Immortalized (temporarily)

The clinic I work at the most in Calgary has a rather ugly sign, so we've been using a window painter to make the building more interesting to look at, and to tell people about us.

I had to laugh when I saw that they had the window painter put me on the windows this time.

I feel famous!

I am so SMRT

Yay!

My studying paid off and I got a 35Q on the MCAT. That's the 93.1-95.1 percentile range. Yay again!

Here is a picture of my brain so you can stare at its awesomeness. Mike took this slice at the research MRI the day I was his guinea pig.

Aren't the wrinkles cute?

Can't blog......studying.

I promise to update people on my little life in a couple of weeks. Right now I have to study physics.

Serena Ryder stood me up!

Mike and I went to London Ontario this month to see what it might be like to live there. Mike will probably be doing his master's and Ph.D out there, so we might be there for about 4 years.

We had a great time. It's a really pretty city. Of course being from Alberta I'm amazed by anywhere that has old brick houses with ivy on them. It's been stinking hot in Calgary for weeks, and it was so nice to get out of our 28 degree townhouse to an air-conditioned hotel room. The hotel was pretty sweet. Our room was built like a 1 bedroom apartment with a kitchen and living area, and separate bedroom.

It was still hot out there, but it was usually cloudy which helped us feel a bit more comfortable when we were walking around outside. It was just fun to walk up and down the streets and look at all the old houses.
It was my birthday on the 19th and we had a great dinner together at a wonderful restaurant. On the 20th we went down to Detroit for the Serena Ryder concert that I had been looking forward to for weeks. We managed to get to downtown Detroit without meeting any violent criminals, but we were a bit early so we had to sit in the car looking rather suspicious for about an hour.

I was hugely disappointed when I found out that Serena Ryder had dropped off that leg of the tour a few weeks prior. You'd think that Ticketmaster would have some way of knowing and contacting people who bought tickets. However, since her album hasn't been released in the US yet, I was one of only 3 people there who had a clue who she was.

Fortunately Xavier Rudd was amazing, and managed to bring me out of my funk with his crazy one-man-band and diggeridoo skills.

We were also cheered up by the fact that the concert was over soon enough for us to hit a Cracker Barrel restaurant on the way back up to Canada.

On our last day we checked out of the hotel in the morning, but our plane didn't leave until after eight pm, so we had a lot of time to kill. There is a really nice park in the middle of London called Victoria Park. They were having a free music festival in the park called the Home County Music Festival.

Since we had spent the night before at the concert in Detroit, we didn't listen that closely to the music. However we had a perfect day lying in the grass, eating fair food, and watching squirrels bury food in the lawn.
I had a great bit of summer in London. Although I would be happy to have fall start tomorrow and put and end to this annoying heat wave.

Weddings.

I spent the last 2 weeks of June in Lethbridge living in a hotel, working, walking around downtown and studying. It was quite peaceful. I got a lot of studying done, and I have now experienced the bar known as Sound Garden. Quite the place that one.




My first appointment at work there was a little weird, though. The police brought in a decapitated and skinned animal for me to look at. It was my job to guess how it died and what it was. I voted for stabbed, and cat. Bizarre. And then the next day a lady brought in her dead cat and asked me to tell her how long it had been dead. And then a bag of dead fish was found in the parking lot. I didn't have to post-mortem the fish, though. After the few days of CSI Lethbridge, things got much more normal.

Lethbridge is nice. It's like a quiet version of Grande Prairie that you can drive across in 10 minutes. I was scared that I would have to treat rattlesnake bites, but thankfully none of the clinic's dog patients were dumb enough to get bitten while I was working. Worst wildlife encounters I had to clean up were dog vs porcupine and dog vs. baby deer.



I got home the day before Heidi and Glen's wedding barbeque. The BBQ was fun, and the wedding was even more fun. All my siblings and their husbands/wives/kid were around and we had a great time dancing. Highlight of the night was BREAKDANCERS! They were awesome.

Kristed hung around town for a few days so I could neuter her dog. We had a lot of fun shopping and hanging out. Opi was an excellent patient and is the cutest dog ever. This is how he looked when he was just little. He's still just as cute, only bigger and droolier. But he's less nutty now. ha ha.




Finally, this last weekend I went to my friend Steph's wedding. It was great but I had a cold so I didn't stay past the speeches. I got to drive around in a low 2-door car while wearing a short skirt that day. Good thing it wasn't windy out.


