the veatchiest blog (version 2.1)

Best take out packaging ever

2009-01-31T19:59:00.000-08:00

Best take out packaging ever

doug fir

2009-01-21T23:22:00.000-08:00

doug fir

posting cuteness for no reason

2009-01-20T15:42:00.000-08:00

posting cuteness for no reason

this was...

2009-01-20T15:34:00.000-08:00

this was totally worth going to a baby shower for

another view from the mountain

2008-12-31T16:08:00.001-08:00

another view from the mountain

view from the top of the mountain

2008-12-31T16:08:00.000-08:00

view from the top of the mountain

the icu tree of e-collars

2008-12-25T20:05:00.000-08:00

the icu tree of e-collars

xmas snowman

2008-12-25T13:33:00.000-08:00

the amazing snowman that our neighbors slaved away on today. i'll have to take a series of photos to catalog its demise as the snow melts. but who knows when that will be, as in the 10 minutes since i took the picture it has started blizzarding again. guess i'll be leaving those snow chains on the van for now...

a casualty of the snow

2008-12-23T23:22:00.000-08:00

NOOOOOO!!! NOT THE PAWN SHOP! OH THE HUMANITY.

more about the snow...

2008-12-22T12:28:00.000-08:00

here's another cute photo of sage by the way. the snow just won't stop. i'm losing count of how long it's been (i think it started thursday night) but every time i look outside it's snowing again and it's even deeper. i just took sage on a winter hike - at least i'm getting to use my snowboarding gear in some way since there's no way i can make it up to the mountain! she had to walk behind me for most of the way in the trail i blazed for her because it was too deep.

both cats are enjoying watching the birdfeeders all day. i'm having to refill them daily because the birds are going crazy.

the table is a good indicator of how deep the snow is. also the bush on the left has disappeared.

so those new snow chains i bought are still in the van unused because i haven't attempted to take it anywhere. luckily i don't have to work until wednesday and maybe it will be a little better by then (but i doubt it). ODOT is now requiring chains on everything, even 4x4 or those with studded tires. this is the craziest snow here in 20 or 30 years and it's obvious because the city has practically shut down. yesterday i did venture out (with someone else driving me) and we passed a bus stuck in the snow, many skiing pedestrians, and hardly any other cars.

i did have an revelation after i watched the movie legend. obviously someone has killed a unicorn by taking its horn and now there is a deep freeze spell upon the earth. it makes total sense. i guess until tom cruise can find that fabulous golden armor dress and save us all, i'll just have to wait it out. i think it's time for some more baking...and sewing...and reading...and birdwatching. sidenote: i'm rereading the bell jar...not sure if that was the wisest choice since i was already going a little stir-crazy....

i'm going to post some more photos on flickr.

The unrelenting snow

2008-12-22T12:21:00.000-08:00

The unrelenting snow

driving back from mt hood...first snowboarding!

2008-12-18T16:17:00.000-08:00

Mount Hood

2008-12-18T16:04:00.000-08:00

Mount Hood

Portlanders freaking out

2008-12-17T13:20:00.000-08:00

Portlanders freaking out and trying to buy chains and snow tires.

some clues we might be in a recession

2008-12-16T13:27:00.000-08:00

1. i'm hearing radio ads about how tasty and economical banquet frozen dinners are.
2. the novelty christmas underwear this year have "who needs credit cards?" printed on them.
3. a painfully slow workday with a certain doctor lurking around and constantly telling us to depopulate (send some of the techs home for the day).

Fun with lewis

2008-12-14T12:21:00.000-08:00

Fun with lewis

Lewis Pecan the fashion diva

2008-12-14T09:52:00.000-08:00

Lewis Pecan the fashion diva

Snow in portland

2008-12-14T09:33:00.000-08:00

Snow in portland, ah! The view from work.

super patient #2

2008-11-24T23:22:00.000-08:00

Super patient number 2 mia! Sad stray we fixed and my first skin graft.

super patient #1

2008-11-24T23:19:00.000-08:00

Super patient number 1 teddy! Broke 3 legs and he's a trooper!

The theme at work tonight. I also pulled

2008-11-11T19:46:00.000-08:00

The theme at work tonight. I also pulled a needle out of a dog's throat.

baking bread

2008-11-09T15:46:00.000-08:00

my first yeast bread. i got inspired by mary and decided to give it a try, but only because there was a recipe that promised to be the easiest yeast bread ever: new york times no-knead bread. it takes some planning (you have to let the dough rise for a really long time) but it really is no-knead and little effort if you're hanging around the house anyway. i just tried some and it's delicious. so we'll see if i can make a habit of making my own bread or if this was just a fluke. and btw, mine is by far NOT the first blog on the subject.

Trailblazers game. . . We're losing.

2008-11-08T20:52:00.000-08:00

Trailblazers game. . . We're losing.

Second election party. . . Spent poppers

2008-11-04T22:58:00.000-08:00

Second election party. . . Spent poppers

Watching the concession speech

2008-11-04T20:41:00.000-08:00

Watching the concession speech

Front door of the election party

2008-11-04T20:38:00.000-08:00

Front door of the election party

pre-election post

2008-11-04T04:28:00.001-08:00

so it's about 4:30 a.m. on election day. i'm closing in on the end of my work week (only 3 more hours to go!!!) and i'm contemplating taking a little nap in the hidey-hole (see previous post). but i thought i'd waste a little more time online first. my patients downstairs are fine, don't worry. on tuesday mornings the floor guy comes to buff the floors so the machine is loud and obnoxious. i had to get away from it upstairs.

today i plan on going home, napping a little, hopefully getting motivated enough to get up and leave the house to play outside (it may be in the rain), then going to an election-day party tonight (basically drinking some beer and watching the news come in). thinking about it kind of stresses me out right now; it could either be a great evening where we're all relieved and our hope in humanity is a little restored, or we could realize that things are not going the way we thought and end the evening feeling worried about what's to come and having lost faith in our fellow americans. we'll see i guess. maybe i'm being a little melodramatic.

so i had a birthday recently and i'm almost to the dreaded 3-0. then i'll be really old. the day wasn't that exciting because i slept for most of it and then went to work that night. i did get a cake at work and felt all special. chris got me some fancy fenders for my bike so i'll have to take pictures when i get them on. speaking of bikes, i drove to work last night and it was strange since i'm so used to biking there. it was like a little vacation - and it will be especially extravagant this morning when i just hop in the car instead of bike home. hopefully it will be pouring rain and turn into a great sleeping day. ok time to nap now.

My kick ass eggs from vicky.

2008-11-02T17:06:00.000-08:00

My kick ass eggs from vicky.

