oh my

Vet school requires a lot of studying. I knew this, of course, but living the reality is craziness. I think the part I didn't really comprehend was how awful it is to go back to school and have to be in class 8:00-5:00 (even worse than grades 1-12) and *then* have to think about eating/studying/sleeping/having a life. Eating has proven a particularly hard task. What did I eat today? So far...a bowl of Lucky Charms, a Luna bar (thanks to Em), 3/4 of a grilled cheese sandwich, one glass of apple juice, and the heel of a loaf of banana bread. Hmm. Yesterday I finished on a strong note with a pot pie, but lunch was half a sandwich and a Snickers. I need to work on this.

So other news...I saw a horse being embalmed today in the back room of the anatomy lab. I think it was the first of the batch they will be working on for us to use next year. Apparently they are horses that were on their way to become dog food. I did a heartworm test in micro lab today. In anatomy we skinned the forearm; well, Brandon did. My lab partners are so cute. Two boys (Brandon and Justin), which is very rare, and they are both from rural places, wanting to go into large animal practices when they graduate. They are also pretty darn smart, and we have all come up with brilliant ideas for learning things that we've shared with each other. Oh, and keep this on the downlow, but Justin was the "Masked Rider" last year for Texas Tech (the mascot-type person on the black horse). Isn't that cool?

Other class news...I don't really have any. Next week will be big - I have a group thingy involving a live horse and exam, a histology exam, and on Friday, my first anatomy test. Eek! Oh, and Matt gets to spend Sunday night here too this weekend thanks to Labor Day (I of course have class on Monday, which stinks). Oh, and the first A&M game is this weekend. I got seats in the gimp section so we can sit down in case I have a seizure or whatever.

Okay, microbiology and histology are calling my name. *wave*

Week 2

Tomorrow begins my second week of vet school, and I'll admit - I'm nervous. Of course, last Monday wasn't exactly what I expected so this should go a little smoother. I got some studying done this weekend...not as much as I would have liked, but much more than I would have done in undergrad, so hopefully that's enough.

I had a fun weekend with Matt. Yesterday we slept in and got a bunch of errands done. Funny how those stack up when one cannot drive. We went to Copy Corner to get my class notes bound, then Old Navy where I got the best pajama pants ever, along with jeans, a shirt, and a skirt. (a skirt! I know! if I see one I like, I must get it since that happens about every 5 years) We went to Home Depot to get some keys made and to buy some other things. We had lunch at Abuelo's ("Mexican Food Embassy") and it was pretty good. I had: "medallions of chicken breast stuffed with chorizo, poblano and cheese, and lightly fried, served with refried beans and papas con chile." Matt had cheese enchiladas. And then the grocery store and home. That afternoon I made some banana bread and studied while Matt worked on some work he'd brought with him from Dallas. We had a laid-back evening, eating dinner at home while watching Ocean's Eleven. After dinner, we had a basketball rematch, only this time the game was "H-O-R-S-E" and Matt shut ME out. It was tragic.

This morning I couldn't sleep in, so I played around in WoW for an hour or so while Matt slept. It is really bothering me that my paladin is 57.7...so I am trying to nudge her to level 60 by playing her every now and then. I spent the morning studying while Matt did some yard work and watched tv. We had lunch together watching one of our TiVoed "Dirty Jobs" and then Matt helped quiz me on the bones of the thoracic limb. This afternoon we had to run over to campus for me to pick up my sports pass, and we poked around in the MSC a bit before coming back home. Then it was sadly time for Matt to head back to Dallas. :( Emily got back from her weekend in Katy with Rick, though, so I wasn't alone for long. She starts school tomorrow, her senior year! Whoop!

PS: Luke hooked me up with the pictures that Susie took when we were in Breckenridge last month and they are now included in the Breckenridge 2006 album on our gallery.

Miscellany

I had a lovely conversation with Brittany tonight. Remember Brittany? Girl with the trumpets? So yeah, she had a busy summer and we sort of made it through the whole thing without chatting. It was great to catch up with her. For those people who are following this budding professional musician, I'd just like to point out that she has a new blog that she is actually updating! Check it out in the link in the sidebar.

Matt is here!!! We just had some practice down at the new basketball court (and I beat him in a mini-game 10-0). Now we're sweaty...it is like 110% humidity out there.

Did anyone ever wonder how it went when I met those people from my World of Warcraft guild last Friday? Well, it went well...there was lots of drinking involved on their part, which was understandable since they are old friends from high school and one of them had just graduated from college. But, they were nice, and while I don't think they are my new best friends, I am glad I got to meet them in real life! We're still pushing for a Texas-wide guild party sometime soon, to include all of us plus the Killeen and Tyler people. =P

I am delicate

This is what happens (I am guessing) when you slam your arm into your seat during a seizure. This shiner is my souvenir from the first day of vet school excitement. Wee!

