Whee!

Tyler's birthday was yesterday, so after he got off work, we headed down to Hollywood to watch Amon Amarth. They're a metal band from Sweden, and instead of being just "death metal" or "black metal," they invented their own genre - "viking metal." All of their songs are about Thor, and Valhalla, and pillaging villages. Good times.

We got there pretty early - about 7:30. The line was so long to get into the venue, it stretched about 5 city blocks, and took us about an hour and a half to actually get inside.

But once inside, the show was amazing. There was no opening band. Instead, Amon Amarth played one set consisting of their brand new album in it's entirity, then a short intermission followed by a set of their older music. It was amazing.



I was hoping that since there wasn't an opening band, and the tickets said it started at 8:30, that I'd get home around midnight, but it didn't quite work that well. I ended up getting home at 3, and didn't get into bed until almost 4. Woke up at 7, powered through 3 hours of class, came home, passed out for a few hours, and then got to studying.

Now I'm reading about what could cause a chronic cough in a 60 pound scottie. I'm also baffled at how a scottie could get up to 60 pounds (normal should be about 20-30) without somebody standing back and saying "I think my dog's getting a little big."

I think this is our last respiratory/cardio case of the year. I'm guessing next week's case will be either an infectious disease, or a heard health case. Then finals! Where did the time go?

Not all sunshine and roses

There was quite a bit of "drama" in class today, and I'm still trying to decide if I should blog about it or not.

- Edited later in the day -

If you're curious about today, I made a new blog (that's private) with the post there. You can find it by clicking here

However, you have to be "authorized" to read it, so if you're curious, shoot me an email at trocarkarin@gmail.com, and I'll add your email address to the "invitation" list. Google/blogger might make you sign up for an account, though.

Finally heard back from the show

I just got an email letting me know I didn't make it on the show. I'm a little bummed out about it, but a little relieved at the same time. It would have been right in the middle of the summer, making it harder to find a job until classes start up again. On the positive side of things, they were really sweet about it. Instead of sending out a form rejection letter, they wrote a letter individually to each person, and mentioned keeping my application on file in case there's a second season (which I'm sure they told everybody, but whatever.)

I also realized I forgot to mention this week's case. We're learning about a respiratory disease that affects up to 90% of thoroughbreds. It's kind of interesting how breeders can be like "my horse is bleeding into its trachea every time it runs, but it runs fast, so let's breed it!" Horse people are weird, but I guess no weirder than dog people who think it's acceptable to breed dysplasic German Shepherds, or perpetuate a breed like bulldogs that can't even give birth without a C-section.

paragraph breaks...

Great. Now if I add html break tags in my post, it gives me giant breaks, but if I put in no tags it mushes everything together. Sorry.

Eek!

So I just realized that for some reason blogger hasn't been including my paragraph breaks in some more recent posts. Sorry if that makes them impossible to read - I'll try to go in after finals and fix everything.



And just to remind you that I live in a very strange place, I bring you today's neighborhood weirdness:



I was sitting on my front porch, and I noticed a truck with a small trailer park across the park from me. The driver proceeded to get out, unload a fully tacked pony, and start walking it around the park. A few minutes later, their passenger got another pony out of the trailer. They then walked around the neighborhood, attracting little kids like crazy, then it looked like they were going house-to-house charging kids' parents for pictures with the ponies.



I don't live in a rural area. I'm off a busy street. There's a car dealership 3 houses down from me. Ponies are really out of place here. Oh, Pomona, you silly weird town, you!

This is not conducive to studying

I went to the renaissance fair in Irwindale yesterday with some friends from school, and as a result, didn't get any studying done yesterday. I figured I'd set aside all day today to get stuff done, and everything's conspiring against me to prevent that from happening. I finished some assignments that are due next week, and when I went to print them, my printer kept saying it was out of black ink. It's not. There's ink in the cartridge, but it's a Lexmark, so they've put a chip in the cartridge to cripple it after x number of pages to drive up their sales. Luckily, my roommate got home, and pulled his printer out of a box so I could print my assignments. Over the summer I need to figure out how to hack the chips so I don't have to fall prey to Lexmark's greed. After spending about an hour messing with the printer, I sat down to start getting some reading done. My jerk next-door-neighbors have been having a party all day, but it wasn't loud until I started to read. All of a sudden, they cranked their music, which they do on a regular basis, until it was so loud that it is literally shaking my house. So my roommate put his stereo in his window, facing their house, and it blaring death metal at them to try to get them to shut off their shitty mariachi. They don't seem to care, because unlike normal, considerate people, they don't seem to realize that maybe their loud crap isn't appreciated by their neighbors. I'm basically stuck in the middle of a passive-aggressive loud music war. I found directions online for how to build an electromagnetic pulse gun from an old microwave, and if I weren't pretty sure that it would be illegal, it would be really tempting to build one, just so I could disable their speaker system whenever they pull this crap. Probably not going to post much this week, but I should find out by Thursday whether or not I got onto the TV show this summer. I'll update when I find out.