I needed this. . . Beautiful fall hiking

2008-10-27T15:11:00.000-07:00

I needed this. . . Beautiful fall hiking.

procrastination

2008-10-27T00:16:00.000-07:00

instead of going to bed like i said i was, i started looking at my posts from 2005. ah, pullman. it did motivate me to keep up on my blog a little better. but blogging about how i read my own blog is NOT the way to do it, dorkwad.

the laziest day ever

2008-10-26T23:40:00.000-07:00

well, i guess i've had lazier (but not by much). and i think you automatically assign a certain level of laziness to the day when you never change out of your pj's. however, i did manage to clean up the house from last night (we have massive amounts of recyclables now) and make enough fried rice to feed an army (or at least feed us for several days). let's see what else....nope, that's about it.

oh yeah, shout out to my grandma, it's her birthday for another 15 minutes or so, at least here in pacific time. 92 is pretty impressive and i hope to be 92 years old one day also. it's pretty amazing to think of all the change someone of that age has seen over their lifetime. i bet they never thought they would see a black man become president. i better not say anything else lest i jinx things.

i hope i do not have the same motivation issues tomorrow, because the temperature is supposed to reach 70 degrees and there could be potential for a beautiful fall hike. maybe i should go to bed so i won't sleep the morning away.

Dog park

2008-10-24T14:19:00.000-07:00

Dog park

Voting! And sending back netflix.

2008-10-23T14:34:00.000-07:00

Voting! And sending back netflix.

updates

2008-10-19T22:09:00.000-07:00

1. i finally broke down and joined facebook.
2. i'm really liking the mobile posting thing. the posts with the subject lines that are the same as the text of the body are the ones from my phone...i wish there was a way to mark them as different.
3. earthshattering news from my job this week. we found out that the owners sold the practice to VCA (giant stupid corporation). i think i'm over the initial shock and dismay phase, now i'm dealing with the issues of abandonment and fear of the future. it's going to be a big adjustment and i don't feel like going into all the details of how crappy this is.

Ghostland observatory

2008-10-19T21:08:00.000-07:00

Ghostland observatory

WTF is all i can say

2008-10-15T08:52:00.000-07:00

WTF is all i can say

The best way to sleep during the day wit

2008-10-14T10:32:00.001-07:00

The best way to sleep during the day with help from cringer

The hidey-hole . . . I'm about to curl u

2008-10-13T05:13:00.000-07:00

The hidey-hole . . . I'm about to curl up now for a nap in the worst make-shift bed ever. But i just want to lie down so i'm not complaining

Here is the front. That big plant on th

2008-10-09T18:49:00.000-07:00

Here is the front. That big plant on the end was already there and about the only thing i saved

at home

2008-10-09T15:40:00.000-07:00

well i at least have a few days off this week. i've been cleaning up my yard and replanting a few things in the front. over the summer everything kind of went to shit and the house started to look like some white trash renters were inhabiting it. since almost everything in the front bed died, i replanted it with some herbs that will hopefully grow into larger bushes by next year - lavender, sage, rosemary, curry. and i added a soaker hose so i hopefully won't kill everything again. today i'm trying to reseed and fertilize the front yard (it's also dead) but it keeps starting to rain. so now i'm cleaning the inside of the house. oh my life is exciting today. that's ok though, we planned to take it a little easier in october, save a little money.

also i signed up to be able to post mobile blogs from my phone, but i haven't tried it yet. hopefully it works. maybe i'll go outside and take a picture and try it out.

say that a little louder?

2008-09-30T22:40:00.000-07:00

. . .because i'm sure i killed some of my hearing last weekend and my right ear is stopped up from this sinus congestion i developed. that's my most prominent momento of ACL right now. i was one of many that subjected myself to the heat, dust, and blaring noise all in the name of music. above is my new boyfriend m. ward. he's actually from portland but i didn't know that until a few days ago. i made a few musical discoveries over the weekend actually; that was exciting. now my body is still trying to recover from the abuse and i'm kind of feeling like after my vacation i need another vacation away from chris. :( but he's feeling crappier than me so that's not really an option. so goes my life.

public safety warning

2008-09-22T12:19:00.000-07:00

funny that a few days after i start my blog up again i see a commercial warning young girls that anyone can see what they post on the internet. that's ok, i'm kind of boring.

revival

2008-09-19T13:44:00.000-07:00

no, not the creepy religious fervor call to action kind, i'm referring to my dead blog. more than once i've thought of it but failed to take any action. since it's been a very long time, i thought i would start out easy and post some pictures of some of our summer activities.

the picture above is from the family visit in may (minus dad, booooo). logs of oregon-oriented fun.
nighttime at the sasquatch festival, our first trip to the gorge ampitheater. worth the trip to the middle of nowhere. justin and julie came up for that one.
trip to missouri in june for amber and jeff's wedding. chris was not impressed with the heat and humidity. got to hang out in columbia with the old vet school crew as well as go to a cardinals game. also went down to see family for a few days.
of course we did some camping here and there, though not as much as last summer it seems. new places included near mt. st. helens (got a new camera before that trip but lost the pictures we took, so sad) and olympic national park in washington. ragbrai with dad in july. great way to break in my fabulous new bike. highlights include 2 a.m. campsite evacuation for a tornado warning, pie pie pie, dad's grandparents farmhouse in ames, mid-morning bloody marys, my favorite new food stand PB and jam's, beautiful century loop among others.

olympic national park. also on this trip we did an unexpected mini-wine tour one afternoon. they don't actually grow grapes on the peninsula but do bottle some good wine. the rainforest is very wet.
and just last weekend mary and marcus got married so we had a great weekend in oregon wine country with good friends. this meal is not wine-oriented but we did have an interesting beer sampler. malgi came all the way from austria, hooray!

images

2007-12-06T22:16:00.000-08:00

quite a few happenings since i last posted. well maybe not so many events per se, but life in general. i'm in the process of updating the ol' flickr page but not done yet.

when i was home for thanksgiving my grandmother told me that i should keep a journal so that i can have a record of all the events/travels/etc of my life and i can look back at it later and remember all that i did. i think this blog is a pretty poor excuse for something like that since i don't make a lot of reference to things like "today i did *blank." but i think she's right, later i will want something to look back on. so i have a couple of options: make this a little more chronology/reporting friendly and print it later, or make a simple nonelectronic log. or the third option of nothing, i guess. i dunno, i forgot where i was going with this...

seagulls pooping on cars in san francisco bay. whole area = huge tourist crap.
reconnecting with some old friends over thanksgiving. sorry julie and mark, you're not in this shot but a shout out to you anyway.
southern illinois countryside during our mini winery tour. that's an abstract buffalo if you can't tell.
ashly is dressed to match her tree.
bowling for....who knows.
along the columbia river in october.

end of fall

2007-12-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

ok i had to do it one last time. these poor pumpkins may or may not be still in the yard returning to the soil from whence they came. this picture was taken before thanksgiving and there has been a lot of rain since then; however they look pretty much the same. i think we're in a holding pattern.

this has gone too far

2007-10-21T19:24:00.000-07:00

i don't know how i'm going to get rid of these things...also last night they were covered in slugs.

making progress

2007-10-19T13:46:00.001-07:00

2007-10-18T11:39:00.000-07:00

this is all that's left of our pumpkins, and there are still two weeks until halloween. also i have no costume ideas yet which may be a problem. think, think!

in other birthday news, we're going on a trip down to san jose for the bridge school benefit. oh hilarious - i just found that wikepedia has some information on it. no pearl jam this year, but eddie vedder at least. we're planning on driving down there (probably splitting the trip up into two days) and camping in part of the redwoods that aren't too far away...weather permitting. we'll see how that works out.

in work news, our internist has this case in the hospital now and someone found a posting on craigslist about the dog asking for anyone to help figure out what's going on with it. apparently the owner's very worried but also doesn't get that there are pending tests out there and geez, there's an internist working on the case! and do they really think that craigslist is a place for good advice about this thing??? so i looked on craigslist and there are actually several of these ridiculous posts. here are a few examples of stupid people: here, here, here. And that's just this week.

my 101st post

2007-09-30T23:20:00.000-07:00

the apocalypse is upon us. here's next week's weather for portland. it's not supposed to rain at all this time of year. this shouldn't be happening until late november or december. also this weekend there was thunder. THUNDER!

post-ragbrai

2007-07-30T19:54:00.000-07:00

other photos on flickr. what a difficult experience to describe to someone who's never been on ragbrai, but i liked the description of a traveling city/county fair/woodstock/tour de france that someone came up with. a few happy surprises included the weather (not quite as ultra-hot and humid as i thought, no severe weather except for some rain thursday night....note to self: borrowed tents run the risk of not being waterproof) and my adequate physical condition (i did not end up in excruciating physical pain like i thought i would). here are some other random thoughts for the week.

