I am still in vet school. I have 8 classes this semester, including electives in neurology and small ruminant production. I spend my spare time studying, worrying that I'm not studying enough, playing 360, trying to get some sleep, and drinking.

I recently (friday) turned 25. This was accompanied by many comments about quarter centuries, grey hairs, and increases in health insurance fees. This is not exciting at all.

I miss old friends but enjoy the new ones.

I met Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright last summer. My class friends are tired of me talking about it.

I yearn to travel to places far far away from Stillwater Oklahoma. Next month, Columbus Ohio for a symposium. Next year, the world! (just kidding - I'll be slaving away doing clinic rotations.)

See you in 62 more weeks!

These are the top 15 songs played on my mp3 player:

1. Sealings by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
2. Fluorescent Adolescent by Arctic Monkeys
3. Doomsday (my favorite song from the Doctor Who soundtrack :)
4. Down Boy by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
5. Micro Cuts by Muse
6. Supermassive Black Hole by Muse
7. Man of Mystery by... Muse
8. Tambourine by Eve
9. Plug in Baby by Muse
10. Take It Or Leave It by Arctic Monkeys (cover of the Strokes)
11. Map of the Problematique by Muse
12. Yi Ge Ren Shui by Karen Mok
13. A Favor House Atlantic by Coheed and Cambria
14. The Way We Get By by Spoon
15. City of Delusion by (guess who) Muse

So this is why Muse is my favorite band: I can keep listening to the same damn songs for years and never get tired of them. I've been in a bit of a rut with music lately though. I haven't found anything new worth listening to so I end up with my good old standbys. And the stuff playing on XM lately gets on my nerves - argh Crank Dat.

Does anyone have suggestions?

I've posted on my knitting blog today about the awesome package I received from my pal in SP11.

Thanks knitting.faerie!!

What? Where have I been? Floating on air for the entire semester?

Huh?? Only three and a half more weeks until finals??

Commence freak out, now!

I'm not sure how to study for 18 hours worth of cumulative material but I AM pretty sure it will kill me. Nice knowin ya. :\

It's driving me crazy. :0

This upcoming week I have three "major" exams and a minor exam (you might call this a quiz but I won't argue with my phys professor) so I will update on school matters a bit later. This weekend I decided to try my hand at tempura sushi. I made it with bananas and shrimpies. One of the banana rolls had cream cheese in it too.. mmm I'm full but now I want to make some more! I'm addicted to sushi making. I don't know how long I can keep it up, as I don't really have time to spend an hour making dinner. Anyway they were delicious. I might make some banana tempura just to keep for snacks.. the mix just has flour, water, egg, and baking soda in it so it's not bad at all. More pics posted on Flickr!

Big anatomy quiz on Monday.

I took a little nap this morning, and when I woke up, there was a piece of yarn in the middle of the room - not a rare occurrence around here. I went to pick it up and ahh! it moved!! I ran and grabbed my glasses and sure enough, it was a baby snake. I don't really have a problem with baby snakes, I mean, its head was so small it couldn't bite me if it tried. But I am wondering what kind of creature is going to wander in unannounced next time. It'll probably be a rabid raccoon or something.

I think the cats were playing with it, as it had a wound on its side. It probably crawled under my bedroom door to get away from them.

A few of my friends from Norman are driving up to hang out with me tomorrow. We used to have sushi every or almost every Friday before we'd go see a movie or something, so I decided to try out this sushi treat recipe that I've had saved away for quite some time. I used fruit roll-ups instead of soft dark chocolate. I couldn't find any normal roll-ups at the store, they only had these weird tongue tattoo ones and I didn't want to have two boxes of leftover roll-ups just to have all green. I also had trouble with the melted white chocolate (on top of the "rice") because it didn't stay melted very long but did manage to be burning-fingers hot for as long as I was making these. They are yummy though! There is another close-up but blurry photo posted on Flickr if you feel like straining your eyes.

I posted my experience with Alltel on a ratings site and I just wanted to repost it here.