Mike was up in GP attending his cousin Tina's wedding. Sounds like it was a good time too.




Mike is happy for Jason and Tina, but he was most excited about the roast pig.

I have to go study some more now.

Sorry for the long pause.

I haven't blogged in a long time so I thought I'd give a brief synopsis of what's been happening in the last month (nothing too exciting).


1. Mike finished school for the year and now I actually get to see him for a few hours every day.

2. Poor Mike made us a delicious meal of eggs and hashbrowns and cheese. Then he noticed that the cheese was moldy. We went out for breakfast that day. Click the picture if you want to see the green bits.


3. We went camping at a nerd convention on May long weekend, and packed up and left at 2am on the last night because it was raining inches of slurpee on us.


4. I tried to dry a tent by hanging it over chairs in the back yard in between rain showers. Not so much luck.



5. I went to a veterinary dentistry seminar in Edmonton. We visited Andy & Amisha and played on their Wii system. That made my arms hurt. Left-handed pong is hard. Amisha made delicious mini hamburgers including baking fresh buns. Delicious.



6. We had our summer work barbeque last week. It rained. Fortunately the barbeque was held at the top of a hill.

Goodbye Buzz

The new car is wonderful and the butt warmers are divine. But I thought I should post one last tribute to Buzz before I move on with life and become accustomed to the shiny new car.

We got Buzz about 2 years ago from somebody we know. That is the only way I would ever buy a really used car like this. Buzz got his name because whenever you were stopped at a light, the whole car would rattle unless you put it in neutral.

The only automatic thing in the car was the transmission.

Over the last 2 years Buzz got new struts, radiator, fluid pump, timing belt, and lenses for the headlights. I finally had to give in and stop pumping more money into the car when it would be $750 just to find out if the transmission was about to blow up. Buzz was our pay-as-you go car. If we ever got too poor to drive it or fix it, we could just park it and only have $50 in insurance payments that month.

I sold Buzz for 5 dollars. I hope he gets a new transmission and goes another 265000km.

Zoom Zoom

We're buying a new car! It makes me feel like such a grownup.

I was hoping to wait until Mike is done school, but the red wagon (aka Buzz) is about to crap out. Mike took it in for an oil change last week and had them look into why it seems to be having trouble changing gears. It'll take about $700 just to figure out what's wrong, and I'm pretty sure the transmission is about to fall out of it.

I was hoping to give it away to someone I know who's car just died, but I think it would cost a lot just to bring it up to safety standards (which I just did 2 years ago).

Anyway, the new car is a Mazda 5 GT, and it will have a command start, cruise, and BUTT WARMERS!!! YAY!!! We'll probably get it on Wednesday night. It will hold a lot of our crap, and every one of the 6 seats in it has its own cup holder. Plus an extra!

And all the back seats fold down flat really easily, and you can store stuff in the middle row seats, and the steering wheel telescopes and tilts, and it has a power moonroof, and the side doors slide open like a minivan, and it will have a CD player. All of our vehicles have been cassette-playing cars so far.

My only complaint is that the only seat without armrests is the front passenger seat. What's up with that? We asked the salesman and he thought it was dumb too. Oh well, my left elbow will just have to dangle and suffer when Mike's driving.



It will look just like this except it will live in Calgary and not in England. And it will have red fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror.

So exciting.

Proud of my husband.

With the help of some valium-type drugs and a very nice dentist, Mike has been brave enough to go through a lot of dental work in the past few weeks.

To be specific he has had 3 root canals, 5 crowns, several fillings, and a major dental cleaning. He still has to have 2 temporary crowns replaced by permanent ones, but he may be able to do that without sedation or freezing (he's most afraid of the needles).

He wasn't allowed to eat after 10 pm the night before his sedation appointments. Then he had to get up at 6 am to take his pills, and I had to shepherd a very large, very drugged, and rather clumsy man to the dentist's office for 7 am.

I went to work for the morning, and booked off some time in the afternoon to go pick him up.

The first time, I was a little apprehensive about leaving him alone at home for a couple of hours while I finished work. What if he decided to leave the house? Or tried to drive?

It's not a totally unfounded worry as one of my friends ended up buying fifty dollars worth of ice cream and leaving it at the store, then buying and bringing home a pet iguana after his dental sedation.