1. i'm so glad i put off buying a bike. during the course of the week i got to try out four different bikes and now i'm converted to a carbon frame fan.

2. i didn't realize that the production of ethanol was such an area of controversy among iowans. our route took us past an ethanol plant one day (and unrelated, also past a monsanto facility with many testing fields). so...i don't really get the view that genetically modified/pesticide/herbicide/mass produced corn is ok but growing corn for non-food use is not. can't sacrifice any of that raw material that could be going towards high fructose corn syrup or some other essential "food" product, i guess.

3. i still hate bud light and all similar products.

4. it's nice to know that the tiny farm town is still out there somewhere. hopefully they aren't all secretly controlled by giant corporate farming.

5. my appreciation for a good pie has been restored. what an art form. my future plans include the purchase of a rolling pin. and that other tool...a pastry cutter? i don't remember what it's called.

6. bottled beverages are so wasteful. and iowa is *slightly* behind the recycling curve.

7. life is just fine without mirrors. but i do have extra appreciation for private showers and flush toilets.

8. how great that these towns still put their lives on hold and welcome thousands of crazy bikers with open arms, even though it totally disrupts everything and probably leaves them with a huge mess to clean up when we all leave.

9. vacationing with your dad is fun.

10. i really am a west coast snob (see 2, 4, 6).

2007-07-19T01:29:00.001-07:00

i need to quit screwing around on the internet, but i can't. i must drop in on friends and eat chips and salsa. i love it that everyone has their own little space where you can check in on them and that they can say whatever the hell they want and keep everyone up to date. aw, i feel all warm and fuzzy.

so tomorrow is a planned packing frenzy. i have to get all my last minute stuff for iowa. i have to disassemble my bike and pack it neatly and safely into a box. i have to remember all the things i'm going to forget to pack. i have to alter a bike jersey if i get around to it. i have to make sure my laundry is done. i have to go on one more last minute bike ride (on a borrowed bike). i have to end it all with a pleasant dinner with friends (well that one i don't have to do, i just want to).

then i'm off friday morning.

r.i.p lady bird

2007-07-11T18:41:00.000-07:00

2007-07-08T23:06:00.000-07:00

oh i forgot a few things.
1. that giant pile of mulch is still in my driveway.
2. i never drank the jelly soda. i decided i'm never buying random food produced in china again when i realized what horrible food regulations there are.
3. my carbon score is 243.
4. i'm actually trying to learn how to play the carnival-prize pink guitar.
5. i think my ipod died for good this weekend.

2007-07-08T22:18:00.000-07:00

let me just start by saying i'm thinking about giving up on the blog. my last post before this one was may 14 so that says something. well, maybe i'll give it one last try.

topic 1: working the 4th of july
so here's my horrible 4th of july story. this dog came in around 11 p.m. because he was "very anxious from the fireworks and breathing heavily." the dog is actually very dyspneic and his temperature is 109 on presentation. as i get the whole story from the owners, it turns out the neighbors were shooting off "illegal fireworks" and it freaked the dogs out. so they put them in their horse trailor to get them away from the noise and calm them down (??). i think they were in there for an hour or two. so the dog overheats to say the least. i had a long talk with the owners about all the horrible complications of a 109 temp, especially DIC (some say this acronym stands for "death is coming"). here is a little summary of what it actually is. not unexpectedly, by the next morning the dog definitely showed signs of it. but the owners took him home to "see if he would perk up there" for financial reasons. geez.

topic 2: the bike search
i've been doing some bicycle shopping because it's about time to retire the old bridgestone. partially due to some encouragement from dad, i decided to try and get a new one before ragbrai so i could ride it then. however i am pretty indecisive and i've also waited until the absolute last minute so it's not quite going as smoothly as planned. after much back and forth, i thought i had finally made a decision and decided to take the plunge and order one yesterday. so i talked with my local bike shop (again) and found out that the company didn't have any frames in my size right now. the bike i'm considering is a surly cross check. no wait, use this link instead because it has a picture of a freaky guy on the bike. it's not quite a road bike, but i think will fit all my needs better in the long run. but ANYWAY, i think i may have resigned to the idea of giving the old bridgestone one more moment of glory in iowa. i don't want to make some rash decision just because i'm running out of time.

topic 3: ragbrai
something like 3 weeks away? i don't know if i'm really training as much as i need to, but i'm assuming it will work out just fine assuming i don't collapse from the crazy midwest humidity (i can't really add that part into my training). i've been going on rides out in the country east of portland and it's gorgeous. but hilly. but gorgeous. oregon is awesome in the summer. today i went on a leisurely ride out to sauvie island with mary. it's a big island where the wilamette river meets the columbia river and it has a large wildlife refuge, a beach, and several small farms. very nice. we took a mid-ride break and went down to the beach. the sand was much, much hotter than we expected and we had to sprint down to the water because our feet were on fire. when we got down there, we realized we should have sprinted the other way back to our shoes. we stood in the water for a very long time debating what to do (take off our shirts and tie them on our feet? no really, we considered it). we finally borrowed someone's sandals to walk up and get our shoes. i thought my feet were going to have serious burns but they're just a little sore now.

photo stuff

2007-05-14T23:53:00.000-07:00

i've done some adding/rearranging to my flickr page lately...got some photos of last week's camping (finally camping!!!) trip up, also made a couple of the sets "ongoing" so i could keep adding to them instead of making more.

on an unrelated note, i found that a source of free mulch is to call a tree company and have them deliver a load to you (i guess they have to pay to get rid of it). so i did that and now i have the biggest pile ever in my driveway. i don't know where i'm going to put all of it. i should take serial photos of this thing or something. it's massive.

i heart vomit

2007-05-06T22:52:00.000-07:00

finally recovering from a crazy weekend. lameness, vomiting, eye problems, back problems, vomiting, anemia, c-section, vomiting, vomiting, parasites, dog bites, abscess, diarrhea, vomiting. i may be exaggerating about the vomiting, but i'm pretty sick of it.