I was forced into Alltel when AT&T became Cingular (something like half the people in my city went to Cingular and I was one of the unfortunate ones put into Alltel). I had a really nice phone that I paid a lot of money for when I was with AT&T. When they switched me over to Alltel, I could no longer use it with their service because it was a GSM phone. First they told me I had to pick one of a couple of their cheap phones to trade mine in with. These were the kinds of phones you might get for free with a contract. I told them no way, my phone cost me $400 and none of their phones were worth anywhere near that much. Finally, I got a supervisor to tell me I could pick any of the phones they had to offer. My other choice was to pay a fee that I couldn't afford to break the 2-yr contract with Alltel that I was being forced into (thanks AT&T). I had to trade in my Motorola v600 in for a Nokia worth half as much. They had a bunch of computers to move contacts from your old phone to your new one, except that they weren't working, so I had to sit there and put them in manually.

About a month later, my new phone developed this horrible buzzing noise whenever I opened it. The buzzing could be heard from across the room and just wasn't something I could put up with. When I took it back to the same office/store they tried to tell me there was nothing wrong with it. I told them it just started doing that so it couldn't be a normal function. Finally after a bunch of arguing along the same line, they gave in and replaced it with a new phone. I was very happy to leave that place and hoped I never had to go back.

About a year after that, the lights on keypad on the phone stopped working, so in dim light I had a hard time text messaging or trying to make a call. I took it in to a different Alltel store that had opened up. They tried to tell me, again, that they weren't supposed to light up when you open the phone. I told them, once again, the lights were working for the past year so are you telling me that the lights were a malfunction and now it's fixed? One of the employees came over and said they had the same phone and theirs lit up when they opened it. They told me the phone was still in warranty so they could send it off to have it fixed. They gave me an ancient heavy phone to use while mine was gone. The kicker was that their computer to move contacts STILL wouldn't work properly (at a different location!) so they gave me a list of my contacts on a piece of paper to use for 6 weeks. Thanks guys. When I finally got my phone back, they had replaced the top part of the phone where it had a couple scratches, but the lights STILL WOULDN'T WORK! I'm still not sure why they didn't bother to address the problem. I didn't want to be without my phone for another six weeks so I just took it and haven't had keypad lights ever since.

I am giving Alltel one star because most of the time my service has worked. However it didn't in some areas where on the map it shows I should have service. It would be roaming and I wouldn't get my voicemail messages until hours later.

I will be going somewhere else when my contract is finally up in September.

I finally got my free Moo LJ cards. I had figured they got lost in the mail, since it's been a really long time since I ordered them. They made it seem like you'd get them a week later.

Anyway, they are really cute! I am going to ask my boss if I can leave a few at work to see if people are interested in taking them (even if they never visit my etsy store or contact me). I think the cute photos on the front will at least cause a glance or two.

Please visit my knitting blog for pics of my finished kangaroo!

List of odd objects my dog has eaten or destroyed by chewing, most recent first:

7/9/07 - sanrio tote bag, hand-knitted cat bed
6/29/07 - basket (shredded to tiny pieces all over bedroom)
bra
nintendo ds charger
mp3 player wall charger
pieces off the underside of my mattress
the yellow plug on the RCA hookup
orange highlighter (this one got all over the carpet and her dog bed)
"pet hair magnet" - plastic squeegee for picking up pet hair
a weight scale
a hairspray bottle
jar of vaseline (chewed plastic jar in half, ate all of the vaseline - yep that was fun when it came back out!)
toothpaste tube
sock after sock after sock
pink highlighter

I'm sure there's more I can't remember right now. I've only had her since February!

The only toys she's kept for longer than a day are a large kong ball that can be stuffed with treats, a nylabone, and a hard rubber barbell. Anything with rawhide (or other digestible material), or soft toys are ruined within a day, usually within a sitting.

Oh Ravelry. I am starting to think you are sweet but bad for me, like donuts.

I've been taking pictures of yarn and FOs and now I decided to give in and finally order a yarn winder. There was a 50% off coupon from Joann's in my inbox so that helped a little.

My laptop finally had its big crash (it had been on the verge for months now). I formatted it and now I have to get all my programs and stuff back on. It took me a while to get the internet to work, because I had to download a driver from the gateway site using my other computer. I'm not sure how they expect someone who only has one computer to download something without internet. Catch-22?

As for why I have two computers, I have my good ole reliable desktop and then my dad gave me his old laptop when he bought a new one. I intended to use it for school but it has a few issues. If I set it down too hard, and it's not like I'm throwing it or anything either, it gives me a blue screen and reboots. Also, the keys magically fly off. These two things make it not as portable as a laptop should be.