I had to work, so I hid Mike's house and car keys where he couldn't find them, gave him a stern lecture about not going down the stairs, and put him to bed. I also put his cell phone on the pillow next to him so he could call if he needed anything (I only work 2 blocks away). He was very tired and could barely stay awake long enough to drink some Gatorade before falling asleep. As final insurance, I left a very stern note on the door as a reminder in case he forgot.





I needn't have worried. I don't think he even turned over in his sleep while I was gone. I had to wake him up to feed him his dinner of pudding, then he went back to bed until the next morning.

No iguanas.

Good job Mike.

Mike and I went to the Starbucks this evening at Market Mall. I had ordered Mike's drink, then my drink. It was quiet in the store, and just as I finished telling the guy behind the counter what I wanted, Marvin Gaye's "Lets Get It On" came on the sound system.

The timing was so perfect that the Barista Boy looked slightly perturbed, then started laughing. In spite of the sexy guitars, I managed to not jump over the counter and shove my tongue down his throat.

I am a strong and decent woman. Marvin Gaye has no power over me.

And just in case you were suffering from cute kitty withdrawal:

from icanhascheezburger.com

It's good to be home.

I went to Fort Mac again last week to visit my friend Alison and to work. Work was pretty good, and Alison's daughter Mary is getting to be very fun. She turned 1 a couple of weeks ago and is much more opinionated than last time. It was really nice to visit with Alison and Dennis again. Dennis cooked me steak twice in one week. Delicious.

Mary is just a few days away from being able to break into any room in the house, and has learned to be a cute little ham for the camera.

She's almost walking but prefers to crawl or to be lifted up and carried, especially when she's sleepy. This is her standing and politely tugging on my leg to be lifted up.

Fort Mac itself was very full of snow and rather chilly compared to Calgary. Also, I have developed the opinion that there are a large number of people in that city who don't know how to drive. I present to you the evidence:

1. Holes in the strip mall that I work in up there. These are DIFFERENT holes than the ones that were there back in October (note to self - get seat AWAY from the window when dining at Subway):

2. Then there's the sign at the Tim Horton's drive through:

3. As I was taking pictures of the sign, Alison noticed this lovely vehicle on our left.

With all those less-than-skilled drivers in town, Tim's must have put in this trench in the parking lot to slow them down. It doesn't look like much in this picture, but it's at least 20 cm deep, and I'm not sure my car could make it out of there. Good thing Alison drives a big truck. Second note to self - do NOT open the lid on steeped tea until the vehicle has cleared the trench.

I had fun, but it's good to be back in Calgary, even with the annoying weather that can't make up its mind. I am so ready for spring and so tired of snow and cloud.

Serena Ryder - If Your Memory Serves You Well

Finally, I bought this fabulous CD by Serena Ryder. I love it and I have to lend it to Jamie and Amisha once I've listened to it a dozen times.

http://www.serenaryder.com/

Ann Coulter, Canada, and Vietnam

Then we have this hilarious video of Ann Coulter making an ass of herself. It was pointed out to me by Perpetual Lent at Livejournal.

A dull life.

I haven't been too lazy to update this, it's just that my life has been nice and dull for the past couple of weeks. So I will show you some of the things that have been entertaining me. First we have some fun pictures made by some very creative people who are not me:




I don't know how to make blogger and youtube look pretty together, so the other stuff will be on top of this post.

I finally know what the book is about.

I always wondered what the story "Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie" was about. Until today.

It is the story of a lovely and friendly hamster who gets lost in the ductwork of a house for 5 days. She is finally found in a duffel bag at the bottom of one of the vents.

All seems well, but then a few days later she develops an eye problem and is taken to the veterinarian. She is a nice hamster, and doesn't even try to bite. Dr. H is impressed with her cuteness and nice personality.

Dr. H is quite sure that the problem around her eye is actually an abscess and takes her into the back of the clinic to lance it because she doesn't want the small child with the hamster to be sad about the gross stuff that is about to come out of Huey's face.

Huey is quite cooperative, but has tough skin. Dr. H tries to poke a hole in it with a biopsy punch, but no luck. She tries again, pushing harder. Still no luck. Then she gives it a tiny nick with a scalpel.

THEN A GREAT BIG STREAM OF PUS LAUNCHES ONTO DR H's CHEEK, GLASSES, AND BANGS.

Huey feels much better and goes home on antibiotics and pain medication.