many travels

2007-05-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

my mom and chris's mom were here last weekend for a visit to the awesome northwest, finally. we had a pretty exhausting agenda and were all tired by the end. then i made my mom miss her flight home because we spaced out shopping for plants but she was a good sport.
mom and i at multnomah falls. i have so many pictures of this waterfall now that it's kind of ridiculous, but they're always beautiful. this was the first time i had been on a saturday afternoon so it was the most crowded i had ever seen.
our visit to crater lake...almost. here is the road going to the entrance of the park (you can see the small check-in station in the distance). so who knew that the park wouldn't open until june? perhaps if we would have checked the website before leaving... so that was kind of disappointing. at least we were headed in that general direction in our travels anyway and it wasn't too far out of the way.
chris's great great aunt lucille. this ended up being one of my favorite parts of the trip. she was such a sweet and thoughtful woman and it seemed like everything she said was so poignant. it's very grounding to listen to someone with so much life experience who has seen so much change in the world.
the redwoods. i'm already planning my next trip so we can camp under them again.

now we are preparing for a frugal may since we apparently had more expenses than we thought in april, and we have a lot of crazy travels planned for june and july. at least camping is cheap.

mmm, jelly soda

2007-04-13T10:46:00.000-07:00

the other day chris and i went to a giant asian market. we weren't really looking for anything in particular but just wandering to browse and gawk at unfamiliar things. the place was huge and we were there for probably about an hour. by the time we left i felt mentally exhausted. it was about the size of a giant american supermarket but about half the items i couldn't really identify as food. i guess the fact that i couldn't read a lot of the packaging didn't help (huh, that's probably what an asian unfamiliar with america would say inside a giant safeway). a lot of the items didn't really fit with my new food kick of staying away from ultra-processed artificial crap from who-knows-where. oh well. we did make a few purchases - some of which we have or soon will regret.
1. tomato juice - this was not an asian novelty but was really just because we didn't want to stop somewhere else before heading home. bloody mary emergency. but oh dear, it was a disaster. something about adding a bunch of sugar to tomato juice (and then your spicy drink) did not work at all.
2. jelly soda (the other beverage purchase) - just bought this one because the picture on the front of the can left us so confused. is this something you drink or a bowl of jelly? we haven't had the courage to try it yet.
3. rice crackers - well this one was no surprise as i've had them before. i am a little freaked out with the fluorescent orange pieces. mmmmm yellow-5.
4. assorted pasta - not much to say about this.
5. quail eggs - this one is all chris. i have no idea how he intends to prepare them. poor quail.
6. banana cake - this one is still in the refrigerator too. it's wrapped in some leaf (banana?). i don't know if that part is edible.
well, we got a few other items but they weren't very exciting. i think at this point i'm content to let someone else be the expert and pay them to make and serve me food when i am craving it.

2007-03-27T23:49:00.000-07:00

another day, another dollar. just got home from work (well by just i mean within the last hour or so). i'm going to make some hot tea then crawl into bed, read a book, and snuggle a kitty. ahh.

just in case you were wondering, i haven't seen any cases of the rat poison-tainted pet food. oregon has had 47 reported cases, which just means that those animals had exposure to the food and also signs of kidney damage. could be unrelated; no way to test for it. good thing i'm not nice enough to feed my animals delicious gravy-laden canned food.

my gimpy fingernail ripped off at work tonight (see 2.09.2007 post). oh, the pain.

we have started preliminary investigations into the costs of an occasional house cleaning service. it was always something we said we'd do when i had a real job. we haven't committed yet or anything, still kind of weighing the options and deciding if it's worth it. aren't we fancy.

watched fast food nation last night. now i want to re-read the book. i am reading a slightly related book now called grub. basically advocating organic whole foods and cooking them deliciously.

2007-03-19T13:08:00.000-07:00

my first bloom.

i'm getting ready to go back to work tonight after a week's break. my time off wasn't extremely exciting; i mostly played in the yard and got some things done around the house. i did get a few good bike rides in (one yesterday with some good hills, yeah!). i went ahead and registered for RAGBRAI with the touring cyclist before it was too late, even though i haven't confirmed that i can get that time off from work yet. i'm sure i can work it out. then it will just be a matter of coordinating how to get myself and my bike to st. louis. i also spayed a bunch of cats yesterday with FCCO. so many of them were already pregnant, those little sluts. i'm actually glad to be getting back to work tonight. i've been in this sort of funk and i need to get away from chris for a while, i think.

2007-03-13T01:41:00.000-07:00

hmm, haven't posted in a while. let's see, i went to las vegas back in february for a conference. unfortunately also NBA all-star weekend in vegas at that time...realized i hate the NBA and its associated culture. but it's easy to ignore here with the "blazers" stinking it up. but it was good times anyway. then i came home, got sick, had to work all weekend, and blew my nose constantly for about a week afterwards. i did a lot of lying around being unmotivated. i've done a little more snowboarding (i think i can make turns now!). i've been kind of looking into some used equipment because my beginner pass with the free equipment rental is used up. we'll see. it's also turning spring here. the flowers are blooming and the birds are singing. and i've been working on getting a garden started. it's probably a little early to plant a lot of stuff, but now i'm ready with my fabulous boxes all finished. i've also been working a lot so this week off is much needed.

hooray for julie getting us tickets!

my only snowboarding picture. it's nighttime but we're still going.
my new garden boxes, ready for some veggies, in my bonus yard that i don't use for anything else.
hotel room goodness.

bitter defeat

2007-02-16T05:02:00.000-08:00

1. i didn't save buster's eye...had to remove it last night. :( but his new family LOVES HIM!

2. i couldn't make it through the stephen hawking book...lost my will during the second chapter. i even lost interest flipping through the rest and looking at the pictures.

the worst day of the year

2007-02-11T15:48:00.000-08:00

well, it was supposed to be, but it wasn't. every year portland cyclists gather to scoff at the weather and act a little goofy in the worst day of the year ride. what a great town. of course the weather turned out great, except when it started to pour during my car ride home afterwards (i felt a little smug at that point). i added a new set to flickr with some of my photos from the ride.

is this ever going to heal?

2007-02-09T00:24:00.000-08:00

it's been like four weeks (maybe three, i don't remember). the nail's growing, but there's never any non-black new nail at the bottom. i'm going to be really irritated if it tries to fall off.

on the plus side, when i show it to people, i get to make a vulgar gesture at them.

2007-02-07T14:19:00.000-08:00

last night buster spent his first night with his new potential owners...hopefully they won't be calling me in a couple of hours with second thoughts. they seemed a little disappointed that he had to wear an e-collar for two weeks, but maybe they'll get over it.

so i'm about to head up to the slopes to cause myself more physical pain, hooray.

i'm such a sucker

2007-02-06T10:35:00.000-08:00

firstly, on an unrelated note, i realized i totally stole my last title from cabell's blog instead of pulling it from the depths of my vocabulary and wit. oops.

so i knew this would happen eventually, but i finally had someone sign over their animal to me this weekend (so i can take financial responsibility, hooray!). now i have a "new dog." but it's only temporary, i'm trying to find a home for him. it was just one of those cases where i couldn't see euthanizing an otherwise young healthy animal for a treatable problem that someone wasn't willing to pay for.

here's the little guy with his eye sutured shut (he had a partial proptosis so i had to do that to keep the massive bulging thing at bay). hopefully it will heal ok, but some of them don't regain vision or they have other problems. we'll see... definitely not a life-threatening problem though. oh yeah, as soon as i got my hands on him i neutered him too. ha. so until he meets his new potential owner tonight, he's staying with us and sage is a little jealous. but she's dealing.