Unrelated sidenote: The pictures that Matt and I took in Breckenridge are now up and captioned on our Gallery. Also featured are pictures of Piper and Nellie, um, getting to know one another in the duplex. :)

Off to a Slightly Rough Start

The good news is that my fellow first years know who I am. The bad news is that this is because I had a seizure after the first class of my vet school career. AHHH! Yeah, pretty embarrassing/annoying/not cool. Now that I have your attention, I'll back up. Matt and I scurried around all weekend getting stuff for the duplex, unpacking and whatnot. Mid-day on Sunday Mom and Leslie rolled into town for the day, arms full of BBQ. We had a lunch of Peggy Sue goodness and fresh veggies, and then Matt had to get back to Dallas. We puttered around, talking about curtains and decor, and then Mom altered some of my clothes for school (hemming, darting, etc). Then all of a sudden it was time to go to bed - it was a school night!

Monday dawned bright and clear and Emily drove me to school. I had anatomy first thing at 9am. We have almost all of our lectures in the same room (201) and Monday they were all there - anatomy, then physiology, then microbiology. After anatomy, which was just going over the syllabus, we had a 10 minute break before the next class. So...one minute I'm sitting there waiting for the next lecture, the next...I feel really tired and can't keep my eyes open. The next thing I hear is words I'm beginning to really hate "Cameron, do you know what happened? You had a seizure." My response: "aw crap." So yeah, there were four paramedics/EMTs kneeling in the aisle next to me (convenient I sat on the aisle). I get to answer the fun questions like "what day is it," "what year is it," "how old are you" <-- I couldn't answer that last one, while my classmates are pretending to not watch and I'm about ready to climb under my seat cushion and hide. So yeah, I got helped down the stairs in between two paramedics, their hands under my arms, and out the door into the ambulence. Oh, and I made class start 10 minutes late. I have maybe 10-15 minutes of unaccounted time while I guess I was either seizing or totally out of it.

So I got taken to College Station Medical Center...and unlike my seizures in Colorado, I don't have Matt riding shotgun with me. When I get there, I get transferred into a room and I call Susie to ask if she can get ahold of Johnny or Cindy to come to the hospital. That pretty much activated the network so eventually Matt, Emily, my parents, Johnny and Cindy, etc all knew. Johnny was able to come up to the hospital right away which made me feel a lot better. There's just something about having a dad with you, even if it isn't your dad, that is very comforting. Eventually Emily came up too - the College Station hospital was way slower than the one in Colorado. All they ended up doing was giving me fluids and rechecking my blood work, which didn't really show anything remarkable, with one exception to be mentioned later. I called Dr. Z while I was waiting too, to tell her, and she was equally displeased about the whole thing. So we made a game-plan and I eventually got released. Emily took me home and we watched TV ("50 First Dates," to be exact, which was actually kind of good). In the meantime, Dad was driving down to College Station to be with me. :) That afternoon I worked on finding out what all I had missed in my classes (I missed two lectures, histology lab, and anatomy lab). Mostly it was going over the syllabus, so it was actually a good day to miss content-wise. I started by e-mailing Dr. Hoffman, my faculty mentor and anatomy prof, not to mention the guy who called 911 =P I told him the extremely short version of my recent medical excitement; he passed it on to the profs and then I e-mailed them myself.

On Tuesday I was rather reluctant to show my face because I was "that first year who had the seizure." I went to the Dean's office and they were extremely nice...said there was no need to do anything more, that the absence was already taken care of. So that was good. After my two lectures (histology, physiology) I took my three hour break before labs to meet with my microbiology professor and Dr. Hoffman. Yet again I was struck by how *nice* all the faculty and administration are. There were a few more times that I met people who sort of had that "ah-ha" moment when I introduced myself, but generally it wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. I also had a nice card from some person I don't even know in my box (a fellow 1VM). In the afternoon I had histo lab, which was hard having not had a lecture yet. But, I shared a double-headed scope with Christy and tried to catch up. Histology seems not hard but not interesting and it is a pretty new subject for me. So I don't know how it'll go. The next and final class of the day was "Clinical Correlates." In this class we will do a lot of hands-on stuff, including "husbandry" of two animals for a week each over the course of a year. I have a cow and horse along with my group. It's going to be an interesting class I think. We will also learn to take histories and do case study-type things, which will be neat but probably also a lot of work. So finally at 5 the day was over - Dad came to pick me up and we went to an early dinner at Ozona Grill. Our food sucked. Then I had to get back to study.

