Hmmmm....

I just logged onto my school's website to see if any new grades have been posted.  (Just waiting on one more class.  At least I know I passed the one I felt the worst about!)

Anyway, after logging in, this screen popped up.

You know, because a person's race just constantly changes, and needs to be updated on a regular basis.  

What is it about public speaking...

That makes you go from eloquent and well spoken to jittery and barely able to form a coherent sentence?

I had to give a presentation today for my population health & production class, and it did not go well.  Practiced the night before, no problems.  Get up in front of a whole nine or ten people, and my brain suddenly decides that it will no longer be able to keep a straight thought, voice starts shaking, the works.  So frustrating.  It's even more frustrating when I compare it to other things.  When my band was together, playing gigs wasn't intimidating.  3000 people and a bass?  No problem.  10 people and a powerpoint?  Bomb it.  Grr.

I have my 3rd year presentation in December.  I really need to fix this by then.

I almost made it through the semester without a trip to the emergency vet

I swear, there's a vet school curse.  For the past 5 semesters, each semester there has been one emergency.  This one was luckily minor.  Skwissgaar and Izmere were playing, Skwissgaar got a little too hyper, and Izzy got crabby and bit him in the face.  Now he's missing about a square centimeter of skin right below his eye.  My poor pup.  The past month he's spent 2 days at Banfield for a cardiac workup.  He managed to skin his nose while he was there, and picked up kennel cough.  Now this.

I'm currently getting spoiled in class.  I'm taking population health and production, and it's basically just practice working epidemiology problems.  I'm spoiled because we're only in class from 8:30 to noon.  That will change next week when we begin our next course, but it's a nice break from being at the equine hospital from 7:30 to 5.

You're Welcome

http://catsthatlooklikepinupgirls.tumblr.com/

CTRL-R, CTRL-R, CTRL-R

I finished up my exams for large animal block friday morning.  Ever since then, I've been obsessively opening blackboard every couple hours, and refreshing to see if my grades have posted.  I have never felt worse after taking tests than I did last week, and I'm terrified I'm going to fail and have to repeat one or more large animal rotations.  On the plus side, even the smart kids on the same rotations feel the same way after those tests, so at least we're all in the same boat.  

I've spent the weekend trying to actually have fun, and take my mind off things.  Friday night, I went out with some classmates to Knotts Scary Farm for their halloween nights.  I had a blast, but I killed my cell phone battery constantly refreshing blackboard.  

Saturday, my neighbor and I went to Universal Studios, then to a vegan bakery in LA that was in an area so sketchy that it looked like a generic "skid row" movie set.  

I kind of feel like I need to go to Disney Land today to round out my amusement park themed weekend.  

It's been awhile since I've had a problem with my crazy-cat-lady superpowers, but it looks like they're flaring up again.  Last year, an outdoor cat started showing up on my porch, and we had a good deal going on.  I fed her, and she kept other random strays from showing up on my doorstep.  Well, now a new cat has moved in, and has been chasing her off.  This new cat is beautiful - he's a white tabby with ice blue eyes, and he's friendly.  I've had to "sneak" into my house, because he tries to bolt in the front door behind me.  But he's un-neutered, and he's beating up Nuke.  He's gotta go.  If anybody's interested in what seems like a great cat, let me know (leave your email address in the comments section,) otherwise he's going to have to go to the shelter.  I'll post more pictures next time he shows up.  You know you want him......

Four exams down, one to go.

I've been lost in the fog that is exam week.  Livestock (meat and fiber,) Livestock (dairy) and Equine I and II tests have all been taken.  I was the most freaked out for the equine tests beforehand, but those tests seemed really reasonable.  Now I'm freaked out about both the livestock tests, because I felt like I did a hell of a lot of guessing on multiple choice exams that covered things in way more detail than I read about.  On the plus side, every single person I talked to feels that way, so at least it's not just me.

I have one (ok, two, but I'm counting them together) more exam tomorrow - a clinical skills exam for both livestock and horses.  I'm not really sure what to expect will be on it.  Not really sure how to prepare for it.  There's a good chance that I will be tested on things that I haven't physically done before, but have only read about.  Eek!