i also have to show off my new birdfeeder, mostly for gail's benefit. :)

well that picture kind of sucks but i'm too lazy to crop and zoom. you may or may not be able to tell that it's shaped like a cat-tail and there are little birdies going crazy around it. we also got a cool copper one to hang by a window and that one has been a big hit with the finches.

mundane happenings

2007-01-30T17:38:00.000-08:00

finally got to go to the dentist today (my other appt got cancelled due to the entire city being shut down due to the snow). i thought i was going to get my teeth cleaned, but this was some preliminary appointment where they just check me out and make me reschedule to have the actual cleaning. geez. i guess i'll have to wait on that free toothbrush too.

i also finally got a library card today (a couple of months ago i was going on and on about the library). the library closest to me, conveniently located next to the dentist, is impressive from the outside but didn't have quite the selection i was anticipating. it's ok though. also my card works for the super-duper library downtown so that's a nice option to have (it has a beverly cleary children's wing which i love...well i love the name at least). i got a stephen hawking book just for kicks but i don't know if i'll be able to wade through all of it if it gets into hard-core physics.

now that my body has recovered from last week's snowboarding, i may go again tomorrow, but i'm not sure yet.

ow, my everything

2007-01-25T11:32:00.000-08:00

i finally went snowboarding yesterday for the first time, on beautiful Mt. Hood. it involved A LOT of falling (but that was expected). i got this package where all the gear and a lesson was included, at least. the lesson was really helpful and i could make it down the bunny hill and stop without falling by the end of the evening. i had a lot of fun, but i'm still deciding whether snowboarding is right for me, mostly because a)risk of serious bodily injury/death b)going fast, falling, hurts, happens often c)lots of gear, cost, traveling involved. i think i should give myself a chance to get more comfortable with it (also i bought three passes). i can definitely see it being something fun to do a couple times a year.

but what about skiing? maybe i should give that a chance and decide between the two. although when you're skiing you have to keep track of four pointy pieces of gear and also go very fast. i wonder if it's easier to learn. hmmm. so many choices. for now i will take some more ibuprofen and enjoy sitting in a soft chair.

ow, my eyes

2007-01-22T11:12:00.000-08:00

this weekend at work i finally had the chance to do a cool surgery by myself, removing an intestinal foreign body from a big dog. it turned out to be a large chunk of a green rubber toy, origin unknown. the dog went home last night, hooray!

in other news , *gasp* it's actually sunny here today! crazy.

my favorite representative

2007-01-17T12:03:00.000-08:00

yes, we are a little wacky in oregon. so david wu (D-OR) made an argument on the floor of the house arguing against the president's policy recently. the most quotable part of his plea is:
don't let faux-klingons send real americans to war.
i don't know if that's how you spell klingons or not and i'm too lazy to find out. but i remember being really bummed in november when i found out i couldn't vote for wu because i wasn't in his district. he's actually not the raving lunatic that that clip makes him out to be. although he did assume the rest of the house would get the star trek references, which is a little crazy.
thank you, jon stewart, for sometimes being my most current news source (how sad).

bob barker would be proud

2007-01-16T13:15:00.000-08:00

ooh, i almost forgot. sunday i spayed a bunch of ferel cats. it was pretty fun. ferel cat coalition is a group that holds spay/neuter clinics to control the populations in wild colonies all over the area. these are cats that have been basically been living as wild cats and would not do well if they were adopted into a home, so they are re-released. there were 100 cats total for the day that got neutered or spayed. normally i really don't get to do the "emergency" spay (unless it's a c-section) so this was the first time i had done it in at least a year.

what about regis and kelly???

2007-01-16T12:54:00.000-08:00

again with the freaky weather here. this time it's turning the people really crazy. it's about 1 pm right now and started snowing at about 5 or 6 am (the snow stopped an hour or two ago). so every single local tv channel has canceled all regular morning programming and has been reporting nonstop about the weather. reporters out in the field all bundled up and pointing at traffic, sticking rulers in the snow and exclaiming about the 2 or 3 inches, interviewing anyone that stops by to bring them starbucks or a donut. then they'll flash to the traffic cams and the chaos that's occurring on every major road. then they'll get someone on their cell phone who is stuck in the traffic and have them relay their story about how long they've been stuck in the commute. then they'll repeat the whole cycle. it was pretty entertaining at first, but come one, 6 hours of this?? i guess it's the most snow they've had in ten years or something.

so of course, my dentist called and canceled my appointment for today because they closed their office due to weather.

i better be able to get out later or i might go a little stir crazy. chris is trying to finally finish hooking up all his games, which equals a lot of wiring and me turning into instant psychobitch. it also reminds me how different some of our priorities are. maybe i'll take sage for a walk instead.

2007-01-14T08:32:00.000-08:00

this morning i finally feel recovered from a crazy week at work. i worked five nights in a row instead of my usual four and it took me a little longer to get back into my routine, but the week itself was just way more exhausting than normal - a full hospital of sick sick dogs all night and a busier than usual ER caseload. my first night working i got my fingernail chomped on by a crazy dog and now it's all purple. i never got the intense throbbing pain i was expecting though, so that's nice.

apparently it's unseasonably warm everywhere else in the entire country but here. we actually got a little snow this week. and by a little, i mean that in the city at least there was about an inch and the actual time it snowed was 1-2 hours. but everyone went up into a panic, schools closed, people called into work, and the city probably released its four snow plows. people are totally ridiculous here. i guess it is pretty dangerous if the bridges freeze and it gets worse outside the city at the higher altitudes, but come on. the schools were closed just based on the forecast, before a single flake fell. of course i was driving home from work in morning rush hour during that only hour that it was snowing, so that was fun. then i let the animals outside to play in the snow.

at least look at the picture

2007-01-14T08:21:00.000-08:00

so this made top headlines in portland this week...
Owner of Jumbo Cat Steps Forward
your classic touching PR story.

2007-01-08T13:50:00.000-08:00

slowly getting back into the swing of things after returning from after-christmas vacation in austin. i don't think it's stopped raining since we got back (well, maybe it has, but the sun hasn't shown its sorry face). i've spent the weekend catching up on some things like...
...blowing all of our christmas money! we finally found a coffee table after much searching, but aren't going to pick it up until next weekend. we also bought a new vacuum, which leads me to the next point.
...cleaning the disgusting house! holy crap there was a lot of animal hair everywhere. good thing we got a new vacuum.
...finally getting some groceries! not much to say about that one, except that i looked for some vitamin D at trader joe's and they didn't have it. no one but those who were in austin will understand that one, but apparently everyone is vitamin D deficient, especially people like me who live where the sun never shines. read about it, people, miracle supplement.
...updating my flickr page with some new and not-so-new photos.
...well i guess that's it. also a lot of sitting around. since we were in central time for a week we are getting up really early and going to bed early also. but i'm sure that will all change after tonight because i go back to work (five overnights, ahhhh! i took an extra shift for someone).

