Universe Bitch Slap

So apparently I need to stop complaining. Because the universe has delivered a few bitch slaps that my face is still smarting from.

A few hours after my last post complaining about stalker boy, I saw him at the gym and of course, he, not being like a normal person who would rightfully just avoid the situation, decided to come talk to me. I was super rude and it worked-he hasn't talked to me since which is just fine with me but I do feel kinda bad : /
Apparently no one I've met so far is a fan of his and everyone calls him boyscout because of how he does his hair (like a 6 yr old going to church whose mom slicked it down and parted it on the side) and the fact that when he raises his hand his fingers are in the form of the boy scout pledge.


Reason #31 why he is creepy: my friend Sharon got his number and texted him "I like your hair and your affinity for merit badges" which we thought was hilarious until we get this back a few hours later "Thanks.....Sharon. I don't know what you mean by merit badges though."
We can't figure out how he knew it was her, they have never really spoke and she is from CT, and so are like 10 other people from our class so even ruling her out by elimination is a stretch. uhhh?


I was also complaining last week about the fact that my normally well-behaved cat Marley decided my open drawers were a much better place to use than the litter box, and what did I discover yesterday as I was petting Bart..........................FLEAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you kidding me?!?!?

I had to look up the signs on the internet because a) I have NEVER had to deal with pets having them and b) I had no clue how they would even have gotten them since their cohabitant Agnes (Kelsey's pitbull) is on preventative stuff and they have never been outside.
So yea, they had them, and I immediately went to the store (itching all the way) but luckily talked to my roomie before I wasted money-word to the wise-dont buy the crap in the store, go to your vet and get the preventative/killing stuff to put ON your pet and some awesome spray that kills/sterilizes the adults, larva and eggs and stays around for 200 days called Mycodex. Shampoos dont do much and the stuff they sell on the shelves isn't very strong.

So exactly 7 loads of laundry later-I am so thankful we don't have to pay for water here-between the peeing and now the fleas I would have spent a fortune on washing and drying-pretty much all the fabric my cats have come in contact with is washed and sprayed down-including the carpet which I think is the cause of this disgusting problem. They stayed in the bathroom for the 6 hours the meds took to work and I swiffered after and felt like a terrible owner-there was a LOT of dead fleas for 2 cats to be harboring. I am hoping the problem is under control now.

Surprisingly, I was seriously grossed out;I know normally this would be a NORMAL reaction, I know, but I dealt with fleas on a daily basis in Greece. Including being able to see and feel them crawling on my skin and clothes (which wasn't happening yesterday) and I didn't get as creeped out as yesterday. I hope I'm not reverting back to being a squeamish wimp. Does this mean I can't handle thousands of maggots in food or piles of dead bodies anymore too? Hope not, I liked being a bad ass. :)

So long story short .....I LOVE MY LIFE! ok universe? I am VERY grateful for being able to be literally living my dream of going to vet school, having lots of great people around me, and am happy to have the company of my two cuddly cats, even if they have an infestation or pee on my stuff.

Activities in Ames

We had an Art Fair!!! It wasn't quite as fantastic as 4th Ave Street Fair but it was like a little sister, trying really hard to emulate it and almost succeeding :) I didn't get anything partly because I am broke but mostly because my brain isn't organized enough yet to be thinking about X-mas presents or other gift giving opportunities. But it does give me hope that there is enough culture in this small town to keep me happy for another 3 and half years. Speaking of culture-I found an awesome Thai place with a whole menu (ok its like a half page) of veggie stuff and had some super tasty sweet and sour tofu. Now that I have friends I can go to restaurants to try things and not feel like a loner :D


I went tailgating yesterday, even though it was freezing and rainy-see I can be a tough mid-westerner too! Well ok, by the time I dragged by butt out from under my comforter it had stopped raining and I did have 3 layers on but whatever! Apparently right before we got there some coked out guy was chasing one of my fellow students around our bus and he got tackled by law enforcement and taken away on a golf cart. Think that's classy? Just wait...

