I feel like a kid at Christmas.  The box arrived from National Geographic today.  It was just a plain brown box, but I knew what excitement it held.

I removed the shipping container, and out popped my nice black Geno 2.0 box.  Here it is, with me in my “home office” garb.

My husband, who also works “home office,” was excited too, so he got the camera and we recorded the process.

The kit contains a nice color booklet titled “Geno 2.0 – Your Story.  Our Story.  The Human Story.  The Greatest Journey every told.”  Indeed, it is.  And there’s a picture of Spencer at Machu Pichu.  Now I don’t think there was any DNA on top of that mountain, but it’s a great shot and represents the lengths that this project has gone to in order to collect indigenous samples.  My personal favorite story though was the year that Spencer couldn’t join us at the conference as planned because he had gotten “detained” by a Civil War in Chad.  I bet he had some tense moments there.  By comparison, Machu Pichu is probably a Sunday walk in the park.

The box arrived just before lunch, so it was a good time to swab.  The instructions are clearly written, with pictures, and the consent form is “built in” to the back page.  You need to complete both sides, tear it off, and insert it into the envelope with the vials.

I’ve swabbed before, so I knew there had to be vials.  Aha, there they are, in a special holder at the bottom of the swab paper.  I nearly missed them.

Well, since you’ve already seen me in my “home office” garb, you might as well see me swab too.  There is just no way to do this attractively.  It’s much better if you either do this alone or have a swab party so everyone looks equally weird.  It’s also hard to laugh and swab too, so if I have to reswab, that’s probably why.

Now, just insert the end of the swab into the vials, give a little push on the end with your thumb, screw on the cap, and you’re done!  Quick and painless, except maybe for that having my picture taken part.

When finished, don’t forget to include the consent form which is the bottom half of the back page, put it in your envelope, along with the vials in the little plastic baggie, and put postage on the envelope – 5 stamps worth – before sending it off.

But wait…you’re not done yet.

You have to register your kit.  Well, you don’t have to, only if you want to be able to see your results AND if you want to be able to recover your code/results if you lose your code. That, of course, would NEVER happen to me.  Yeah, right.

So here are the options at www.genographic.com under the results tab.

• If you participated in version 1, and you registered, it’s easy to sign in using your user ID and just add this kit to your account.

• If you participated in version 1, and you did not register, but you still have your ID, you can register now, then you can go back and add the 2.0 kit to your account.

• If you participated in version 1, and registered your kit, obtaining a user ID and password, and you lost it, you can easily recover it.

• If you participated in version 1, and you did NOT register your kit, and you do NOT have your original kit number, you are toast relative to your version 1 results.  They don’t have any breadcrumbs to you if you didn’t register your kit.

• If you did not participate in version 1.0, then this is your first National Geographic kit, so just register it.

During this process you’ll be asked if your sample can be included in the project for study purposes.  It’s a personal decision, but without people like you and I giving permission to utilize our results, the progress we have seen today would never have happened.  So please consider checking the “include me” box!

Now that you’re registered, you can check the status of your kit and eventually, your results.  Of course the status of my kit is that it’s laying on my desk right now, waiting to be taken to the mailbox in the morning to begin its journey.

As the back of the brochure says “You are adding your own chapter…YOU to the Human Story.”

And yes, the story continues.  I’ll let you know when the results come back.  The kit says 6 to 8 weeks from the time the lab receives the DNA vials AND the consent form.  Let’s see, that would be roughly sometime between the first of December and the 15^th, maybe slightly longer since it hasn’t left yet.  Ah, an early Christmas present. That works for me.  The hardest part of DNA testing is always the wait!

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