You're so sly

Man, there's been some junk going on.

When was the last time I posted, even?

Well, I spent one of the days between babysitting. My charge?

I spent some Sunday being effectively the doorman of a Finding Nemo Bouncing Castle. (It's tempting to say I was the bouncer, in fact).

I loved bouncing castles growing up. So I was suprised to see that a number of children either:
a) didn't ask to get on
b) didn't agree when asked to get on
c) began crying when they were inserted through the little door
Most of those from (c) would come back and give it another try. There was a little girl who came back so many times her mother forbid her from coming back (which didn't stop her). That seems more like my attitude.

I actually, don't have much experience with kids and until this day I'd never really picked up or held a child and so it was an interesting experience having to pick a <2y.o. up and carry her out of a bouncing castle full of exciteable children.

Other things I have been up to include visiting my boy's parent's farm. That was kinda cool. Nice and quiet, and his parents/sister are lovely, as are the pets. We planted a veggie garden but didn't do much other farm stuff. I went over to see the cows one day and very brutally, accidently almost punched a hole in a ear drum with a grass seed. That somewhat terminated the holiday when Dave had to drive me the two hours back to the Emergency Ward of the RVEEH so I could be told to stop eating, go home and come back to have the thing removed under and anasthetic so that I'd stop screaming at all the doctors.

Whoops.

The other news is that I got my marks returned to me. I passed, very well in fact. And both micro(biology) and genetics offered me my first preference for Honours projects. Thanks, boys.

I decided to follow my heart and I'm taking the genetics option. So, here is the most dumbed down version (for all the more artily inclined) of the project I can describe:

When you take a drug (legal or illict) the body goes "ooh, I don't recognise that chemical, let's get rid of it." This is by the use of detoxification genes which attack the chemical until it's really easy to excrete (piss) out of the system.

In Australia (for the more internationally inclined) we have this thing called the Australian Sheep Blowfly that does nasty thing to sheep (and sheep farmers) leading to a loss of money and food production.

I will be given some Australian Sheep Blowflys that have strange expression of their detoxification genes meaning that they are resistant to a large number of insecticides that would normally kill them. I am going to investigate how/why this can happen with the limited (by this I mean the ASB genome hasn't been sequenced and that would be useful) knowledge available.

So, if you understood that, good. If not, just say "congratulations Jud" and smile and wave.