. I had planned on volunteering because I wanted a free tshirt, but decided not to at the last minute because logistics with the ole ankle just wouldn't work out. Here is a video (courtesy of Caley's iphone) for your viewing pleasure of the craziness of Tour de Fat!
Hope you are all having a great weekend!
-Megan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQFtsof5Ixw

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Workin' Away

Me. Working. Healing my ankle. :)