I hope to be getting a tablet pc with my financial aid to help me with vet school. You can write on the screen, directly on the powerpoint slides that the professor posts. Imagine how much paper that would save over four years at least! Plus, it will be fun for a nerdy person like me.

I watched Big Nothing today, with David Schwimmer and Simon Pegg. I watched it because I <3 Simon Pegg. But then I kinda realized that some of what I like might just be the English accent (that he was without in this film). Or maybe the bleached blonde spiky hair. Oh no.

I didn't go to a party tonight because my stomach is a little upset and I figured I wouldn't be much fun for anyone else. I hope the Dobs has a great birthday!

Yay it's pay day! I made it from Saturday to Friday with only spending a little money on gas. The reason was because my mom and I stopped by a great yarn store (Sealed With a Kiss in Guthrie, OK) and I bought some really pretty sock yarn and a goodie for my LJ Secret Pal. So yesterday Tina and I had sushi to celebrate my moneyless week. Then we bought the Scene it! movie trivia game. I think that's the only trivia game I can win. Scratch that, not just trivia! I am really bad at trivial pursuit, or anything requiring luck, like uno or poker or other card games. Those are the only other kinds of game we share. Needless to say game night never excited me much. But I'm really good at remembering minute details from scene clips.

I've been trying to get back on the summer diet that I was on last year. I only did it while I was out of school because when I was at school/work all day it was very hard for me to control calories and fat grams. I had lost over 20 pounds last summer. Now I think I've gained 10 back and still had a few I still wanted to lose. It's been hard keeping on a diet just because now I'm at work all day until 6-6:30 and my stomach starts growling at 4:30. I end up eating the snacks they have at the office, like cookies or donuts to hold me over til I can get home and have dinner. I wish they would just bring carrots or celery instead. And I'm so forgetful I can't remember to bring them myself. So, I was trying to lose weight by eating a little better and exercising every day. Today, since I finally have money for groceries, I am going to work on buying healthy snacks like grapes instead of those 100 calorie snacks, and I am going to try to cut out the $1 microwave meals if my budget will let me. And then I am going to keep exercising. I hope this will work for me.

The dog ate my nintendo ds charger. I was mad because those kind of things (that you get for free with your system) are way over-priced when you have to replace them. That's another $20 down the drain when she had a full basket of toys with her that were completely untouched. I don't think when I hold the item and yell "NOT A TOY" that she's actually understanding me but at least it makes me feel better..

I ran out of yarn for my kangaroo so I had to order some more. Luckily knitpicks is pretty fast and shipping is cheap so it won't put me out much.

Well I'm off to pick up my paycheck, go to the bank, and then get some groceries. Au revoir (or as my friend mistakenly said in french class so long ago, avoir!)

Sorry about not posting! Last week I tried to post and Livejournal was very very very slow and wouldn't take my update. Then I took my laptop down to my parents' and their internet was dead because of a storm all weekend so I haven't had access!

Last weekend, Tina and I drove up to Edmond (45 mins away) to see Waitress at the mall, because that was the only theater it was playing in. It was a really cute, funny movie and I highly recommend it. Plus, Nathan Fillion is in it and that should be reason enough!

This past weekend, like I said, I went down to my parents' and took my dog. They live about 2 hours away. I had to drive through a pretty bad storm on the way down. It seemed like when I got off the freeway onto this country highway, the sky turned black and there was lightning streaking across the sky. It kept giving me lightning-shaped blind spots.

River had a lot of fun running around and taking all the toys out of their toy basket. My parents' dogs don't finish bones or really chew on their toys so they have tons left over. River picks one out, drags it somewhere, maybe starts to chew it until something else distracts her, and then goes back to the toy basket to get a new one out. I counted 15 toys on the floor on Saturday. She also smelled like horse poop when we got home. Needless to say she got another bath (this is becoming a Sunday activity for us).

I finished my Monkey sock. I ordered some yarn to make the kangaroo from the book my Secret Pal bought me, and it should be arriving tomorrow, so now my knitting agenda is free for some kangarooing! I got an alpaca blend so I hope it makes a really soft toy.

TTYL

So yesterday was a friend's birthday celebration. I didn't knit her anything because I didn't know she was having a get-together until Wednesday, or maybe Thursday.  I bought her some nice chocolates and a cute gift bag from Target. We met at the Mont, I had an always delicious Grasshopper (chocolate mint alcoholic yumyum) and then found out they were making their apparently annual birthday trek to Sugar's. This is a crappy run-down strip joint, the only strip joint I know of in Norman. I declined. Being a straight girl I don't really want to look at naked women. Especially the kind that would be employed at Sugar's. I'm not sure I would want to go were I a straight man either! So, I went out for an hour and came back home. Fun times.

