oh, the pain

so i went running this week for the first time in, oh, several months. it was quite painful, and the pain lasted long after the running stopped. the fact that i've had no form of physical activity recently made it worse, i'm sure. but the first few days are over with now, so i think the worst is behind me. a few of the residents, sarah, and i have this hairbrained scheme of running a half-marathon in march. not that it can't be done, i ran one in 04, but i don't think we realized in our initial excitement that the race is only about 8 weeks away. most training schedules out there are 12-16 weeks. so i guess i'll see if we can actually stick to a schedule and if it is possible to build up enough distance in 8 weeks. if nothing else this will at least motivate me a little to get off my ass. woo! i plan on running when i get done with work this evening. hopefully the darkness and the chilliness won't discourage me enough to bail out on it.

the 27th was the halfway point of my internship (we have a little countdown going in the intern office already...today is day 182, by the way). i would have had a mini celebration, but i got to leave at about 8:30 a.m. and have the day off, so i didn't even realize that this monumentous occasion was occurring. it was pretty sweet, i did some after-christmas shopping, grocery shopping, wine tasting, napping...good times.

well, happy new year. we on the west coast are running a little behind the rest of the country, but we'll eventually celebrate it too.

and to all a good night

ah, the xmas craziness is over. well, there are a few unfinished xmas matters: 1) the after-christmas bargain hunting i plan on doing, 2) the package that the UPS man left with a random neighbor who apparently left town until friday, 3) the thank-yous, 4) the decent xmas gift i never got for chris.

so despite the distance away from everyone, it was a pretty nice holiday. we spent the weekend in cour d'alene, idaho, and have decided that for future holidays we need to convince the family to plan a trip. hey, if we're going to have to travel somewhere, it might as well be some place exciting. highlights of the weekend included some live jazz and finally finding a restaurant with chimay, a boat ride to santa's workshop(!!!), sushi, finally sleeping in and a king size bed, swedish massage, the warmest christmas in this area in 25 years, and spending a weekend outside of pullman! so exciting. pictures on flickr.

we did end up having a formal christmas dinner after all. the oncologist here made some dinner and invited some of us vagrants over for a swell evening, complete with a riveting game of cat-opoly and a white elephant exchange. i can't believe some people don't know what a white elephant gift exchange is. anyway, here's the crew from last night.


xmas at fidel's 

so i'm covering emergency duty at work right now, but it's not very busy because some clinics are open for real today.

blogsurfin

so i think i'm addicted to clicking on the "next blog" button. it's fascinating. well, except for the businesses, god-pushers, and politicians. and the teenage girls...man, was i really one of those at one time? anyway, there are a lot of damn people out there. a lot of them do not speak my language, and a fair amount of them chose the same template as me (and i thought my standard template was so original). there's a certain degree of anticipation in what and who that next blog is going to be...will it be a dud or some truly interesting person. you should try it sometime. but beware, it will suck you in.

in other "news," i'm done with my crappy week of overnights and i get to return to the schedule of the masses for a few weeks. in fact, i think i'm going to go brush my teeth and go to bed right now. brushing my teeth is the best after staying up all night.

even the fog freezes here

but it made for some pretty scenery. it left little crystals everywhere and all the trees turned white. i posted some pictures on flickr to admire. ooh, nature. the snow on the ground is still leftover from almost 2 weeks ago now.

frosty, oh yeah 
i think i may be getting sick. i hope it's just that this place is giving me a headache this week and i'm having an off day. so i plan on spending as much time as i can tonight hiding and resting. hopefully i won't get too many calls. some vet called in earlier for advise about a sick fish...don't know if i was too helpful on that one. ok, time to go lie down.

don't be alarmed...