Quick update

I had my interview for the Great Swedish Adventure on Friday afternoon. I think it went reasonably well. I should find out by the 21st whether or not I got on. I also found out that they pay you for being on the show - far more than I'd be able to make at a normal job. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. One of the questions they asked me during the interview was something along the lines of "Why are you proud to be Swedish?" I spit out some answer about having well-defined roots, and how it was cool when growing up to be one of my few friends who was 100% of one nationality, instead of a mix. As I was saying it, I realized how fucked up that is, and was kicking myself inside for even thinking it. Seriously, what's the point in taking pride in something like a pedegree that's tracible to one area? You're born with it. It's not like something you earned. It doesn't affect the present, knowing your ancestors all came from one area. It seems to me like a very mild version of racism, only instead of taking pride in a race (which is equally stupid), it's taking pride in a country of origin. The more I think about it, the more I want to distance myself completely from that type of thinking. My sister, Kirstin, had an interview for the show right after mine. She ended up crashing at my house Friday night, then I drove her to LAX on Saturday. So, umm, I don't drive on highways. I really need to do it, and get over the phobia, but for now I just leave earlier and find backroads and ways around it. Anyway, so I drove her to LAX from Pomona using only back roads. Apparently, while the GPS software has an "avoid highways" function, it does not have a much needed "avoid ghettos" option. My GPS took me right through the middle of South Central LA. I don't think I've ever seen so much graffiti in my life as I did in the 45 minutes it took me to get through that one area. Having never been through an area that was that trashed and poverty stricken, it really makes me think about just how priviledged I've been growing up. Other than that, there hasn't been a lot going on around here. My roommate's moving out at the end of the month, since he hasn't been able to find a job out here. He's moving to N. Carolina with his mom, who's helping him with the startup costs of a guitar company. I'm really bummed that he's leaving, because it's been so nice having somebody from home to hang out with, but I'm also excited for him, since it's an opportunity that would be hard to turn down. Speaking of Stu, he had quite the adventure the other day. I guess he was driving home, and got pulled over, just across the park from our house. According to him, the conversation went like this. Officer: "You from Colorado, huh?" (Looking at his license plates) Stu: "yes." Officer: "What are you doing here?" Stu: "Visiting some friends." Officer: "You have any guns in your truck?" Stu (kind of baffled): "umm, no?" Officer: "You out looking for hookers?" Stu (getting really confused at this point): "No, I'm driving back to my friend's house." Officer: "OK. Well, you've heard about Pomona, right?" Stu: "yes?" Officer: "Have a good evening then." So he was never given a real reason why he was pulled over (he's guessing it's just for having out of state license plates,) and apparently the cops here think that people from Colorado are gun-toting rednecks with a penchant for prostitutes. And with that "you have heard of Pomona, right" line, apparently he thinks this stinkhole city must be nationally known for it's hooker reputation. I don't know which line of thinking bothers me/cracks me up more. Another cat seems to be trying to adopt me. This brown tabby showed up on our front porch one night last week, and now he refuses to leave. It's been a week, and everytime I go outside, and every time I get home there he is on my front stairs, weaving between my feet, meowing for skritches and food. He's really sweet, and I don't want to see anything bad happen to him, but I also don't have the room to take him inside. I also refuse to take him to the Inland Empire Humane Society, since I get a terrible vibe off of that place. I'm kind of at a loss for what to do about him, but as it stands, I guess we have a temporary outside kitty?

Open House II

Ok, so open house was today. It started off with me getting ready to leave the house, and my roommate seeing me in my red open house shirt (it has the vet med logo on the front, and on the back say says "volunteer" and has a purina logo on it. So my roommate looks at my shirt and asked if I joined the Bloods. It was a good thing I hadn't just taken a drink of anything, because it caught me so off guard, and I started laughing so hard, I would have done a spit-take. So I told him, yes, I did, and the gang is now sponsored by Purina. Open house wasn't terrible. The 2nd years warned us about how terrible the little kids were last year, and how their parents were worse. We didn't have problems with that at all. I did have some fun messing with some of the more squeamish scouts, though. Pathology Club had a booth, where in order for the scouts to get their stickers, they had to reach into a box, and describe what they were feeling. A couple of them were really nervous about doing it without seeing what was inside first. Instead of letting them peek, I'd say things like "there's nothing in there that will bite." "No, it's not alive." One girl finally got up the guts to reach in, felt the squishy stress ball that was in there and exclaimed "Oh! I thought there was going to be a dog head in there!" All in all, it wasn't unpleasant. Path club made a decent amount of money selling nachos and icecream, there were a couple really bright little kids who were honestly interested in what we had to say (and some really obnoxious hyperactive snotnoses as well,) so I made sure to really talk to the ones who were actually interested, and answered all their questions. I also overheard some pre-vet students who said something along the lines of "Man! I thought Davis was nice when I visisted there, but I really want to go here now!" Haha, score one for the little guy! (Nothing against Davis. I would never go there, but only because they required 2 semesters of organic chemistry, and orgo is the devil.) Anyway, it's over, and it was pretty fun.