2006-12-27T20:36:00.000-08:00

well, since i AM the person of the year, i suppose it is my obligation to pacify the masses with some words of wisdom.

those Time articles were actually pretty interesting. and they also pointed out that there is a wacky variety of people out there. i must say as a new little myspace user i am especially fascinated by the constant interaction of everyone that i never realized was such a huge aspect of people's lives. and that's just the myspace losers, not even the superior friendster users (at least that's what i hear). myspace makes me realized how one-sided blogging can be, but maybe that's because hardly anyone i know is very blod-friendly. it's a good thing i caved and finally signed up, or i would have been decades behind (not just months to years). and those utube boys! oh such a heartwarming story. i have to say i haven't explored the depths of utube that much, but i did look up some square one mathnet episodes once. "square one! do do do do do, do do dooooooooo. square one! do do do do do, do do dooooooo..."

in other news, one of the reasons that i finally broke down and posted something is because chris is supposed to be picking me up from work and i've been waiting a really long time. oh well, i needed some quality computer-catch-up time and some phone time. that was after i borred someone's car to go go fred meyer (which portlanders call "freddie's"). the holidays were pretty uneventful for us; i worked on christmas so we didn't do much. it kind of snuck up on us this year because we didn't do much to prepare for it. although we did decorate the wine tree again, only this time we added the extra special touch of freshly cut juniper greens (from our dying bushes in the front yard.

speaking of those bushes...they are these crazy overgrown bushes that are about the end of their lifespan, no amount of pruning or tlc is going to make them attractive. before we moved in they were covering the entire sidewalk so they previous owner just cut back one side of them with a chainsaw or something. so now the dead 75% of the bush underneath the top layer is all exposed and it's ridiculous. our crazy neighbor (that's another post all together) was going to help us out with cutting them down but he has a crappy chainsaw and after every other cut the chain falls off. it's a neon yellow and purple chain saw, i wonder if that says anything about its quality. anyway, the bottom line is that we need to hire some lawn service to take two hours to remove them and turn them into wonderful mulch.

i don't know why i got off on that tangent...whoa. oh yeah, christmas. well, i guess there's not really much else to say about that. chris got me a massage chair thing (well not a chair, a pad that you set in a chair). so awesome. and very addictive.

we're taking care of a certain friend's dogs this week. i may have compared it in the past to taking care of a couple of retarded children. i've never taken care of a couple of retarded children, but i imagine it could be somewhat similar. except maybe the children wouldn't have horrible gas and an accident in the house.

2006-12-15T00:38:00.000-08:00

what the crap, blogger won't switch my account to their new and improved version. maybe it's because i'm only a fair weather user. ah, the pain of rejection.

so oregon is having some freaking rainy weather, the power went out at work tonight, just after i finished typing a case summary. so i lost it all and that was awesome. at least our fluid pumps have battery power and the power came right back on. i guess there are supposed to be pretty high winds that blow a bunch of stuff over tonight. well part of my fence already blew over so take that weather...too little too late.

oh the pain

2006-12-11T23:48:00.000-08:00

i finally broke down and made a myspace page. i feel so dirty. but i guess that's the only way to keep up with all the crazy people nowadays. ARRRRRRRRRRGH!! anyway. it's not like i'm keeping in touch with anyone here since i'm such a slacker. SLAAAAAAAAAAAACKER!!

defeat hurts bad, so bad.

holy crap, it rains a lot here

2006-11-07T19:17:00.000-08:00

as you may have seen on the news. but i guess it i the most it's rained at at time in about 10 years so it's not usually this bad. i did see part of the sky behind the clouds for the first time in several days, so that was exciting. it better not be raining the whole time we're in missouri next week because i'm sure we'll need a break by then. no flooding in my neighborhood, but i've seen more electric and sewer work around town than ever before and some of the older buildings near downtown have their basements flooding. the meteorologists here always have a lot to talk about and they all use flashy graphics.

finally put the halloween pics on flickr.

we're finally trying to fill our empty living room so we went sofa shopping today. a little overwhelming, not sure if we'll be making a decision anytime soon.

WHY does our local news feel that it is necessary to report that brittney spears is getting divorced? that's some shameful reporting. that does it, it's time to stop watching the news and do something else.

post-halloween

2006-11-02T18:35:00.000-08:00

i don't quite have our halloween pictures ready to post yet, but here's a preview.

i think the rainy season has officially begun. the rain started today and is supposed to continue for the next week or so.

what the heck i'm doing around the house (mostly with paint)

2006-10-26T16:32:00.000-07:00

well, here's what i'm not doing. living room, still empty and sad.
the random green chris bought for the bathroom ended up going on one of the walls in the bedroom and some of the kitchen. notice the sweet shelf headboard thing behind the bed. free on craigslist, oh yeah.
these are not the same color...on the left is "chris's den", a grey that was the first room we painted (before we even moved our furniture in), and then there's my bathroom with some donated leftover paint that mary had. it's actually blue, not grey. and i can't get motivated to actually finish. i think it's because i have to take down the bathroom cabinet.
last week we started our fern shade garden. that's the driftwood we brought back when we went to cape disappointment. the area looks a little sparse and sad right now, i know, but it just needs some time to grow. when i was digging up some of the dirt in the area, i guess i released some mysterious spore into the air. the next day our back patio was covered in a lime-green powder and now more moss is starting to grow. huh. hope i didn't inhale those.
this is the red paint i was whining about. laundry room/hallway to garage. more leftover mary paint, generously donated. i also did the floor in this room with classy stick-on vinyl tiles.

expensive new wheels

2006-10-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

well, we finally got the new van after months and months of delays. it's quite the step up from out old piece of crap. we traded it in, in a most classy way, totally discusting with an empty gas tank. we were practically coasting into the parking lot on fumes. i should have taken a picture but oh well. so here is the new van. it has a bunch of fancy buttons and controls, i'll post some more pictures on flickr when i actually take them. then you can take in every glorious detail. anyway, this is chris and mike, a guy that worked at the dealer (and was impossible to ever get in touch with over the phone).

in other news, when will i ever learn to use primer when i paint things red?

oh yeah, this is what you get from a disposable camera

2006-09-29T10:50:00.000-07:00

quality. you can see the rest of the roll here.

another reason to visit me in portland

2006-09-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

i heard on the news the other night that the portland airport (PDX) was rated most pleasant airport experience, or something like that. from personal experience, it really is, as far as airports go. sometimes there's someone playing a grand piano for you, and it's usually not too crowded and obnoxious...anyway. i can't find any verification of this claim searching the internet, though, so i wonder if they made it up.

oh wait, here's one. whatever shortnews is. actually it was rated the BEST airport in the country. and there's free wireless. now all you need is a plane ticket.

books and super best friends

2006-09-22T23:52:00.000-07:00

i think i'm going to have to break down and have chris help me edit my template because it is so lame. then i'll be able to show off some sweet photos of the area. so eventually that will happen...

last night i was getting a little stir crazy staying at home (the whole trying not to spend any more money on crap this month) so i went to find a borders to hunt around in (courtesy of mike and gail). i discovered that a mere two miles from me is a giant suburbia-esque (hmm, that word didn't work out so well) shopping mall. the borders was not-so-strategically placed directly across from a barnes and noble. anyway, i ended up with some good finds, and i was able to make the final total a mere 5 cents under the gift card value. got a new cookbook, a coctail book (who knows why i needed that one, it was just there), sudoku book (i'm really lagging behind the fad on this one...i just did my first one ever last week), and a plant book (real exciting, i know). i got home and got all excited about books, so i had to investigate the portland public library system. of course, there's a library not far away so i plan on getting to know it next week. that's a free activity, right? why didn't i think of it a couple of weeks ago?