I ended up babysitting 2 of my friends since they got toasted pretty early on and we ended up at a trailer (in my trailer park) surrounded by big-ass farmer boys who were doing a power hour(shot of beer every minute for an hr-might not sound like a lot but you work your way through a 12 pack pretty fast), smoking and blasting country music all outside. I was thinking...wow ok I'm finally experiencing what I was fearing about living in a trailer park in the mid-west when 2 of the boys started shoving each other in a race to pee in the bushes on the side of the trailer (they had a totally adequate bathroom INSIDE-like 2 steps away). Then one of them fell on me-with his pants ZIPPED UP thank god. His apology was a smile (with a missing tooth) and then he preceded to lie to me about how he was a vet student too and he was taking a class called VM 123 (all our classes are 300 level or over and no such class abbreviation as VM) called "Cow/calf" and all he did for class was shove his arm up cows butts. And when he finished chugging his beer he threw the can into the bushes in the front yard. I know what you are thinking.... CLASSY! right? I love my life.

Update on the stalker boy from my pseudo date...still creeping. He has texted me EVERY single day asking to do one thing or another and I either ignore him or decline and my "no thanks blah excuse blah" have turned a lot more harsh and still...they keep on coming!! Luckily he hasn't tried to wait for me after class and walk me home in awhile and really doesn't try very hard to speak to me in real life so I don't know what the deal is. Seriously though, how DENSE can his head be?! Suggestions?? I don't know if I've ever had to deal with someone this bad before and normally I'd just be a bitch and make sure he didn't want to hang out with me ever again buuut since we will be in school together every day for 8 hrs for the next 3 years I dont want to make any enemies.
On the bright side, my roomie and other friends all think it is quite entertaining and are getting a big kick out of it. It doesn't help that he is incredible socially akward and looks kinda like a Who from Dr. Seuss

My room

Here are the pics I promised a long time ago of my room.






Note-the framed and signed picture of some of my favorite people was one of the first things I hung and I look at it everyday as I get dressed(since its above my dresser hehe) and the black and white blanket is Marley's absolute favorite spot to hang out on




Also, I actually put pictures in the frames on the wall now so they aren't just empty. and that is my spiffy computer on the bed-it has a fingerprint scanner on it that I use to log in-how cool is that?!



I love my wall of closets-I dont think I could do without it!

I'll take some more pictures of the other areas and post those soon too-I promise! :) Gotta get back to studying now

C= DVM

Well I survived my first two tests of Vet school! The first one was Cell Biology on Wed and Anatomy on Thurs. The bio one wasn't so bad, a lot of review but anatomy...oh my god. Every part of every bone, every muscle including its function, where it attaches and all the nerves that innervate them! And my favorite-they picked the most complicated, convoluted part-the skull-to teach us on the day BEFORE the exam! WTF! This was how I studied the night before: all my bones of my bone box spread out-I guess it was a fairly large dog haha



The anatomy test itself wasn't too painful and I got a high B so I am pretty pleased with myself :)
It had a practical portion where they pinned certain muscles/parts of bones on our cadaver dogs and we had to identify them and then a multiple choice section (thank god). It felt very nice to get it over with but strangely I wasn't very stressed out beforehand and I didn't really cram, I got a decent amount of sleep the night before and the usual nervous stomach ache I get before a major test was absent. My undergrad self would never have believed it :) Grades finally don't really matter-a C=DVM as they told us in our orientation so I don't have to kill myself to get As anymore and its AWESOME! Of course I want to do well, getting a job/internship/residency do slightly depend on having a decent GPA but its nice to have the competition lowered quite a bit.

Also, they have about a bazillion clubs here and of course all are super interesting and I want to join them all! I have restricted myself to only:
SCAVMA-big club everybody joins which is an extension of the vet association we will all be a part of when we graduate;
Equine
Cow
Pig
ZEW-exotic and wildlife-I decided to be a fund-raising chair for this one-its a small time commitment and looks good on the ever present resume
Shelter
Emergency medicine for all animals
Emergency equine team-I'm on call for intensive care, births, and surgeries (soo excited!!) Business-another one for the resume and I have no idea about any financial/business like

And I am undecided about the holistic club and reproduction. The only thing that is holding me back is all these clubs have dues ranging from $10-20+ so they add up quickly and I'm afraid if I join too many they will all overlap with meetings and wet labs -which are basically different activities dealing with the specific animals or topics they are about. Decisions decisions...