After my equine exam, I stopped by Dr. Diniz's office today to transfer Skwissgaar's ECG readings to a flash drive, and he's convinced that there's zero evidence of cardiac pathology in my pup aside from a decreased fractional index.  A 48 hour ECG, and no evidence of ventricular premature complexes, just a couple slightly weird, probably physiological Mobitz type 1 AV blocks.  I can only imagine how long it took to go through 48 hours of ECG tracings, even with a computer's help, and I'm so grateful that he has been so great to me and my puppy.  We're really lucky here to have so many amazing faculty members.

One more week of horses!

I'm posting this from my own couch! That won't get old for awhile.  I'm finishing up my last equine rotation, at a specialty referral hospital.  I've met some wonderful vets, some wonderful interns, and some pretty cool horses the last week.  I have one more week there, then a week of testing, then I am done with horses and large animals for good until I start studying for my national boards next year.

It was fun, and I totally get why the school wants to expose us to as many of the different areas of vet med as possible, but I'm pretty sure I intrinsically knew that I don't enjoy being out in the sun (uugh, I have freckles now, even with my liberal use of my spf 100 sunscreen), I don't like flies landing on me, I don't like getting splattered with cow poop, and I'm not a big fan of having my arm buried up to my armpit in an animal's rectum.  Not entirely sure I needed 8 weeks of hands-on experience to learn those facts.  But to be fair, I did learn quite a bit of not-so-negative things as well.  I got a bunch of ultrasound experience.  I learned that I adore draft horses and jersey cows.  I've gotten a lot more comfortable working around animals that could easily squish me if they wanted to.  It's been a great 2 months.  But I'll be glad when it's over.

Last weekend, my next door neighbor brought her dogs to school for a continuing education class for vets to work on doing echocardiograms.  Basically, her dogs were there for the vets to practice their ultrasound skills on.  She has little dogs, and they wanted bigger dogs.  I told her she could bring Skwissgaar on Sunday, since he's good about hanging out with people poking him, and I've always wanted to find out if he has dilated cardiomyopathy.  I got Skwissgaar at 8 weeks old, since my friend owned his grandpa (his dam's sire) as a service dog.  When Skwissgaar was about 3 or 4 months old, my friend's seemingly perfectly healthy dog dropped dead.  So I've always known there was a chance that my guy had DCM, and I figured I could find out for sure.  So my neighbor gets back, and I asked her about it, and she had the worst look on her face.  So I kind of put her in the bad position of having to deliver the bad news that yes he does, but they think it's pretty early. I'm taking him into school tomorrow for the 3rd year internal medicine rotation, where he'll have another ecg, an echocardiogram, and some bloodwork done. We'll get a baseline of how far along he is, and hopefully with medications, we'll be able to buy as much time as possible before he goes into congestive heart failure, or just drops dead like his grandpa.  Skwissgaar's my bestest buddy in the world, so I'm going to be pretty broken if anything happens to him.

I was sitting on my front porch a few days ago, and looking at my new car.  I then realized that the little decorative hubs that go over the alloy wheels were gone.  I went and investigated.  All 4 were gone, and there's a pry mark on one of the alloy wheels where apparently it didn't come off gracefully.  I hate my neighborhood.  It would be nice to live somewhere where I didn't have to worry about parts getting stolen off my car while it's parked directly in front of my house.

Tomorrow's my 7-year wedding anniversary.  Tyler took Saturday off of work so we could celebrate, and actually spend an entire day together (which was awesome, after barely getting to see the guy while I was living out of hotel rooms.)  We wandered around Old Town Pasadena, and discovered a couple really cool shops.  The first shop was an old-timey soda and candy shop.  I bought these:

I'm a little bit afraid for my tastebuds, when I break them all open.  I'm sure the root beer, sarsaparilla and butterscotch ones will all be fine.  It's the bacon, buffalo hot wings, PBJ and pumpkin pie ones that are scary.  

We also discovered a store called the Gold Bug.  I need to win the lottery, so I can buy stuff from there - they have some amazing steampunk stuff (like this animatronic phoenix,) taxidermy, decorative plates and prints based off of old anatomy books, and various ephemera.  I'm in love, but I'm way to broke to ever afford anything there.  

Anyway, back to the grind.  Hopefully, soon I'll get back to more frequent, shorter updates.