speaking of books (kind of), i was watching a classic south park episode the other night - the one about the super best friends, a great episode - and i realized how little i know about a lot of the history of world religions. was the asian super best friend confucious, or some other guy? does anyone have a recommendation for a good basic world religion history book? i'm hoping that a certain religious studies/sociology guru in wisconsin can answer this one. i'm looking for a light but informative read here. and i thought it was unfair that the mormons got to be represented with their own super best friend, since they're kind of an offshoot of christianity. anyway.

okay, i'm back

2006-09-21T11:38:00.000-07:00

ah, the ol' microwave egg and cheese sandwich. one of the only real uses for american "cheese." originally it was going to be a bagel instead of sandwich, but i discovered that my two remaining bagels were nicely stuck together with a carpet of mold. i guess i wasn't that disappointed though, because of the following piece of information that i recently discovered: hawaiian bagel = PLAIN bagel. (acually it may have been a little sweeter, but for all practical purposes...PLAIN. i wasn't too sad to see those two other poser bagels go) i hope this information is helpful to others so they can avoid the same letdown that i experienced.

i'm officially car-less now (well, chris still has his, so the household isn't car-less). as a brief update, portland licensing requires that vehicles pass an emissions inspection (which the corolla failed with flying colors). a general inspection of the car at this same time revealed that several other areas of the car were also badly in need of replacement, so many areas that the repair costs for these were greater than the value of the car. when i went to pick up the un-repaired car after the inspection, they cautioned me several times not to drive it too far. considering i had just driven it the distance of the entire length of oregon, it wasn't too comforting to hear. so anyway, i decided to just be done with it and donate it (autos for animals). they came to tow it away the other day. i wanted to take some pictures of it being towed away, but i was asleep at the time. :(

so i'm not on a new car hunt yet, and i don't plan to be anytime soon. in an extremely environmentally-conscious city, this has actually been a good (be it forced) adaptation. at least portland is the most bike-friendly city i've ever seen (well at least big city u.s. i'm sure). i'm sure we'll get a long fine indefinitely with our one car.

and incidentally, when i was describing the car saga, i was reminded of how i hate it when people name their cars. "cindy lou failed her emissions inspection." "bob needs all new brakes, pads, and tires." "fiona is leaking radiator fluid." blehhhhh. a couple people told me i should name it once (the type of people that were into car-naming), but the best i could come up with was "the corolla." so, "the corolla" will be sold at a car auction shortly, and will probably end up being disassembled to use for parts. the end of an era.

ditto that last title

2006-09-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

ditto's such a dumb word.

well, since cabell has called me out on the whole reformat of the blog without any new postings (i was planning on it, really), i might as well finally get around to it. the first step is the hardest, right?

but first i have to make some breakfast, because that brownie i just had for breakfast isn't quite cutting it, and all i'm doing now is getting up and looking in the refrigerator every two minutes. as if something has changed in there. and yes, it is still before noon here, so it's still breakfast.

hold on a minute.

my long hiatus

2006-07-13T17:05:00.000-07:00

i guess there are a few updates in order since poor bloggie was neglected for so long.

1. i did find a house and a job, in portland. i start the job on july 28 (or 29th?) and we move there on monday. hooray!

2. internship is done done done done!

3. i've added some photos to flickr of a rafting trip i took and also a trip to glacier national park. that's basically how i've been spending my time while in limbo between jobs. be prepared to see a lot of trees and mountains.

4. we're getting a dog! sage is a corgi and we're picking her up tomorrow. i'll post some pictures. the cats are fine now, but cringer will be very upset by the time this whole moving business is over.

5. next week it's off to chicago for mike and gail's long-awaited wedding. and we'll get to hang out with ashly and justin for the weekend too. yay!

okay, back to the empty, discusting apartment...after the move i'll be better about updating....maybe...

the lo-down

2006-06-02T01:49:00.000-07:00

looks like may has come and gone and ol' bloggy hasn't exactly kept up with the times. what a lame ass. well, i'll just breeze through a few highlights. early may...trip to missouri, both columbia and cape (oh, a few hours in stl too), good times, pictures on flickr for your viewing pleasure. then i worked three whole days and we took off again, this time to portland for job interviews and house hunting. learned what the real estate term "escalation agreement" is. eww. but had some kick-ass sushi with mary and marcus and was wined and dined by potential employer. discovered portland area has a nude beach. came back to pullman and worked some more. late may...it's my last real week of overnights at this place, hooray. (my last scheduled week the new interns will be here so one of them will be staying overnight. suckers.) trying to make a decision on the job and also not freak out that apartment lease is up in a month and i have nowhere to go. tonight...trying to complete a major overhaul on the ipod, debating whether to actually have rounds with the overnight students, taking care of a puppy kicked by a horse, doing some miscellaneous cleaning/organizing, debating the idea of a little nap. hmm, that actually sounds pretty good. but i better brush my teeth first.

letdowns of the day

2006-05-04T00:53:00.000-07:00

1. i was supposed to have my long-awaited (well, not that long-awaited) job interview today, but i got a call this morning telling me they were going to have to reschedule. argh. let's get on with it already.

2. i had to give my spring seminar this morning (after being here all night, fabulous). everyone has been getting this comment on their evaluations from a certain faculty member about how they need to dress more appropriately. but i didn't get one today, even though i wore practically the same thing as sarah who also had to speak today (she got the comment). maybe my attire was just that bland.

3. the icu is actually busy tonight and i don't think i'll be able to sleep practically the entire night. dang.

4. i had this wicked craving for ice cream earlier and no way to get any.

kamiak

2006-04-28T21:33:00.000-07:00

how many months have i been here? how pathetic that i'm only now hiking up kamiak butte, one of the only non-farmland scenic areas around here. actually i did go a couple of times before, once not too long after moving here (it was closed due to risk of forest fires) and once about a month ago (i got a phone call and ended up being lame and just sitting and talking on the phone). oh, also for the more advanced reader, there is a list of the native plants on the butte. this picture didn't quite capture the rolling hills down below (it makes it look flatter than it really is) but pullman is off in the hazy horizon (also not all that apparent). it was so beautiful today that i was really bitter to have to return to work tonight to start a week of overnights. poo.

p.s. sarah had to get six stitches. :(

good times in the ER

2006-04-24T21:53:00.000-07:00

my internmate sarah got nailed by a dog tonight while she was working, so i took her over to the local emergency room. but no sooner had we filled out her personal information when they whisked her away to some secret room to examine her wounds and left me out in the waiting room. of course, the most horrible tv i could possibly ask for is on: larry king live taking calls about princess di's death. argh. at least there's a wireless connection in the hospital that i can pick up. and it would be nice if someone would give me some kind of timeline here...it's been like an hour. am i supposed to just sit here indefinitely? can i go home, take a shower, change clothes, and come back? there's not even a skanky couch here that i can sprawl out on, and it's getting to be that time of night where i really need to. i wonder if she's getting sutures right now.

ooh, in other news, i submitted a job application today. how exciting.

nothing

2006-04-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

here's me with my arch enemy, ronald mcdonald. look at him with his sinister grin. yeah, i have no idea where i was going with that one, i just think it's a funny picture. oh crap, i just realized i said "arch enemy." didn't mean to make such a horrible, horrible pun.

i think my refrigerator is reaching maximum condiment capacity. there should be a rule that when those little jars of things no longer fit in the compartments in the door it's time to stop. but for some reason we haven't been able to control ourselves with the sauces, and the dressings, and the olives...i don't even know what the hell is in that door anymore.

my easter

2006-04-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

you can't tell, but it's snowing
dog vs. porcupine

my "to do" list

2006-03-29T19:03:00.000-08:00

1. update my blog. yes, i keep meaning to do this one, but i never seem to get around to it.

