My house smells amazing right now

There's nothing better than baking.  I got an email reminder from the president of the pathology club that we were holding a breakfast fundraiser tomorrow, and she asked if I'd make muffins again.  I didn't have the ingredients, so I'm making orange cinnamon rolls instead.  Then, I decided since I was already making bread dough, and I had some cabbage in my fridge, that I'd make runzas.  If you've never heard of them, it's because they're a weird mid-west food that has part russian part german origins.  It's basically cabbage, hamburger and onions sauteed together, then baked into a bread roll.  It sounds bizarre, but it is wonderful.

I recently downloaded this app for my tablet - it's basically cat toys that roll around on the screen, and when the cats touch the screen, they can pin down the toy.  Here's a video of big cats playing with the ipad version.

Anyway, they finally released it for the HP touchpad, so I got it for my kitties.  Out of the 4 kitties I've tried to get to play with it, I've had some pretty mixed results.  D'Arcy watches it intently, but doesn't really paw at the screen.  Billy gets into it, and plays with it the way it was designed.  Stego doesn't even look at the screen. Chicken, because she's trouble, got super interested in watching the toys roll around, then tried to chew on the side of the tablet.  Grr.

Lagging on the updates.

Sorry about the slow updates recently.  This is due to a couple things. 

• It's neuro block.  Not only is there a ton of material to cover, but my attention span is kaput, so it's slow going. 
• See above, re: studying.  I haven't been able to go do anything, so I haven't had anything interesting to talk about. 

I have, however, decided that once I can own some backyard chickens, that they will all have really horrible names, like "Cluck Buddy" and "Poultrygeist."  

One more SOPA post this week.

So, I was looking at a list of companies that supported SOPA legislation here.  Some surprising companies from that list:

1-800-pet-meds (just giving me yet ANOTHER reason to dislike them)
1-800-contacts
Gibson Guitars
Martin Guitars
Fender Guitars
Taylor Guitars
Peavey Electronics
Monster Cables
L'Oreal
Pfizer
Zippo

Anyway.  Click the link above to see the full list.  If you do business with one of the companies listed, please boycott them, and tell them why.

Rockin' the OVH

Had my VACS rotation today.  Got to do an entire spay, except closing the incision.  Right now they're not having us do the closures because of time issues (7 student surgeries in 4 hours wouldn't be possible otherwise.) It was a pretty awesome way to start off the week.

Anyway, the blog will be offline until Thursday to join in the SOPA protest.

Sorry about not posting last week.

It's amazing how much a stupid little cold can knock you on your ass.  I got sick just as I got back to school over break.  No big deal, just a runny nose, and feeling generally crummy and tired.  But feeling crummy and tired does not mesh well with having to read about neurological problems.  I'd read a page, then realize I was zoned out for half of it, then have to try and find where I left off, and start over. Combine that with never feeling like I had enough sleep, plus having to catch up on stuff that didn't get done, and the last 2 weeks have been pretty much FUBAR.  We just had a three day weekend, and I'm pretty much caught up now, but holy crap,  don't get sick in vet school.   

If you want to read something snarky and hilarious, I found this new blog - http://vetsbehavingbadly.blogspot.com.  Enjoy.  

Also, this breaks my heart.  http://doberman911.org/cases/noelle2.html. It made me want to cry, so if you're squeamish, and don't want to click on it, basically a 7 year old doberman was dropped off at a shelter weighing 30 pounds.  Worst pictures ever.  But now she's in a permanent home, and slowly gaining weight, so yay! Happy ending!  

I also found this, when looking at the DAN website (the orginazation that pulled Noelle from the shelter in the first place.)  Click on that link, then look on the bottom right where it says "igive," click on the link to download a tiny toolbar, and sign up.  Any normal online shopping you do, from hundreds of websites ends up donating a small portion to DAN.  For example, amazon orders give 0.8% of your purchase price to the rescue, while stores like zazzle give 8%.  It takes under 5 minutes to sign up and install it, and chances are you buy things online anyway, so make some good come out of it.   

This could end badly.

A couple days ago, Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act.  Ok, that's been signed every year, no problems.  But this year, extra provisions were sneakily thrown in by John McCain and Carl Levin.  Basically, section 1031 codifies the ability of the military to indefinitely detain american citizens without due process or trial.  It's kind of like the house, senate and president were all like "fuck that silly constitution we swore to uphold.  Let's poke as many holes in it as possible.  Ha ha, those silly peons think they have rights."

It's not even one of those "oh, you have nothing to worry about, if you're not doing anything wrong" kind of things.  

http://www.nh.gov/readynh/resources/documents/shopping_malls.pdf

http://www.santarosa.fl.gov/coad/documents/Internet%20cafes.pdf

http://www.nh.gov/readynh/resources/documents/hobby_shops.pdf

http://agr.wa.gov/FoodSecurity/docs/CommunitiesAgainstTerrorism-FarmSupplyStores.pdf

http://oathkeepers.org/oath/wp-content/uploads/ColoradoFBISurplusStore.pdf

Some of the things that can get you tagged as a terrorist - loitering outside of pet stores, wearing a warm coat that's deemed "out of season," shielding your laptop screen when using public wifi (because only terr'ists want privacy,) look up biological information, purchase paintball equipment, shopping at a feed store that's not local to you, buy large amounts of MREs, or gadgets like night vision.  No matter where you're shopping, apparently paying with cash is suspicious.  And we've known for almost a decade now that daring to protest, whether it's protesting how we handled Iraq, joining the Tea Party, or Occupy can easily get you on a watch list.  

On a slightly related note, this week's case is a dairy cattle toxicology case, where a huge number of cattle started dropping dead in hours, and almost 1/3 of the herd ended up dying over a couple weeks.  Which means that even though everybody in our class has found the published study of the actual case, we still need to look up theoretical possible differentials that are possible or likely.  We also need to look up every toxin that was tested for in the case, and be able to explain the mechanism, and how it differs from the the toxin responsible for the deaths.  Now, I do have some textbooks I use, but I also rely on websites, google scholar and journal searches a pretty fair amount.  That means that in the course of researching this week's case, so far, I have done internet searches for aflotoxin, anthrax, botulism, cyanide, nitrates, organophosphates, strychnine, and tetanus,  among other things.  

I hope my internet searches for school don't get me flagged for suspicious activity.  But I guess if it does, Guantanamo Bay's probably pretty this time of year.