Saturday, December 01, 2007

What's your superpower? Part 2 and a Callout

As the mother of a 7 year old, I think a great deal about superpowers. Iris and I discussed our superpowers walking to school in What's your superpower? I took the What Should Your Superpower Be? quiz in I wish.

But I have to say I am disappointed in the quiz. For instance, you would expect choosing a cheetah for an animal companion to strongly influence whether or not you are super fast. Guess again. If you made the same first 4 selections I did, the fifth and final question can still give four possible superpowers. How do I know? Well, my first instinct was to pick wind, but I thought I should put down weather because I am a meteorologist. But I didn't want to be invisibility and I decided to go back to my first instinct. That gave super speed. BTW, the last three options on question 5 all give invisibility. Then I played around with some other combinations and I don't see the reasoning at all for the selections.

What does this mean? It means that I should quit taking on-line quizzes and get ready for AGU and our trip to New Zealand.

Thomasina suggested a trip to Artfibers in downtown San Francisco as a break from AGU on Wednesday. Leave a comment with your email address if you want to join us.

We are going to visit both the north and south Islands. Mark has set up an itinerary that includes both glaciers and volcanoes. From Clementine's Shoes' Flickr photos, it looks we might have to bundle up for hiking around glaciers. Anyone know how cold it is in midsummer in the glacier fields of the south island?

Anybody have suggestions for yarn shopping in New Zealand? My sister suggested I buy possum fur yarn while I am there. My budget is more modest than hers. I was thinking more along the lines of soft merinos. But, I might buy a little possum/merino blend for a scarf or Moebius neck ring.

I did shop for some host gifts today. Two families in Auckland and Christchurch offered to house us--offers greatly appreciated as the dollar continues to plummet. From what I can tell, NZ is a very friendly country. One host family are old friends that we have hosted. But his parents offered to host us as well, though they have never even met us. I gave some new neighbors Iris' outgrown toddler seat. When we met the visiting grandparents from NZ, the grandfather immediately offered to host us. Unfortunately, they didn't live on our itinerary so we took a raincheck.

3 comments:

  1. I've never been to NZ, but if the South Island glacier fields are anything like the Sierras in August when snow has lingered through the summer, it is cold! Of course, it will depend somewhat on how close you are getting to the glaciers, but I would expect to need ski-type jackets, and hats and mittens which you can stuff in your pockets just in case.

    Have a great trip!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, I haven't been to NZ yet so I can't help with that.

    But I am thrilled, and intrigued, to see that someone else starts playing around with the answers on these things to see how the answers are determined. Of course this probably means that I should just leave these things alone.

    I was torn between water and wind on question 5. Wind of course gave Super Speed and Water gave Mind Reading, but changing my answers to other questions did not affect these outcomes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Grace, I stumbled on your blog from I don't know where and am enjoying it. I'm another scientist/mommy. If you haven't gone to NZ yet, I can tell you that the weather will be... unpredictable midsummer. My hubby's a Kiwi, and I've been several times. On my first trip, we went up on Franz Josef glacier. I wore shorts and a sweatshirt and was fine. But it was a nice sunny day. You could also get a yuckier day- you just never know. I vaguely remember them telling us NOT to wear jeans or any such thing because they would get wet and cold, so I think some zip-off hiking pants would be just the thing to wear. If you want more NZ advice drop a line on my blog and I'll figure out some way to exchange email addresses w/o identifying ourselves. Maybe I need to set up a gmail account that doesn't involve my name. Also, if you look in the travel posts on my blog, I have a couple about NZ.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are open for recent posts, but require moderation for posts older than 14 days.