2. find a job. this one should be #1, but it's scary and keeps getting put off as well. i think i'm close to actually applying to a few though. hopefully more on that one coming soon.

3. finish powerpoint presentation. i have to speak this weekend, for pete's sake. i just can't seem to find the perfect pictures to add though.

4. get taxes done. well, that one's almost done, i just have to get it in the mail.

5. call mandy. i have to find out if ol' pregos is having morning sickness yet.

6. call tony. geez, he's finally back on this continent and i haven't even bothered. that's pathetic.

7. update flickr. actually, i just did that one so i can cross it off the list. who's the biggest nerd ever for posting pictures of cats on the internet?

8. call *insert name here.* damn this pacific time zone.

9. finish another powerpoint. this one's for my spring seminar, and theoretically i can still procrastinate for a few more weeks and be fine. but really, i should get my act together. oh that's a good one too.

10. get my act together.

11. go running. yeah, blew that one off today. the 100K is this weekend (i only have to do 5.6 miles of it, i don't know how many kilometers that is).

12. decorate jerseys for the 100K. we are giant dorks because we're going to have team jerseys with nicknames on them.

13. laundry. that one never really gets crossed off the list.

14. make a real list and complete the items on it. pat self on back.

i'm sorry, but lucky has tumors everywhere. big ones.

2006-03-13T18:42:00.000-08:00

every time i spend time on the "referral medicine" service, i have to see these cases that other vets send our way because either a) we have diagnostic/treatment capabilities that most practices don't have (ultrasound, endoscopy, CT, etc), b) there's something really screwy going on, c) someone wants a 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th) opinion. and a lot of the time that happens, we find cancer. it kind of sucks to always be telling people that their beloved companion has cancer.

so today i had an owner that came for an ultrasound, prepared to have the "C" word dropped on her, and i got to tell her that her cat DIDN'T have cancer! she was so excited. sure, he'll still be peeing blood for a while until they can get rid of the bladder stones, but at least it's not cancer.

hopefully tomorrow there won't be a rebound effect after my good fortune today.

eew, my tonsil is gross

2006-03-08T01:53:00.000-08:00

so i had this sore throat (really half of a sore throat, it was only on one side) that was bugging the crap out of me for like a week. and i couldn't stop palpating my big lymph nodes, i was becoming obsessive. so when i was getting worried that i was starting to get an earache in addition to everything, i finally went to the doctor on monday. when it was only my throat, i figured the doctor would just tell me to suck it up and wait it out again like the last gime. but then when it was my ear...

anyway, my ear was totally fine, he told me the pain was all referred from my throat. and he also told me i had a tonsillolith, or basically a inspissated/impacted wad of crap that was brewing in my tonsillar crypt and irritating everything. gross. anyway, i popped the sucker out and my throat feels great.

when i googled "tonsillolith," all these ads came up for fighting bad breath. apparently these little things are supposed to smell foul. geez, i hope i didn't have horrible breath for like a month when this thing was building up.

so my grossness was more yellow than this guy and also more round.

the moral of the story is, if your throat hurts and feels like there's something stuck back there, check out your crypt for a wad of nasty. eww.

weeee! (or is it "AHHHHHHH!")

2006-03-07T02:06:00.000-08:00

and this is what i feel like right now. so much craziness lately that i've barely had time to check my email. i haven't even posted since i've been back from vegas, which still seems like just last week, but definitely is much longer than that now. i did upload some photos onto flickr (that's what this one is from) if anyone wants to see me acting stupid. i had a great time though and reality was very difficult for the first few days after i got back. but that's all i can say about that; you know how that saying goes about the happening and the staying...yeah whatever.

i appear to be an emergency magnet this week. this weekend was crazy, usually monday is the really quiet night of the week and i took in three cases, i just hope the rest of the week slows down just a little because i have a bunch of stuff i need to get done. it's not like i can go home and do it after my shift, that's my valuable sleeping time.

they just got cable on the tv in the lobby here. if it's quiet on wednesday, i might have to sneak away and watch the project runway finale. i love that show! it makes me want to play with my sewing machine, but it seems that my time has been a little occupied for the past several months. i did have time to put together a little concoction last week (well, i made time by putting off other things i should have been doing, it felt great).

so chris and i finally decided to find another home for our sugar glider. the amount of time we spent with her was pretty pitiful, really. shame on us. so we thought she'd be better off with someone who could devote a lot more attention than we were. chris posted something on sugarglider.net and within two days we had found someone just over in moscow. i think this girl is exactly the type of person we were hoping to find so i'm hopeful that cinnamon will have a much more enriched and exciting life from now on. good luch cinnamon!

ok, better check on the icu. then it's down to business getting some work done! or maybe i'll just go to sleep.

this was kind of fun

2006-02-16T02:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.mensa.org/workout2.php?

and i remembered that i always sucked at word scrambles.

worst cases of this week

2006-02-16T00:53:00.000-08:00

and the week's not quite over! but can i top these? we'll just have to see.

natural selection does not work in humans. i blame welfare. i see an alarmingly high amount of people like this on emergency. they never come out during the daytime, always at night, and they never have money.

so this one shouldn't even count as a case, but it's a stupid story anyway. yesterday at 3:30 in the morning, i got a special delivery of baby mice. it wasn't totally unexpected though, about an hour earlier i got a call from some lady in a frenzy becaue she found a nest i her closet. i told her over the phone that if she really needed to get rid of them she could bring them in the morning (and we'd probably feed them to the raptors), so just put them in a box until then or leave them where they are. but she was convinced that these guys would chew through anything and she absolutely didn't have anything they couldn't escape from.

then she showed up with these mice in a *glass fishtank* and the little guys didn't even have their eyes open yet.

i can understand being a little freaked out to find mice in your house, especially in a closet, but does it really warrant a huge ordeal in the middle of the night? and why are you going through your closet at 3 in the morning?

tonight i got a call about someone accidentally dropping their bed on their puppy's head. yeah, i had to ask twice so verify that that's really what they said. a little background, this dog was just in last week for acetaminophen toxicity because he got into some children's tylenol. a couple hundred dollars later (most of which they haven't paid)... the puppy is rummaging around under the bed and oh, finds some more children's tylenol that no one bothered to clean up. then the struggle trying to lift the bed up and get the dog out results in an end of the bed getting dropped in just the right place.

i think she's going to be ok, lucky for them because they can't afford extensive treatment. and i think we got her to ralph up any pills she ate. she's got to have a killer headache though; she even had a seizure after the bed-dropping happened.