...i just got tired of all that blue background. it was really starting to annoy me. but then i lost all my links and things when i chose a new format. stupid blogger. so here i am tonight at almost 3 am, the best time for entries. tonight i saw a few cases, one that wouldn't stop seizuring until i anesthetized it, one that has a ruptured gallbladder and is going to surgery in the morning, and a stray cat that someone brought in. he is a beautiful siamese that is very emaciated and was less than 90 degrees when he came in (no wonder, it's freezing here and he has no body fat). he's declawed and neutered, so i'm sure someone is missing him, but he didn't have a microchip. :( we thought he may be injured because he was so cold he could barely move and we couldn't really assess if he can walk. but now we've warmed him up, hydrated him, and fed him (he was famished), and got to do a better examination and found out there's nothing wrong with him except for being very thin and weak. i guess we'll call the humane society on monday and see if anyone's looking for a siamese. if only my cats wouldn't get totally pissed off if i brought him home. it's probably for the best though, otherwise i'd turn into one of those crazy cat ladies. hoarding things is not healthy, especially if what you're collecting is an animal.

the spirit of x-mas

the xmas tree 

so i finally got in the christmas spirit and decorated a tree, as you can see. it's a good tree, but i really wanted to find some extra-tacky tinsel to make it complete. i haven't been able to yet. some may recognize the special star, circa 2000, handcrafted as a parody tribute to pearl jam's wishlist.

so all i did at work today was find a bunch of cancer. that was fun. and the dog i mentioned earlier that had the allergic reaction died on sunday. and today another dog that was having the same sort of reaction (but we thought not as bad) also died. so it was an overall wonderful day. everyone at work feels horrible about everything that happened.

laziness

so i guess i left my phone at work when i left this morning. when i finally got out of bed at around 6:30 tonight chris wanted to order food, but apparently he thinks he lost his phone somewhere in missouri ( he didn't tell me this until tonight). after searching aound the apartment and car for a while, i resigned to the fact that we couldn't order any food (i wonder if they would have delivered to us anyway, it snowed again while i was sleeping today), and made some mexican rice from a box. i haven't had time to buy many groceries since we got back from thanksgiving. i topped mine with some cheese and sour cream that had been in the refrigerator since sometime before thanksgiving. in retrospect that may not have been such a good idea; i hope i don't go on to regret it later tonight.

so i saw this commercial tonight that made me want to vomit. queen latifa is getting ready to go christmas shopping with her mom and they're talking about all the wonderful products that everyone wants this season and how it's going to be such a big job to do all this shopping. then they get into walmart and her mom has this glorious idea of getting everyone walmart gift cards!! the shopping is done in five minutes!! isn't that amazing? now everyone can fulfill their obligatory christmas consumerism duties at the greatest machine for consumers ever! and they can just blindly purchase some gift card! i feel warm and fuzzy just thinking about it. i love christmas.

well, maybe i'll make the most of this exciting evening and clean up the house now. or maybe i'll just watch some more curb your enthusiasm.

delerious at 4 am again

the last stretch in my week of overnights, ahh. i can see the light at the end of the tunnel. so it's been snowing a ton here since monday night (i think...the days are blurring together). since the picture was taken it's snowed three more times. i keep asking if the whole winter is going to be like this, but no one has said for sure. i think this weather is earlier in the year than expected, but i'm sure i have a whole lot more snow to look forward to. they haven't been doing a great job of keeping it plowed in front of our apartment. on the way to work tonight i skidded off of the drive that turns onto the road. luckily there was some guy standing right there because some other car had done the exact same thing two minutes earlier. he stuck some log near my tire or something...i don't know what he was doing...and i was able to drive away. i felt kind of rude just pulling out and driving away, but i don't think stopping was an option.
looking out the front door 
i'm looking forward to doing a lot of sitting around this weekend. it's supposed to snow even more so i probably won't be doing a lot of getting out and about. that will be nice, it's been a pretty tiring week. there's a dog in the ICU that requires almost constant attention because he's so critical. it's a 4th year student's dog that was in a study and received a dose of human albumin. he had a delayed allergic/immune reaction to it, probably the worst allergic reaction i've seen (in my vast experience) and he's a really sick puppy. i think he may be over the very worst of it but it's still going to be slow going for a while. he's got a lot of healing to do. he's been very tolerant of all the crap we're doing to him. i'm sure she's regretting her decision to try to help out with the advancement of veterinary medicine.

so sarah wants to put some christmas decorations in our office...i don't know if i can handle a whole month of them. maybe i'll volunteer my purple lights that are multiseasonal. at least i haven't been in any stores that are blaring carols yet. i guess that's because the only place i've been lately is the grocery store.

well, it's back to the ICU to check up on things.