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Always look on the bright side of life.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

And then ... (no and then!)

I forgot to mention that Matt and I saw The Merchant of Venice at the Angelika on Saturday night. It was really good - Al Pacino is great. All the movies that were previewed when I saw some independent films over Christmas are in theatres now, and there are a couple more I want to see. I need to make myself go - quality movies are hard to pass up.

I have to give a "special occasion speech" tonight for my class. Bleh. I wrote half of it last night and half of it this morning. I'm not looking forward to it. But I should look forward to getting it over with because I won't have to give another speech until April 5!

UPDATE: I got an A+ on the speech. A classmate confessed he wrote his in his car in the parking lot. :)

Monday, February 21, 2005

New Computer!

I've been a slacker, I know, but I got my new computer on Tuesday night! So I've been playing with it ever since. And by playing, I mean lots of WoW, but also mundane things like setting up e-mail, reinstalling programs, organizing between the two hard drives (new one and old one from the Dell), etc.

Some of the pertinent specs:
-ASUS motherboard
-SAPPHIRE X850 XT 256M video card
-Intel P4 3.6 GHz processor
-2 GB DDR2 RAM
-10,000 RPM hard drive
-DVD burner, DVD reader
-bells, whistles

Pictures!





Other news...
Work the last two weeks has been interesting, mostly because there has been twice as much of it! I worked my normal Sundays, but also on the 10th from 6-12 for Jennifer, and on the 14th for Angela.

Last Sunday, a Shih Tzu came in grossly pregnant and in labor. She hadn't had any puppies and Dr. Sarpong wanted to do a C-section but the clients didn't have the money. This might be a good time to mention they 1) didn't know she was pregnant, despite her looking as Dr Sarpong put it "like a tick", and 2) they didn't know how their unspayed female could have become pregnant. So Dr Sarpong gave her a shot to induce and said if she hadn't had a puppy in an hour to bring her back. The next day was the Monday I worked for Angela, and the dog came back in. Still no puppies. Her belly was huge, with big blue veins running all over it. There was no choice to do a C-section (well, euthanasia was an option since they still had no money, but Sarpong wasn't going to do that). We figured all the puppies were dead and were just trying to save mom. But we were quite surprised when two of the six puppies were alive! Unfortunately, the people weren't really thrilled that the puppies made it, and the mom died a few hours after surgery. It's really hard to raise puppies when you know what they are doing, and everyone guessed that those puppies weren't going to make it in their indifferent daddies' care. It sucked.

Piper gets spayed on Wednesday and I'm going to watch. The poor thing - she's always tolerated the vet's office really well so far, but this might be the end of that.

Mom has the bridesmaid dress situation completely under control. The skirts are made for everyone, although unhemmed and unaltered. Red silk fabric pieces are everywhere!

To make up for not posting much, I will try to compensate with pictures!


So I'd randomly put a bandana around Murph's neck that day and he'd allowed it to stay on (which is unlike him). But during his nap, it worked its way completely on its own to sitting on top of his head like a wreath. The pic doesn't show Piper napping a foot away from him. :)


I see this view a lot. Gotta love the life of a cat.


Awwww, animal nap time!


She won't be able to fit under there much longer. Now she sits on the desk and bites my typing fingers.


I knew she and Murphy were kindred spirits!


She really likes this stool.

(FYI: The wedding is less than four months away!)

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Obligatory Update

That thing I mentioned in my last post - about me being excited - it was that Luke and I are building me a new computer system. I want to play WoW in style! And my college Dell just isn't cutting it anymore. I thought I'd be able to post from said new computer before now, but there was a BIOS issue and a damaged video card, and ... well, no new computer yet. Maybe next weekend.

Other news...

- I've picked up a few extra work shifts for people. I did check-ins for Jennifer on Thursday and I'm working Monday night for Angela.
- Piper has lost her baby fangs and is sporting bigger adult fangs. They are impressive. She has discovered the flip top on my trashcan is very exciting. She will be getting spayed on the 23rd, and Dr Myers said I could watch.
- My solo WoW character (as opposed to my cow I play with Bryan) reached level 40 today. He now has a demon horse to ride. Having reached that goal, I need to back off the gaming this coming week to focus on my classes. Particularly if I get the new computer this weekend.
- Matt sent me a beautiful flower arrangement for Valentines on Friday. We celebrated yesterday (by eating Jack's and watching our recorded Thursday night TV shows) and are celebrating tonight since he has a big deadline on Tuesday (which is one of the reasons I'm covering a shift on Valentines). The flowers are a mix of roses and two other flowers (I'm bad at identifying). They are sitting up high because Piper wants to eat them.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

The 12th Man

Our herd is complete now - Belle had her calf yesterday. Jerry had claimed naming rights, and so our little bull calf is named "12th Man." Mom and Dad are going to call him 12. The lucky boy will be exempt from this weekends planned castration party. Midnight and Chief are the guests of honor, although they don't know it yet. :)

Things have been slow but steady over here for me. I subbed Thursday and Friday of last week. Thursday was just another typical day with Ms. Janik's 8th grade language arts class. We read The Diary of Anne Frank play aloud in class.

But Friday! Friday I substituted for the Cube (otherwise known as Mrs. Cubeta, my junior AP English III teacher). She teaches junior and senior English, so for a couple periods I was in charge of kids who were 4 years younger than me. And it was great! The juniors were taking a vocab quiz which only took them about 15 minutes, and then they were allowed quiet free time. And unlike the 8th graders, they took advantage of that time by getting work done. And the volume level stayed reasonable. And there were any boys who I had to say "stop touching each other" to or that threw books or cussed. The worst thing, which was really just odd, not bad, was a boy coming back from the restroom with a volleyball. Also, during lunch I ate with the pre-AP and AP chemistry teachers. They said they'd remember my name for subbing. Teaching chemistry - now that would be fun! After classes were over, I had a wonderful long chat with Mr. Barrows. It was great catching up with him. He cares about his former students so much! He was really delighted with all the stories I had about his former students and what they were doing now. So I came away from the high school no longer fearing it. :)

I hung out with Matt on Friday night and most of Saturday. He's about to be swamped with taxes, so we tried to get as much time in together last weekend as possible. On Sunday, I found out that someone had signed up to cover most of my shift that day. I'd posted it up the week before, thinking no one would sign up for it but hoping they would so I could spend that time with Matt. Well, someone covered it from 6-12, so I only had to go in for 2 hours. And it was the slowest I'd ever seen the clinic, so mostly I just watched TV. Excellent. So I spend the evening over at Matt's. We watched The Gods Must Be Crazy.

Monday was my day of rest. I finished off a new fantasy trilogy I was reading by Jacqueline Carey. I also attempted to work on my "speech of introduction" for my online speech class. But WoW won out and I mostly played that instead. Yesterday I subbed again for Ms. Janik and they read Anne Frank again. During my off period I practiced my speech. Last night I drove out to Richland to give my speech. I met 8 of the other students in my class (we had the choice to send in a tape instead - five or so people went that route) and my instructor. I got an A+ on my speech...but everyone got an A. I was the only one there that wasn't either married or had children. The ages ranged from me and a 23-year-old to a woman who looked about 60-ish. All major ethnic groups were represented as well - quite a different experience from A&M, but I think it'll be a good one. And not very challenging either! My two classes are taking up some time, but so far haven't required too much thinking. I have a lot due this weekend, and how that all turns out will give me a good idea of how the rest of the semester will go.

That's about it. Except for one thing that I'm holding back that is exciting me...but I'll just say there should be pictures up this weekend about it. :)