Oh and one added bonus of learning anatomy so well, I now know which muscles are injured in my still (seriously?!) swollen ankle. Not that I can do anything about it, but I thought that was kinda cool :)

Farmer's Market Joy

Des Monies Farmers Market is AWESOME!! It is massive but not too crowded and have lots and LOTS of food, mostly produce-I have never seen so many veggies in my life! I went and got some fresh mozzarella, basil, and granola which are all super tasty and the other time I went I got some delicious sweet corn ice cream-which was basically like rice pudding with chunks of corn-it worked somehow. They also have some cool craft booths, it kinda fills the void left in my life from the 4th Ave street fair in Tucson. I think it will be closing up in October since it will probably be too cold to go outside for an extended period of time but I'm gonna try to go as often as I can before then!

Holy crap school

Just wanted to show off my massive stacks of books and my bone box :) I wont put up my pile of flashcards-thats just depressing.

So I've survived 2 weeks of vet school so far! It has been intense but not as bad as my nightmares. So far individual classes have not been too difficult, the hard part is just trying to swallow the mountain of information everyday. I am hoping I can get some kind of system going where I study every day...right now it has been pretty hard to try to do that, I've never been one to study much until the night before a test so this whole being prepared thing is a bit tricky and kind of a pain in the ass.

3 day weekend HALLELUJAH! I haven't studied as much as I have wanted to but my brain is enjoying its rest. Yesterday (Saturday) I went tubing in Eldora-about an hr drive away-with my roommate and some other people. Pretty much consumed all of my calories in beer that day which made for a fun and relaxing float down a river and one hell of a hangover a few hours later. I met some trashy, skanky people who decided it was a great day for celebrating Mardi Gras and wanted girls to flash their bazoombas for some crappy beads. While I passed, I got to see some awesome saggy titties and they got some beads so everybody wins I guess. Some BAMFs made a stereo system out of wood, car speakers and a solar panel and figured out how to float it down on the river so we had some good music and like I said-interesting company. Woke up a few hours later in my car-I didn't drive anywhere just fell asleep in the seat-apparently people thought I took off with the saggy booby girls for the bachlorette party since no one could find me. :) I have some standards people! the floating/camping place had some horrible cover band playing and I took off to go home after consuming every scrap of food I had with me. No pictures unfortunately, those saggy gems will just reside in my memory...no reason to subject you all to that acute kind of misery.

Plans for my last day of freedom-study my bone box, and 3 in stack of flashcards for anatomy-read a few chapters for histology and go over the weeks notes. Saved all the real good stuff for last :)

Oh and here's an update on my ankle-it really hasn't gotten any better as far as appearances go

:(

Bart pissed on my bed today so he is definitely on my SHIT list. I have no idea what to do with him...it doesnt make any sense.

Tailgating

I had no idea tailgating was itself a sport. AZ peeps, you guys have no idea how serious it is over here. Camping out a full day beforehand-and paying for spots ranging from $20-50 for one night. Buses/RVs/cars are painted permanently(!) with school colors and logos, and dont even get me started on the other decorations-including clothing.

















Grilling meat and corn (of course) and drinking lots of beer, I'd say more than half the people didn't even go to the game, its more of an excuse than a reason to tailgate here. Vet students get in on it too-we have our own bus! Pretty sad looking thing but its awesome and a fair amount of people showed up too.










In other news, my ungraceful self has reared her bruised head and when I was running the other day I tripped on the edge of a sidewalk and some grass and got a nasty twisted ankle and skinned knee.
I couldnt walk at all for awhile and had to have my roomate pick me up. I forgot just how horribly painful it can be...a few days later now I can walk with only a slight limp and my knee is finally done oozing and is scabbed up. heres some awesome pictures...I'll update when the bruising gets even prettier on the ankle...I'm still waiting for my foot to get back to a normal size.