BOHICA

They have a saying here about finals- "bend over here it comes again" which just kinda made me uncomfortable because I'm not a big fan of people using rape or anal as a joke since it can be pretty serious stuff to people. But looking at this semester...if I were to use expressions like that...it would definitely apply.
Just finished my first test of the semester and have to gear up for the next one this week and the next week for that test etc...we have a test every week this semester from now on besides during spring break (yay!) and one week mid April. Which pretty much means I can never actually relax. Well thats the idea-but knowing me, I'll be able to fit in plenty of procrastination. I'm doing pretty well at that so far! I dont want to complain about school too much so I'll just say: it is ridiculous how fast you can get behind, like 1-2 days of not listing intently or studying when I get home and BAM! Suddenly I'm a week behind in 3 classes and have to study for a big ol test. Besides the weekly tests though, classes are seeming to get better and more interesting and for that I am thankful. I still absolutely love it and couldn't think of anything I'd rather be doing.

Some highlights I've done since last time:

SNOWBOARDING?! I honestly did NOT think Iowa had big enough hills-but it does! They are in the next town over and totally adorable and short but since I kinda(totally) suck, it was pretty much perfect. And some of my friends are new to it too so we were able to fall together and compare sweet colorful bruises. And I learned about why our bruises are the colors they are and why they change colors today in pathology-pretty cool!

"Sincerest form of flattery party" Sharon and I came up with the idea to dress as our classmates/professors while we were in Missouri a few weeks ago and we made it happen. It was a total success with people being hilarious but not really mean about their impressions. Although it took over an hour of hardcore cleaning the next day to make the trailer livable and I had to deal with a puddle of urine on my bed/floor (from a friend who passed out in my bed I think-there was too much pee for just a cat), it was totally worth it and really fun.

Tie-back procedure: I went to a wet-lab on Sunday at school and got to learn about actual horse-racing cases from a vet and do a tie-back procedure on a cadaver horse larynx (it is the start of the trachea) where you suture back a cartilage chunk that has been paraylzed. It was pretty awesome and made me really excited for our surgery class during the third year!

Not so fun but definitely different-my car got stuck in snow, trying to pull back into my parking space! They do clear the roads/parking areas of snow but since I'm usually parked in the same space all the time, the snow just builds up around me and I definitely had to spend 10 minutes shoveling the snow around and out from underneath my little car to get it to move. Sometimes I miss my Jeep :(

I think thats about it for recent exciting things, I should probably get back to studying.... :/

New year here we go!

Alright so I'm in my second week of semester #2 and it kind of feels like I never left. Which I guess is a good and bad thing. I loved being home for break, it was sooooo fantastic to get to see my friends and family and pets (although the cats were left behind) and I did a lot of things I had been meaning to. Which mainly involved eating at my fav places and hiking and being outside AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. Some drama with Danny on my last night gave me a little bit of a bitter taste as I was leaving but some space and time have washed that out and I can't wait to be back in 2 months for a swine conference (1st weekend) and spring break(3rd week). Highlights were: Secret Santa #8, mom and daughter quilting reunion, meeting Mr. Rowan Lamoreaux in person for the 1st time, driving up to phnx with my bro, and pretty much anytime I hung out with my friends for dinners/lunch/breakfast etc!

I left right before the horrible tragedy happened. I am so thankful that no one I know personally was injured but the huge hole it ripped in Tucson's heart is going to take a while to heal. I am proud to be part of such a strong community which seems to be doing a pretty good job of supporting each other. Although it pains me to not be there, I know I'm not the only person grieving from afar and I am really hoping that positive changes will be made as a result of the suffering it caused. The public funeral and Obama's speech were beautiful and healing and I'm thankful that I was able to watch it and still feel a strong connection with my home. This is the second time my community has been ripped apart by a young man/men with a gun-I lived nearby Columbine when that tragedy happened, and I am really hoping this is the last time. I realize people around the world deal with this almost daily and so I am grateful that I can live mostly without fear and don't have a constant worry about guns and bombs and war, but still...it sucks.

On another note....I did not realize my schedule this semester was going to be quite so crazy! Histology (2nd semester), lg animal anatomy, pathology, immunology, animal welfare, neurology, case studies, production animal informatics, beef records (2nd semester), animal behavior, and aquatic medicine.
Whew! The last 4 are electives I am taking and I don't want to drop any because I like them all and I want room in my schedule later to take even more awesome ones. So I'm going to be busy :) Still loving it though and wouldn't change a thing. Well I might make it about 20 degrees warmer, staying around freezing would be nice, as opposed to the single digits. But what can you do?

I also attended an exotics symposium this past weekend in Missouri. I listened to a lot of very interesting Vets about their experiences and jobs and got to see some awesome pictures of wild animals being worked on-including removing huge chunks of dying flesh from inside a tigers rib cage. AWESOME! btw their skin is striped too, not just the fur. I have always been kind of interested in exotics and such but since there aren't many jobs in that area compared to mixed or large animal medicine I just kind of pushed that aside. But hearing about all those adventures made me all excited about it again. I don't know where I'll end up but I like the fact that I have a hard time narrowing down my interests as opposed to not having anything interesting to look forward to. Despite the fact that I was/am sick and my voice alternates between squeaking, whispers and a man thanks to my golf-ball sized tonsils, the conference was a really good time and I am going to try to attend it again.

New years this year did not suck! Which is kind of a surprise since it is usually a let down. I spent it with some of my favorite people and had a really good time! I don't really like making resolutions since I usually don't stick with them for a whole year and my to-do lists are always nuts but I feel like I want to have some broad-sweeping goals to work towards that do not have a specific start or end time. So here goes my guilt-free I'll try to list:

Not be afraid to go new places and try radically different things- even if it means looking like an idiot
Be able to get up and run for a few miles without wanting to die
Try one thing out of my cookbooks once a month-definitely includes desserts
Find a good place to volunteer in Ames outside of school
Slim Bart down to a reasonable weight (he is off to a good start!)
Don't let money stop me from doing awesome things but also don't dig myself into a large hole of dept
Be grateful for things/opportunities/people I have in my life and not let them slip away from laziness or procrastination or equally stupid reasons

Love you all and I hope 2011 is going to be totally fantastic!

First Semester-success!

I can't believe I am done with my first semester of Vet School! It is so crazy to me that I've been living in Iowa for 4 months and am 1/8 a veterinarian! I was a bit worried going into finals since its been a long time (~2 years) since I actually had to study hardcore but even with my short attention span I made my way through it and actually kinda rocked it. Not to toot my own horn or anything but I am actually pretty proud of myself....Im ending up with almost a 4.0! I just made the cutoff for As in some classes but its still pretty freaking fantastic and I never would have thought I would be doing so well. Granted this was probably my easiest semester but its nice to start off on a good foot :) At about 3 am on the last night of studying for finals I realized how all my classes were overlapping, it was such an awesome feeling to finally have them all coming together. Most of the time I just study to do well on the test but now I am studying to learn, and with them all overlapping I feel like the stuff will actually stick with me, which is great! Hopefully it will continue this way...I just have no idea how I'm going to continue to shove the incredible amount of information in my brain for the next 4 years...

Also, its all snowy here! It hasn't been too terrible so far, we had one night of a blizzard warning which was mostly because of the insane wind that caused the snow to fall sideways but we didn't get a lot of snow. Apparently the winter here is a lot worse in January and February so I'm gonna try not to jinx myself yet, but I've been handling it better than I thought. I was walking to school the other day and it was sunny and I said Oh its so nice today! and it was like 30-somthing degrees! Which is a big improvement on the few days of less than 10 degree highs but still. Didn't expect to ever hear that out of my mouth-guess I am adapting??

I am sosososososososososososososososososososososososososoosososososoososososo excited to go back home to AZ. It doesn't really equal the universally huge excitement and relief I had when coming home from Europe but its pretty close. I have a feeling it is going to be kinda strange since most friends dont live there anymore, I wont have my car which is going to be frustrating and my cats are staying in Iowa. And my room is no longer my room (my Dad's office now) which is going to be REALLY strange. Speaking of strange...I was kinda forced to stay at home today waiting for the petsitter to come by to pick up keys etc (she hasn't showed up yet ugh!) and it was so weird to not have anything (important)to do. Even when I was avoiding school and being lazy over the semester, I was still worrying about it constantly. It feels like there is something missing haha...where has my stress gone? Its been my buddy for these past months. Not complaining

Life is great. :)

Highlights of my Thanksgiving week off!

I did it! I ran 7 miles in the obstacle race known as Living History Farms Race!

Ok my team "This isn't a 5k?!" walked a lot of it. It was (literally) freezing temperatures. And we had to wade through 6 creeks. And dodge deer. Unfortunately no scrambling over monstrous hay bales as I was hoping but it lived up to my expectations pretty well. People had some fantastic costumes so we are doing it next year and dressing up, but having warm costumes because seriously it took a full 1/2 hr for my hands to even begin to get feeling back in them. I can't imagine how the people who had bathing suits on (or less) felt. Crazies! There were some dudes who had camelbacks full of some kind of alcohol...they didn' t wade through the creeks-they did face-plants and back-falls into them-not on purpose. Soaking from head to toe in muddy (FREEZING!) water. We saw one of the guys at the end...he seriously looked like death.
My ankle held up really well considering the uneven terrain we were running through-aka dead cornfields and streams- and the only injuries I sustained were some bruised shins from scrambling up banks on my hands and knees and a nice scalp wound from a thorny bush I did a headbutt into. Scabs in your hair feel really weird. Not bad for someone as un-graceful as me.

Pics are on Facebook, I didn't bring my camera with me for good reason, it would've been broken within 10 minutes. My fav costumes included the hoard of zombies, 2 diff pacmen, and one guy had a shirt that said I have to poop and he had rolls of toilet paper all over him.


My friend Morgan came to visit for a few days which was totally awesome! I was a bit worried about trying to keep her entertained here in Iowa since I know most people don't think of it as a super exciting place. Highlights: bowling, Harry Potter, Des Moines: free art museum, ice skating outside (!!) where we were the oldest people by like 10 years who didnt have little children, yummy food and of course HANGING OUT WITH ME! :) One day I planned out a 10 hour roadtrip (I cut it down from 49 hours) around mid east portion of Iowa seeing all sorts of beautiful roadside attractions like the tallest double railroad bridge, a 80 ft tall rusty wheel structure built by a 90 yr old, largest frying pan, lg metal corn cob, dark angel in a cemetary which has a death curse when you kiss her (still waiting), big cow, 2/3 of a bridge, community of flags, and replica of a star trek ship. Ames itself has 3: world's largest gnome, largest pitchfork, and large metal woman's head (creepy). Pictures are once again on fb-I am too lazy to put them on here too :)

Doesn't that make you wanna visit me?! If you do, theres still a TON of roadside jems I want to discover!! Most of them were really in the middle of NOWHERE and it got a little worrisome sometimes and Iowa really is kinda ugly in the winter before the snow and once all the corn is dead/chopped down but we still had a lot of fun. We weren't huge fans of the "freezing rain"-seriously if its gonna be cold and wet just snow already! I can't believe the Pac NW got snow before us!


This is my second year in a row spending Thanksgiving with strangers although this one and the last weren't even in the same universe as far as fun times go. I guess I can't even call them strangers...it was full of my new friends and fantastic food and a loooong awesome game of cranium. I am so thankful to be where I am with people here and around the world I can call my friends. And also a little less than a month til I am home, which I am really excited about! Also my cat's deserve a thank you for not pissing on anything recently and being good cuddlers when I'm missing home/company. I am starting to feel super guilty about leaving them for 3 wks during the break. :/


Hope everybody had a great fun and food filled thanksgiving too! Thanks for reading and acting interested in my life and thoughts :)

November?!

It's been a while...October was an intense month but with the beginning of November I am looking at 4 glorious weeks without a single test!!! We've been a bit slammed and it culminated Thurs night-I was up til 4:30 am to get up at 6:30-I didn't have it in me to pull an all-niter studying for respiratory histology. Hopefully I did alright, but at this point I can't generate enough energy to care :)

My favorite holiday, Halloween, is technically over :( but I get to dress up one last time today for a "Be Green" party put on by 2 clubs-they are renting out a floor in a dance club and want people to recycle old costumes. Unfortunately, my old costume parts did not make the cross-country trek with me and I don't know if I feel like being a zombie again (more on that in a bit). So my friends and I have decided to go as things we have learned about in class-I love being surrounded by people as nerdy as me!! I'm going as brush-border which is the epithelium (lining) of the intestines- basically cells with little fringes, interspersed with goblet cells which excrete mucous for protection (water guns!!) I'll make sure to put up pics, but I am pretty excited about it! :)
Last weekend a group of friends and I went as zombies-it was awesome. I loved getting all gory...totally beat out the cute costumes in my book. and I am SOOOOOOOOOOO sick of all the slutty costumes...no creativity and chosen based on how much skin they show. Gross. And it goes for boys too, I dont need to see all your junk either. Plus its really cold here! So heres the best pictures of us I think...



Yea we rocked those costumes! As we got out of the car some group of guys walked by and where like "Good LORD!" so thats when I knew we were good. The pirate was supposed to be a zombie too but backed out earlier...she did dance with a lot more boys than we did...zombie outfit/makeup isn't the best way to pick up boys... ahah big surprise I know. We had some drunk boy convinced it was real blood too which was awesome.

I was pretty disappointed I missed Dia de los Muertos since that is my favorite part of fall in Tucson but ...someday I will be back and do it again.


I got really excited the other day because I found some cheap pomegranates and remembered last year at about this time I got to pick them fresh of trees on my 6 mile hike to and from the town and my wildlife sanctuary on the top of the Greek Island. Life was pretty simple while I was there and sometimes I miss being there, it was a really beautiful place (the island, not the wildlife place) but I wouldn't trade my life right now for anything. Its just funny to think of my state of mind a year ago, there is no way I would've imagined I'd be living in a trailer next to the vet school I am going to in IOWA. NO WAY. Life can be so strange sometimes. :) Hope all of you had a great Halloween/dia de los muertos and have a great weekend!

Midwestern adventures

Theres a tradition here at school that the Beef club puts on...the hayrack ride. At 4 on Friday Vet students all grab some pudding, jump on a hay rack pulled by a tractor and eat the pudding on the hour and half ride to a professors house where there is more pudding and other food and a nice big bonfire. Then they get a ride home on a van by midnight.

Before you embarrass yourself like I did....pudding = booze. apparently.

So thats mostly what I did. And it was awesome! We had 3 tractors pulling us but the hourish ride turned into 3 when our tire blew out on the hayrack. It was cool though because we were in the middle of nowhere(seriously I still have no idea where we went or how we got there) surrounded by corn fields, which people used as bathrooms like its the most normal thing to do, plenty of dried corn kernels still left on the stalks to use as ammo for pelting each other and good company. And a gorgeous sunset. Once we got to the professor's farm-also NO idea where it is or who the professor is-there was indeed lots of "pudding" and a decent sized bonfire. I don't really know how it happened but the hours went by fast-mostly dancing and belting it out to the awesome playlist. I only had to walk away twice-once for a country song and the other for Miley Cyrus...I will NOT put my hands up or move my hips like yea...and I have a problem with 30 year old farmer boys singing along to that crap, its creepy. and ok, maybe slightly amusing. but only slightly.

Some 10 hours later, yes I just said 10, I found myself and a few friends waiting for the last van at 2 am. Definite time warp, but a totally awesome one :) Also I woke up the next morning with incredibly sore pointer fingers on both hands. No idea why :)

Saturday was another gorgeously warm and sunny day so I ditched my studying for the histology test and instead spent the day walking around town and the nearby school gardens taking pictures of the changing colors of the leaves. I never understood the big deal about fall but it truly is really nice :) I would post pictures but I'm lazy and only want to post them once so check out fb-I'll eventually put them up there.

Sunday I woke up at 5 am and drove over the the vet school to pick up some friends who are part of the ZEW club( zoonotics, exotics, and wildlife) and I drove us to the Minnesota Zoo about 3 1/2 hours away. We got to see the prettiest sunrise over the corn fields (like postcard pretty/stereotypical midwest) and studied a bit of histology but mostly just hung out. We also passed a big wind farm which I didn't know where out here and some girls had never seen one before. Passed some funny places like "Manly forest" and "the sexiest casino of the midwest" in what else? An old barn. I don't think they get much competition out here. We met up with the rest of our club and got a hospital tour by a vet who might have been the least enthusiastic person I have ever met. I was so close to falling asleep standing up. The one interesting thing about him was he could seriously be Emery from the future, I could NOT get over how similar they looked-super tall, SUUUPER skinny, skinny jeans, big glasses. He was missing the mountain man/hobo beard but I'm hoping Em grows out of that by the time he hits middle age.

We then went into the actual zoo which was a good size and pretty nice, as far as zoos go. I wasn't super depressed walking around so thats always a good sign. They had river and sea otters which are always my favorites. And we got a backstage tour by the keepers for the bears, tigers, and camels. I have never seen a camel as big as the bull was, he weighed a ton! Literally, a ton-2,000+ lbs. His head was like the size of a washer. Seeing the tigers close up totally rocked and the bears have a sweet set-up there. Drove back with the sun setting on our other side. Again, pics will be on fb, I'm lazy.

So this past weekend rocked. And I just took my 2nd histo test (after our 2nd anatomy last week) and was looking through my calender-I have at least one test (usually 2) for the next month. But I refuse to be beaten down, especially with my favorite holiday coming right up, Halloween!! School can suck it, I am having way too much fun here! :D

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.