This weekend I have been working on the second Monkey sock, and you can see the progress at my knitting blog.

Sunday is supposed to be my cleaning day. I haven't really cleaned anything, unless you count the dog. This is the face I get after she gets a bath:



Aww poor baby. It sucks being clean! I had to bathe her because she got kennel cough. Before you ask, she IS vaccinated. Apparently kennel cough only works like a flu vaccine, and there are strains outside of what is included in the vaccine itself. My vet said if she hadn't been vaccinated she would have much worse symptoms. I am glad she was then, because she has seemed pretty miserable. She goes into coughing fits for 20 second periods at a time and her whole body is involved. For the first few days she was coughing up small pools of mucus all over my apartment (on Wednesday I must have scrubbed eight different places on the carpet). Anyway, since I work at a vet's office, I was taking her to work because I could let her out a few times during the day, as opposed to leaving her at home where she would be stuck inside from 7am to 6pm. Plus she has a habit of chewing things that are bad for her (highlighters, random bottles, an entire canister of vasoline that led to some FUN diarrhea..). Apparently she is not safe with me at work either. At any rate she has to be quarantined for a couple weeks til she gets rid of the cough. I am going around in circles. She has gotten very dirty because of the mucus spitting so that is why I gave her a bath. Nothing grosses me out anymore! After I hid the camera for a couple minutes she decided to stop looking miserable and chew on her nylabone.



I have watched Amelie today and I have started the Eye, a Chinese horror movie. It is difficult to get knitting done when you have to read subtitles! I wouldn't have it any other way. I hate watching dubbed movies. I really can't stand an Asian person sounding like a drunk American cowboy. Things haven't really changed since the Bruce Lee days. The only time I didn't really mind, but didn't really like it either, was when in Shaolin Soccer: Stephen Chow recorded his own English dub, so at least it was his own voice. But it still didn't match up with his mouth! Subtitles for me, all the way. I guess I am done ranting for the day!

I worked at Walmart for a year and a half and our one cardinal rule was to be nice to a customer no matter what. They can yell at you (they did), they can curse you out and call you names (they did), they can throw shit at you (they did!), but you have to be nice because for some stupid reason you want people like that coming back and giving you a paycheck. I don't really know how I made it through but I ended up quitting because of poor department management rather than poor treatment by customers.

Now I work at a vet clinic and I came in thinking that we had to share the same idea, but having some hope that people with the compassion to help animals might treat me better than people who feel they have the right to walk all over me. Well, they still want to walk all over me, They're just more sly about it. They think they should be able to receive services and walk out the door and we'll forget about the money they owe us (Can you do that at a doctor's office? What about Walmart?). They think they should be able to get medical prescriptions refilled when the animal hasn't been seen by a doctor in two years (can people do that?). Even worse is when people go around price-shopping for medical treatments. When it comes to vaccinations, there shouldn't be much of a difference in protocol between clinics, but when your dog is having surgery or having any other kind of treatment, then you shouldn't be shopping for the best "deal." There IS a difference in how a veterinarian treats a sick animal

. I belong to the "if you don't have money, you shouldn't have a pet" school of thought. You're supposed to have $500 saved just in case of an emergency with your pet. If you don't want to do this, then fine. But if you don't have a decent enough credit score to have a credit card, you should probably reconsider how good of a home you can offer an animal.

Living in a town that is based around a university, we get a lot of college students coming in with new pets. Most of them have their parents still paying for their bills. They're the ones who will complain about high prices about a month after they have services done and paid for. This is because their mom just got the credit card bill in the mail and she's pissed.  Blah. As one vet would say, "we don't do shit for free!" It's hard to run a business when you can't get people to pay for what you've done for them.

But then again, my father has had the same problem in human medicine.

So, I guess I'm hoping that I'll get into a veterinary radiology program and not have to deal with accounts receivable and billing issues. Yay rads!!

I fiiiinally added some stuff to my Etsy shop so pleeease take a look around and check back once in a while. I plan on putting up some knitted items as soon as I can get started on them.. also please consider donating to a poor post-bachelor pre-medical degree college student! :D