I'm apparently breaking stuff here.

I let my domain for this blog expire, and forgot to change my redirect settings, so that would explain why my pageviews have been stuck at 0 since the 17th.  Sorry about that.  Hopefully, if you've been using clawspawsscales.com to get here, you can figure out how to get to the blogspot address (clawspawsscales.blogspot.com), otherwise, oops, I just lost a ton of readers.

The past few weeks here in MN have been great.  I've leaned how to do orthopedic procedures and endoscopy on birds, plus a ton of other things.  I'm ready to leave, though, and the next 4 days are going to drag.  I think I hit my quota of days I can be gone without being homesick, and unfortunately, I have to go straight from here to Arizona.

I've been plowing through a ton of busywork the past few days, trying to get all of these random assignments done for this rotation, and my motivation is pretty sapped.  Busywork + personal life crashing and burning while I'm 1,000 miles away + missing my puppies is not a good combination.  I had grand plans to knock out all my assignments over the weekend, but instead ended up watching a bunch of episodes of The Shield, plus the Dexter series finale.  I fail at life.

I did get my email today from the NAVLE, giving me the go-ahead to schedule my national boards.  I was able to schedule them in my hometown, in the timeframe I was hoping for.  I'm excited and terrified.

I'm in Minnesota!

I'm halfway through my first week at the Raptor Center.  I had labor day off, so it's only been three days.  But in those three days, I've seen more raptors than I've seen in my life (in the wild, and zoos combined.)  I think the board said we had 99 patients today - everything from merlins to bald eagles to various hawk species.  I'm getting tons of hands-on experience, and getting practice with handling and IDing various species, and it's overall just wonderful.

I'm staying at the house of this woman who rents out rooms to students, and she is an absolute sweetheart.  I've been walking the 2 miles to the raptor center every day, and she's been hellbent on finding me a bike.  I don't mind walking, but she's way more concerned about it than I am.

One of the weird things I've noticed on my rotations is I keep finding vets who very closely resemble faculty members from school.  At CSU, one of the ECC residents had the EXACT same intonation and accent as our pharmacologist at Western.  Here at the raptor center, one of the vets has identical facial expressions and personality traits as our surgeon.  Nothing that makes any of them a complete doppleganger, but just enough similarities to throw you off.

Anyway, I've had long days sandwiched by long walks, I need to do my case logs for the last 3 days, and an avian radiology exercise, so I'm not going to write much of an update.  The whole year will probably be like this, which is sad, because this is probably the most interesting year, but the one I can write the least about.