Dr. H washes her face, glasses, and hair. Then she washes her face again. It was her turn to be the smelly person on the bus tonight anyway. Dr. H is very glad that she wears glasses instead of contacts.

THE END

Just for Jamie

I'm working at a clinic that sees all kinds of small creatures this week. I've treated geckos and ferrets and birds and bunnies and guinea pigs. I had to laugh when I walked in to the back on Friday and saw that the clinic not only has 2 budgies and a conure, they also have......A SKINNY PIG!!!!

I hadn't given any thought to skinny pigs in a few years, then Jamie posted on her blog about how much she loves them last week. This one is a bit weird looking because he's albino (and because he's a skinny pig). I forget what his name is, but it's an African word for hippo.

Some advice for those of you who want to own strange little animals:

Alberta is a very dry part of the world.

It's not the best area for geckos and other creatures with the consistency of a gummy bear to live. Stick to something with fur or that came from a desert in the first place.

Why I love my neighborhood.

I got up early this morning to go to the gym (yay me!) and decided to take the garbage out on my way. I usually just toss it over the fence into the dumpster, but this morning I could hear somebody rummaging around inside the dumpster.

What to do?

I'm not the kind of person to throw garbage on somebody just because they're dumpster diving, and I'm glad people go through and take out all the bottles and cans. I silently hemmed and hawed for a minute. Should I lean the garbage against the wall of our building and throw it out when I get back? What if they tear it open looking for bottles and make a mess? Should I just yell "heads up!"?

I decided to walk around the dumpster as stompily as I could to catch his or her attention. He heard me and popped his head out with a very friendly "good morning!". He is a senior man who looks like the kind of neighbor you would love to have, who would spend all day picking sticks and leaves off of his lawn.

He reached out and took the garbage bag from me, and I explained that there were no bottles or cans in it because I take those out separately and leave them next to the dumpster.

"Oh yes, I got those the other morning. Thank-you very much."

So I went on my way and started the car. While in the car I noticed him frantically running back and forth across the alley. Was somebody yelling at him or being mean to him? When I got out to brush the snow off the running car, he caught me looking around for him and explained:

"I like to have a little fun chasing the rabbits."

He was chasing the wild hares around the back alley for shits and giggles at 6:45 am. We had a short conversation about the abundance of hares in the area, and then I left for the gym.

I'll have to learn that guy's name.

Must post more frequently than quarterly.

I have been shamefully procrastinating about this blog. Shame shame.

Oh well, I'm here now.


As for knitting, I have made a ton of stuff since August, but my favorite is the knucks I've been wearing constantly.

You can see that the thumb on the right hand rolls a bit. I think it's because I cast on a bit loose for that thumb.

They're actually less pink overall than they seem in the picture. More rusty orange.


I wore these knucks when I got to go on a tour of the oilsands in Ft. McMurray. I went up to do a locum in October, and had a lot of fun. The clinic was crazy busy, though. When I started on Monday, there were no appointments available for the rest of the week, and they were booking vaccine appointments 2 months out! That didn't stop animals from needing to be seen, of course. I got 1.5 lunches in 5 days. It was fun, though. I even had a blocked cat flown in one day from Fort Chipewyan. I've never had a patient airlifted to me before.

I had a lot of fun with Alison and Mary. Cute picture to prove it:

She's a really good kid these days. She only cried twice the whole time. Super cute too.

Alison met Robbie, and they seem to amuse each other quite nicely.


Denis took me on an awesome tour of the oilsands and I got to ride in a 400 ton truck for 2 loads! It was very very cool. Look how huge these trucks are:



I also did some knitting in Ft. Mac. I made odessa from Grumperina's website http://www.magknits.com/feb06/patterns/odessa.htm, but I need to block it before I show a picture. I also made some Futurama brain slugs http://www.johnnysstew.com/pattern/brainslug.html for Mike and friends for hallowe'en. Here I am sporting one of the little creatures:

I showed pictures on VIN, and now I'm involved in a trade with some American Vinners. American junk food for brain slugs.

Mmmm....baked cheetos in 100 calorie packs.

Mmmm....fudge shoppe cookies in 100 calorie packs.

Mike's also excited, because he's getting some Target strawberry lemonade juice powder.

I finished Robbie's hat last night, and want to get Sinead's panta done so it has some hope of reaching Germay before Christmas.

Must stop blogging and start knitting. I think that I'm going to go turn on the heated mattress pad, and knit in bed while watching TV for awhile.