24 facts Meme!

If you would like to participate, comment and I'll give you a random number of facts that you then share! Dom gave me 24 :)

1. I wanted to be a scientist since middle school and was ready to specialize right then and there
2. My high school biology teacher nearly turned me off science forever if not for a special after school program I took in biomedical engineering which led to...
3. I attended the inaugral year of a 1/2 day magnet school that focused on math and science, GHAMAS (Greater Hartford Academy of Math and Science) but I was the second graduating class
4. I've performed ovariectomies on rats (at GHAMAS) 
5. I once stunk up the entire magnet school, both the math and science AND performing arts side in a reproductive biology project that went totally wrong when all our sea urchins died.
6. I took a snake over to the performing arts side specifically to scare all the arts majors
7. I hated Connecticut, where I grew up, and traveled the furthest out of my entire graduating class to go to college in Florida
8. I met Eric because I had just broken up with a boygirlfriend and was required to bring a date to my fledgling local sorority formal so we could meet the minimum head count for our banquet hall. He was the third person I asked.
9. I would trade manpower for help with my undergraduate research project with a crazy grad student named Matt.
10. Matt and I once canoed up a creek from the Indian River Lagoon, caught a baby alligator, kept it in a tackle box and then portaged the canoe from where it met campus a mile away to the fish biology building. I still made it to class on time, albeit covered in grime and muck.
11. I was on the crew team in college for one semester and dropped out due to the time commitment
12. I'm a certified SCUBA diver.
13. I spent 6 weeks in Australia and 3 days in New Zealand in the summer of 2005
14. I was a competitive viola player in high school in that I competed for spots on regional, statewide and New England youth orchestras and regularly was a part of them.
15. I can also passably play the violin, less passably the piano
16. I love to sing and went out of my way in high school to take both orchestra and chorus while also attending the magnet school
17. I have seen Phantom of the Opera off broadway 6 times
18. I worked at Sears to raise money to go to Australia.
19. On a whim I asked for a job when I toured the Space Life Sciences Lab at Kennedy Space Center while considering grad school options. Wayne said yes and I worked part time as a lab tech at KSC SLSL my last semester of college and then full time once summer started.
20. I hated living in Gainesville.
21. I loved the last place Eric and I lived in Florida, Port St. John, a 2 bedroom 1st floor condo right on the lagoon. I could wake up and see dolphins or an alligator swim by and we never needed to go anywhere for rocket and shuttle launches.
22. I prepped pieces of an experiment that flew on the International Space Station as part of a project with the European Space Agency.
23. NASA paid for me to go to Spain and attend a summer school in Astrobiology. I learned more spanish in the 2 weeks I was there than the semester I took in middle school.
24. After grad school I worked for a local zoo on a conservation project where I got to go to scrubland and identify Scrub Jays. I also cared for breeding population of beach mice and was watched by giraffes every time I clocked in.