Ham.....

Admittedly, I know little about preparing ham. However, I can't say that I've encountered a special bag in which to smoke and then store your ham. We ran across this gem at the grocery store, it stopped me in my tracks, and I had to document such an interesting contraption. Who knows, maybe they exist everywhere but this is the first time I've ever seen one. :) 

Home....

Since December is almost upon us I've started listening to Christmas music during the random moments when I'm not running nonstop through the lab, practicing rollerskating or sleeping. The other night I sat down to cruise the web and first opened my Pandora Christmas station. Immediately, somehow miraculously, I felt the insanity of the day pull away from me. Granted nothing had really changed but I suddenly felt better. Felt better about work, wait a minute, I was no longer thinking about work and therein I realized I had found a place to rest. These days rest is coming to us less and less. We are carrying out intensive research projects that do not follow the traditional work week as well as volunteer commitments and recreational activities like skating. So amongst all of that I'm happy to say that, regardless how silly it may sound, there's something about the Christmas holiday that makes me feel at home. With that said I can see now why I've so staunchly clung to my snowy, Northern hemisphere Christmas traditions since moving to NZ. They have always been and will forever be a comfort to me. So regardless the incongruity I will set up an evergreen Christmas tree, celebrate St. Nicholas Day on December 6th, work jigsaw puzzles and watch Christmas movies. I can't help it; wherever I go it will be a joyful part of me that I must embrace! :)

LEDs.....

It's the end of November and I've been so busily distracted with work that I realized a few days ago that it's the end of November! And that means shifting into Christmas mode: setting up the tree, writing Christmas cards, and watching Christmas movies while working on jigsaw puzzles. Since the season is suddenly upon us we decided to venture out and see if we could find some twinkle lights to put up in our living room area. Alas we found some sweet colored LEDs and after a quick stop at Starbucks headed home to put them up.

With some much appreciated 3M Command strips sent from home (here they would be exponentially more expensive) we measured the space and put them up at the appropriate intervals.

They stretched around the room and we had a few left over. I was happy with the end result and ready to plop down on the couch and admire our handywork but Timmy was counting the extra lights on the end of the cord and calculating how 'if we could add just five more to each section then it would be perfect'. I left this task up to him because I wasn't fussed either way so he went around, step ladder in tow, and adjusted each section of the strand until it evened out exactly where the two ends met in one of the corners.

He even tucked the excess cord away on the top of our bed module so we can't see the extra cord that would hang down to the ground. :) Attention to detail does pay off and I have to say it's looks so incredibly cozy. The only weird thing was that our neighbors across the courtyard watched the entire process undoubtedly wondering, "What are they doing over there? They have some sort of lights on a string....". Again, things are different in New Zealand. Without a doubt we will be the only unit that has any Christmas decorations up for the season. I'm not surprised that people don't seem that into Christmas here; it is summer. But nevertheless it breaks my heart as I've always enjoyed the traditions of the season and miss them terribly when we are so far away from home. With that said we are determined not to hate and have decided to embrace the 'Kiwi Christmas' activity of choice this year: beaching it on Christmas Day. :) Bizarro but we'll give it a try! Our next tasks include setting up the tree and writing out Christmas cards so we can get them into the mail with enough time to make it to all of our North American family and friends. Our deadline in December 4th so we need to get cracking on them this week!

Breakfast....

Under a drizzling sky last Friday we set off for school and decided to treat ourselves and take the bus. We arrived with a few minutes to spare and I was telling Timmy about what was sure to be a crazy day. These days I run experiments in the lab from 9am-5pm. But on Friday I was running additional experiments on top of the normal ones and therefore had to be in before 8am to complete the copious amounts of prep work to start by 9am with the intention of being out of the shared experimental room by noon so the next student could use it.

That morning I realized there was no milk for our cereal (damn. damn!) so being the faithful breakfaster that I am I dutifully put some Cheerios into a tupperware container and decided I'd scarf it down when I had a spare moment sometime that morning.

So we're waiting for the bus and Tim turns to me and asks, "Are you doing surgeries today?". As soon as the "no" was out of my mouth he was darting across the street to the gas station. I smiled to myself knowing that he was buying me a blueberry Red Bull, my favorite, to kick start my crazy day. :) That moment right there made my day.

The bus whisked us up to campus where I hurried to the lab and began setting up my regular experiment and as well as the extra one I had slated for 8am-12pm that morning. It was continual running around the lab to ensure that everything was set to go. A colleague of mine was nice enough to start my first experiment so I could focus on the other simultaneously running experiment! I was happy that my one off experiment only ran until 11:30 so I had time to move all my stuff out of the room. This happened just in time for me to swap over my ongoing experiment to the next group. Run, run, run! Once everything was squared away I took a breath and looked at the clock. Almost 12:30pm. Time for breakfast. In all the chaos I hadn't had two spare moments to eat my cereal and remember I'd just been running on one blueberry Red Bull. So I went downstairs fetched my Cheerios. My colleagues, who were just sitting down to lunch, chuckled when they saw my cereal but soon quieted down when I said, "This was my first chance to eat breakfast". I scarfed the lot down and rushed back into the lab. The afternoon wasn't quite as crazy but the next time I had a chance to sit down it was nearly 4pm. I collapsed into my desk chair and started eating lunch when Tim messaged me to say that some of the folks from his lab were meeting for beers at 4pm. I told him that I still had an hour of experiments to go and would meet up with them afterwards. Sigh. Big sigh. Don't get me wrong I enjoy my work but breakfast at 12:30pm - that's just wrong! :)

Ta.....

