It had to end sometime

I'm back in the country! I had a great time in Mexico! The weather was perfect (low 80s and sunny), the resort was luxurious and gorgeous, and the food was delicious. Thank you mom and dad! We stayed at the all-inclusive resort the Aventura Spa Palace at Riviera Maya (1 hour from Cancun). We also took a day trip to Tulum to see some Mayan ruins and to Xel Ha, a nature-water park.

Below are some pics. If you'd like to see rest let me know.

Looking out at the ocean over my favorite beach spot to sit and read in the sun

The jacuzzi in our room (yes you heard me!) along with a little towel friend left by the maids

The ruins of a Mayan palace at Tulum from about 1000 AD.

PCR is back!

Thats right, last night I did my first successful PCR in I don't know how many months. I think it was last spring, although I might have done one in July. Anyway, it is still not working totally properly, but I have all my supplies and I can get it to work well enough for my purposes. Woohoo! Now it just has to stay working while I process 300 wren DNA samples. Ahh...pray for me!

In other news, I can definitely confirm that mailboxes look like deer. When you are driving through the countryside at night (say, from KBS to EL and back...just as an example) and you are already hyper-sensitive because you keep seeing lots of deer, some of whom try to cross the road in front of youl, seeing a dark mailbox leaning over the road with a little reflector on it that looks like a deer's eye is really disconcerting! And I'm not crazy or drunk, Emily G agreed with me!

This will probably be my last post before Mexico, so ADIOS!

Anything you can do...

Ability meme...from Tina's blog

You bold anything you can do, italicize anything you wish you could do, and add one new skill you're proud of to the end.

+ Use chopsticks
+ Speak more than one language
+ Roll my tongue
+ Play a musical instrument
+ Name every single pokemon character
+ Sing in tune
+ Use html
+ Cross my eyes
+ Put both feet behind my head
+ Ride a horse
+ Swim
+ Shuffle playing cards with a fancy move
+ Move and wiggle my eyebrows independently of each other
+ Play chess and win
+ Ride a bike
+ Drive
+ Do long division in my head
+ Draw quite convincingly
+ Bake cakes
+ Stand on my head (I could do this as a child...but not anymore!)
+ Do cartwheels (ditto)
+ Spell Czechoslovakia without having to look it up first
+ Identify any garden bird
+ Mix a mean cocktail (I have Aaron for that!)
+ Read music
+ Style hair like a professional
+ Tell the difference between Prada and nada at a glance
+ Whistle
+ Recite whole passages from the Lord Of The Rings books by heart
+ Remember birthdays and anniversaries without being reminded (It's called a calendar!)
+ Tap dance
+ Defuse an argument easily
+ Nurse any sick plant back to health
+ Cook anything
+ Forgive quickly
+ Train a dog (I trained Zoe to play dead...does that count?)
+ Commit things to memory without effort (at least some things)
+ Stick my big toe up and my little toes down
+ Freakishly bend my double-jointed thumb
+ Remove any stain
+ Do anything with makeup
+ Open jars without trouble
+ Charm the pants off people
+ Hold my breath for a minute
+ Roller-skate
+ Understand Shakespeare
+ Listen
+ Sew curtains
+ Decipher morse code
+ Click my fingers
+ Complete crossword puzzles (thanks to crossword puzzle races with Katie L and Kosha during stats lectures)
+ Finish a book once I start it
+ Fold napkins into pretty fan shapes
+ Crochet scarves
+ Cheer people up
+ Write multi-chapter fan fic stories
+ Rock at Six Degrees of Separation
+ Tell a debit from a credit in general ledger accounting
+ Solve legal problems and say 'yes, the answer would be yes, but it all depends you see...'
+ Teach
+ Teach real estate agents
+ Repair a bicycle puncture
+ Assemble flat packed furniture
+ Wiggle my ears without touching them
+ Type over 60 words per minute (never been timed but I am pretty fast)
+ Run a nuclear reactor
+ Take ugly writing and make it pretty (although I'm probably not as good at this as many of my friends who might be reading this blog)
+ Confidently talk about sports with anyone

(For my added one, I was going to do something about capturing or taking blood from wild birds, but I figured fewer people would be able to (or would want to) do that.)