Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Well, the summer's taking off. . .
Yes, I'm getting in the groove. I got here at 8:30 a.m. and I'm still here at the vet med building. Unfortunately, my dinner (a carton of cottage cheese and a container of pineapple chunks, both labeled with my name and the date) was purloined out of the cafeteria fridge by some nameless, faceless jerk.
Now what kind of person would steal cottage cheese and fruit? It's not like it was anything irresistably appetizing like homemade cheesecake or prime rib--it's curdled milk and canned fruit, for pete's sake! Geez! Anyway, in order to quench my hunger and rage, I had to go halfsies on a pizza with a classmate. Instead of a 60 cent dinner, I had an 8 dollar dinner. Poo.
Rants aside, I started this morning with a good workout in the barn attic above the cows--that's where the Vet Med Fitness Club has a little "gym." I can watch the horsies run outside while I do burpies.
I've got a modest schedule with the research for now, so I've been getting interviews done for the pet column so I can hopefully get ahead on those since the research schedule will get busier as the summer rolls on. The job is great--I'm learning tons from talking with the different clinicians and staff. I interviewed our ER vet this morning and got invited to hang out in the ER on Friday--that should be interesting. Lotsa cool emergencies come in during spring.
This afternon my research mentor and I had our first "field day" collecting snails at a local private pond. Some folks in town own a HUGE plot of land behind a motel. They've got a great house and dozens of acres of woods, prarie and human-made ponds, one even has a sand beach. They also have a collections of peacocks and swans which provided ample musical and visual entertainment as we sloshed through the water in search of snails.
I tried to work on the GIS (Geographic Information Systems) assignment this evening with my pizza buddy, but we are both too technically illerterate to figure out how to merge data into this program--so we'll try again tomorrow. I think the doughy pizza made us sluggish.
I just checked on the snails we collected earlier, and a few of them are shedding the little critters we need for our experiments--so there's small victory for the day. . .
the parasite that we need for our experiments
. . . to compensate for the trauma of losing my cottage cheese and pinapples.
Yes, I'm bitter, but I'll get over it .