Ta. Upon arriving in New Zealand I soon noticed that some of my lab colleagues would say "ta" instead of  "thank you". I'm not sure why but I really like the way it sounds and am trying to incorporate into my everyday speech. Thus far I've had limited success and usually just default to "thank you", "thank you so much", "thank you very much", "thanks", or the occasion throwback to my time in Mexico, "gracias". Nevertheless I'm determined to get "ta" into my vocabulary. Looking up the etymology I learned that it comes from the Danish word "tak" to say "thanks" but people have shortened it to "ta" and use it very informally. Since it caught my ear I've paid attention to when people use it. You'll hear someone say "ta" if you do some very small kindness like holding the door for him/her or passing something across the table. And once in awhile I'll greet a colleague in the morning and ask "how are you?" and he/she might respond, "good, ta". There's just something about that little word that makes me smile. Ta! :)

Book love.....

Tully. This one was a mistake. I picked it up at the local book fair thinking that the author was someone else I had been meaning to read. Yeah. This book was not well written and seemed to have no direction. Oh well - when you pick randomly (even when you think you're not) this is bound to happen from time to time.

Wire what???

Recently I was working on adding a temperature control unit to a warming oven in our lab.  The job was relatively simply, I was basically wiring in a really expensive thermostat.  Once everything was in place and assembled, I had two sets of wires that needed to be tied together.  So what do I look for?  A couple wire nuts of course.

You know, these things:

When I couldn't find any in our lab, I went to ask our department's electronics technician.  At first I thought Rod (our tech) was pulling my leg when he said he had no idea what I was talking about, but then I figured there must be another name in New Zealand for these little devices.  Once I described what you us them for, he exclaimed, "oh, a terminal block!"

But wait, a terminal block is this:

I worked hard to explain again what I was looking for and described their usage in construction, but I was assured that I was looking for a terminal block.  Or as I learned a "candy bar" in Kiwi speak.  To be safe I had Rod check out what I was doing and he assured me I was looking for a terminal block.  Well in the end I got the job done, but I am still not convinced how New Zealand functions without wire nuts.  

Pain....

So remember how excited I was after the my first "freshmeat" training session? Yes, I was truly encouraged. But then I got up the next morning. More like struggled to contort body into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Standing at this point seemed like a way-in-the-future type of goal. I expected to be sore. Sure, I had just done lots of exercise after not having done exercise for awhile. Right. This was beyond sore. I don't think I've ever ached so completely  throughout my entire body. Pulling myself up from laying down in bed sent shooting pain all through my abs, sides of my torso and back. I also noticed that my arms weren't much good for helping as they were tender to the touch and smarted with every movement I made. So there I am sitting on the edge of the bed knowing it was only going to get worse. Taking a deep breath I pushed off the bed, an mind you ours is lower than your standard nest, and was somehow able to hold myself upright while my brain was overloaded with signals from every nocioreceptor (pain) in my body. In addition, I couldn't fully stand up because my legs were so stiff and I must've looked insane standing there, wincing with my knees bent to accommodate my significantly shorter leg muscles. After that I hobbled around the house, managed to dress myself and walked to school. So this is fun when you have all kinds of stairs to go up and down along the way. I don't remember everything I learned in Human Anatomy class but I have to say that whatever I pulled screamed just as much going up stairs as going down. In the past I've experienced one or the other. No. Not this time.

After arriving at school I gingerly lowered myself onto my desk chair and started to ignore the pain in my legs, only because they weren't currently moving under the desk. But every reach across the piles of papers had my back, arms and abs complaining. Busy with other tasks I put the pain out of my mind until, you guessed it, I had to go the bathroom. That meant extracting myself from the chair and walking, shudder, down the hall. With all those muscles you don't ever think about until their howling in agony I braced and pushed myself out of the chair. Embarrassingly, I had a genuine limp as my left leg tends to be less limber in general. This was exaggerated now and I could not compensate. So I limped my way down the hall. Then I faced a problem. Since my arms, chest and back were on fire I couldn't just put out my arms to push the door open. No, I had to, with T-Rex-like arms, use my body weight to push the door open. I've never had to do this before in my life. It made me marvel at how many coordinated muscle movements we make to achieve fluid actions. All without noticing. Until now.

The following morning, Tuesday, was worse. Much worse. I'm not sure why the second day after is a killer but it is. It took more time to get ready and make it up to school with all the wincing, whimpering and small gutteral cries you might imagine. Especially when I had to push doors open. Every time I needed to visit the restroom I sighed and cringed because, you know, I knew what was coming and the sighing hurt too.

On Wednesday I was getting really worried because I was still hobbling around. That night I had my weekly Rollerfit course and wasn't sure what to expect with my decrepit feeling body. But I attended and made it through the class. At this point I think the extra moving around was helping stretch my muscles back to their regular length.

So I'm not sure what to expect, probably more of the same, with the next training sessions. I'm wondering if there is some method to their madness in scheduling them every other week. Maybe so we can have enough time to recover before the next session. :) Despite all the pain I'm planning to go back but at this point I cannot imagine moving beyond this beginner/pain stage. It'll be a great day when I just feel tired the day after. :)