Tagged!

Hey! I was tagged... not once but twice! The rules for this game are as follows:

1. Link to the person who sent this to you and leave a comment on their blog so their readers can visit yours 2. Post the rules on your blog 3. Share 7 strange/weird facts about yourself 4. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, linking their blog 5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

My only problem is that the only blogs I read are other Kazakhstan adoption blogs, and it looks like everyone has played this game already! I'm not sure there's anybody left to tag! Bummer!

Oh well... here are my 7 weird things:

1. I grew up in the military (dad was in the Air Force) and we moved every two years, on average. I went to 11 different schools (including 3 different high schools). I've lived in the US, the Azores Islands, and Germany.

2. And speaking of Germany, a friend and I were once locked in a castle tower in Germany. Our cries for help went unanswered for about an hour and finally my friend and I decided to figure out how to pick a lock. We were successful. :^)

3. I once sat on the roof of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.

4. Over the years, I have had 4 giant millipedes as pets, ranging from a nearly 13-inch long female named Millificent the Magnificent Millipede to a skinny little guy, only about 8 inches long, named Slim.

5. On this day, one year ago, I was petting fuzzy little leaves on New Zealand edelweiss plants along a trail leading up to Aoraki, the highest mountain in New Zealand, while my students took their midterm exam (by trying to identify plants, birds, rocks, etc. along the trail).

6. I get really excited by really cold weather. The coldest I've experienced is -40 degrees, while leading a wolf-watching trip to Yellowstone National Park. (Did you know that -40 is the same on the Celcius and Fahrenheit scales? It's where the two scales converge! Cool!) Anyways, when the temperature hit -40, I ran outside in my long underwear and jumped up and down with exitement! (And quickly learned that -40 will freeze your lung tissue almost instantly!)

7. I've climbed to the top of a 14,000 foot mountain in Colorado! (Even though lots of my friends have peaked numerous 14'ers... I'm still proud of my ONE 14'er!)

Hmmmm..... now who do I tag???? Who's left in Kaz blogland? I'll have to search...

(PS. Does anyone know why blogger continues to double-space between my paragraphs, even when I go back to edit the post and delete the extra spaces continuously????)
(PPS. Hey! I just noticed that on my poll on the sidebar, someone just voted for us to get "the call" this week! Thanks for the vote of confidence! :^)

Nope

For those of you out there that are checking this blog weekly to see if we've heard anything new, the short answer is: Nope. The long answer is: Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nada. Nichts. Nothin'.


Try again next week! In the meantime, I've posted a new poll... cast your votes!


(Amy, if you're reading this, my mildly cranky attitude this week does NOT negate the fact that we're still optimists by default. I stand by that claim! :^)

(UPDATE on 1/18/08: Okay, I realize that my poll on the sidebar is incredibly poorly constructed. I'm clearly not a social scientist. I guess I was wondering, will I get the phone call this month? Or will it be later than this month, i.e. later in the year. Clearly if I get the phone call this month, it will also be this year. My brain is fried. I'm glad it's the weekend.)

Science!

Well, still no news on the adoption front, but I finally got my DNA extractions to work! I'm working on a research project during my "maternity leave" from teaching. I'm hoping to compare genetic diversity of some small populations of prairie plants along the Mississippi River bluffs. But first, I had to actually extract the DNA out of the plants, which just wasn't working. But last week, I set up the reaction, left the room for a bit, and when I came back, there was DNA!!! Yay!!!! It was like a late Christmas present! Here's what it looks like:

The little pinkish, glow-in-the-dark bands is DNA that is flourescing under an ultraviolet light. This picture is actually sugar maple DNA that one of my students extracted last night, after I taught her how to make the extraction work. She's doing this for part of her senior capstone project. Groovy.

On a completely different note, we had freakishly warm weather this past weekend, so we enjoyed it by taking the dog to the state park at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.

The obligatory self-portrait shot:

Russell and Deva learning about the great rivers: