Sunday, March 14, 2004
Revelation of the Day
The other day I was standing at the bus stop and a little old lady walked by with a big cookie in her hand. About 8 inches diameter.
The benefits of a cookie this size are countless. . .now the really big ones, like the size of a pizza, in my mind are less like true cookies and more like the "cookie bar" variety, since you have to cut them up before you eat them. No fun. But the
perfect cookie is big enough to be a little obnoxious, but small enough to be eaten with one hand.
Approximately the size of your face.
Just the thought that these perfect cookies exist somewhere out there. . .
. . reminds me that life
is good.
Shocking news
I am house and dog-sitting for a faculty member, and unfortunately (I have to study!) she has cable. I was flipping through the channels and admittedly I paused on VH1's countdown of the top 100 "hottest hotties."
I didn't make the list! Can you believe it?!?!
(try to refrain yourself, I know I'm leaving myself open for jokes here. . .)
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
New Job
Well, as the mouse tallies are declining (either due to the warming weather or the wonderful folks in Wards 3 and 4 who have been throwing away our traps) my partner and I are left with less and less work. Well, it was a pilot project, and much is still left to learn. . .
But fuzzy, cute little germbags aside, I have a new job starting next month as a
Pet Column Writer. I get to interview clinicians from the teaching hospital about timely animal care issues and write up my findings into a lay person-friendly column which gets published in newspapers and magazines, and, of course, on the web. So now I'll actually be able to claim I have a real-ish part-time job (ten hours a week, they say!) and buy food*.
Anyway, I'll be glad to do some writing that's informative--not that babbling and ranting about school isn't a load of fun. . .
*just kidding Mom and Dad--don't freak out--I'm not starving!
Friday, March 05, 2004
The Entity
First year, second semester is the "large animal" semester. We get to dissect dead cows and horses, and we get to restrain, poke, palpate, milk, and downright annoy the live ones. Just yesterday I squeezed milk out of a real live cow teat for maybe the second time in my life. I also learned how to induce urination, draw blood, test for udder infection, and manipuate a pill the size of golf ball down a cow's throat. And I almost got shat upon about three times. It wasn't exactly a date with Matt Damon, but it was kind of fun.
The wonderful smell of large animal (a mixture of hay, manure and other bodily secretions) has infiltrated my skin, my hair, my clothes, and even my apartment. After I take a shower, the hay-manure smell lingers in the bathroom steam. It's everywhere, and like the smell of formaldahyde, it soon becomes unnoticeable to the person carrying it.
And of course, when I'm not smelling like poo and hay, I'm smelling like poo and formadalyde (we've been dissecting the bowels, which are full of. . .you guessed it, poo), much to the dismay of the person standing in line behind me at the grocery store. I feel like Pigpen, like this big greenish brown cloud of putridity (or as one of our texbooks put it, "an evil smell") is blowing around me everywhere I go. I can
see the waves of stink rise from my skin when I'm taking a shower, and from my clothes when I take them to the laundromat.
It's all in a day's learning. And at the end of the day, I do my best with the soap and shampoo to get rid of it, but I think it's become a part of me. So if you're ever at County Market and there's some tired, foul-smelling person in the vicinity contaminating your air--give them some slack; they're probably a first-year vet student.
Monday, March 01, 2004
Now back to studying. . .
The research grant applications are in! Yay! I'm back from the edge of the earth, so now I can go back to being a normal vet student and catch up on all the things and people I've been blowing off. Anatomy lab, here I come!
Here's an
article featuring my research mentors!
Look at this poor froggie. . .
It may seem to some like the left-wing media is just having a hissy fit, but I find
Project Censored's lists of top censored news stories pretty disturbing. We citizens
are entitled to facts that affect us. When these facts are kept from us, be it by politicians or corporations who wield the power to influence the media, democracy suffers another blow.
Revelation of the Day
I'm taking a break from putting the finishing touches on my research proposals, and as I'm trying to write eloquently about my interest in ecology and my career goals, I can't help but think about people who've come a sliver shy of saying that "professional students" like me are a waste of space. People say similar things about musicians, artists, writers, anthropologists and so on. Why? Listening to good music or reading a good novel makes me feel great--why wouldn't anyone enjoy sharing these things with the world? The same goes for art, theater, film, literature, dance. . . and cute fuzzy animals.
Those who dedicate themselves to ideas, careers and activities they believe in and love are subject to resentment by those who dedicate themselves to the pursuit of status and money.
Why? I don't know. Perhaps spending 40-80 hours a week chasing money leaves little time and energy to enjoy things you love and to be the person you want to be.
Work, play, friendship and love--if you can't spend the majority of your time
enjoying these things, what's the point?