Yesterday was a LOOONG day. It started at 8 with Professional Development. The teacher was the acting president of A&M a while back and sounds like the elder George Bush. It was really boring and I think most of it will be. Luckily it won't be too much work. Then anatomy, physiology, and microbiology lectures, followed by our one hour lunch break. The afternoon labs were microbiology (we tested samples for Brucellosis and Equine Infectious Anemia) and anatomy. I met my anatomy group - two guys! - Justin and Brandon. They are two West Texas boys, from Abeliene Christian and Tech. Dr. Hoffman put one person who'd had A&M anatomy with people who hadn't, so I'm the most experienced, which is a bit intimidating. But the guys are really nice and so far we're working well together. We jumped right in with our dog, and started working on the thoracic limb until 4:40 when it was time to clean up and call it a day. Dad took a bunch of us to dinner at Chedders. It was me, Emily, Johnny, Cindy, Danny, Chris, Katie, Stephanie, and a friend of Katie's who is living with them this year. Then, again, it was time to study! But I gave up early and went to bed. This proved to be a mistake because...

...today I had my first quiz. It was via our little remote controls we have to carry around, and it was in histology lab. We had to identify some different kinds of cells, and since this was a topic I was saving for the weekend to learn...I got 1/3. Oops. Luckily, even though that does count toward my grade, it isn't a big part and there are a few bonus questions I could get to make up. So yeah, histology is sort of boring. But anatomy is a fabulous way to end the day (seriously) because we don't have to rush out of there or stink up our next class or anything. We got our thoracic limb off and reveiwed. We finished early but just called it a day because we need to go home and do some personal studying before moving on. I also got my bone box (remember from my undergrad? It is the same thing. Actually, my undergrad one was in better shape). Emily picked me up and we went home. We had some lasagna Mom and Leslie had brought for dinner, and I, guess what, studied! Then I took a break to write this, and now I need to wrap it up and get back to work.

Matt gets in tomorrow night, which makes me happy. He is bringing work with him so I can study and he can account but at least we'll be together. It was rough going though the medical thing this week without him, although I was lucky to 1) have Uncle Johnny and Emily to come to the hospital, and 2) have Dad come down (he went back today) to make sure I was okay.

The exception I mentioned in the blood work? Yeah, so the doctor said my creatinine was high and nothing else was, and that meant I might only have one kidney. Isn't that random? I have to go see a regular doctor and find out sometime. That'd be a good thing to know.

Return of the Pictures

I will endeavor to write about this weekend and my first day of school (eek) when I get home tomorrow. In the meantime I would like to inform you that I am finally updating our picture website with some new photos. Check it out!

Day 2!

One interesting thing I have noticed during all the talks by vets at orientation. At least half of the vest said they ended up doing something different than they wanted to do when they started school. (examples: dog & cat -> birds, small animal -> large animal, practice -> teaching)

We started out today with breakfast again, but I ate beforehand to avoid potentially bad food and the line. At 8:30 we had a couple more vets present cases to us... for fun I guess. Then at 9 we spend thirty minutes going over policies and procedures in our "Professional Student Handbook." The only thing that was fun about that was that we have an "audience response system," where we each have a remote thing with which we can answer multiple choice questions. The fun part was choosing the blatantly wrong answer, like in "which of the following is true according to your handbook?" Answer: "each student is allowed one unethical act during their four years in vet school." Some people also chose E, which was blank.

At 9:30 we heard from reps from several student organizations, including SCAVMA (Student Chapter of American Veterinary Medical Association; I am already a member), a class BBQ put on by the second years every year, Open House (the huge vet school open house they have every year, which is super-cool and totally student-run), and Pet Fare. Pet Fare is a place open during our lunch where we can buy insanely cheap Purina and Hill's pet food. The highest price is $9 for a 40# bag. !!!

At 10 we were released for 45 minutes to peruse the tables in the hallway set up by a bunch of student clubs/organizations. I was really interested in some of them: the Student Veterinary Emergency & Critical Care Society (SVECCS), the Pathology Club, and the American Veterinary Society for Animal Behavior. The cool thing about SVECCS, besides that the president is Kimberly Martin, a HP grad, is that they have programs called "SA ICU Program" and "Large Animal Emergency Team." In these, you follow a 4th year around during their emergency-type rotation for a 5-hour shift (7-midnight) about once a month. But you actually get to participate to a certain extent. I'd really like to do the large animal one, since I already have a fair amount of small animal emergency experience. During this time I also got a bunch of free stuff, like a water bottle, some pens, candy, cat food, highlighters, and colored pencils.

I didn't need the whole 45 minutes to look at the tables, so I went to try and find the locker room. I couldn't though, but a nice vet student passing by helped me out. When I asked her, she didn't just tell me - she walked me into it, gave me some advice on which lockers to pick, and was generally very nice. It made me happy to think that the upperclassmen are like her! I hope they all are, anyway.

At 10:45 we talked about the honor code, then had a presentation from the Texas Veterinary Medical Association and got a free medical dictionary from them. Lunch was at noon, catered from Blue Baker. I made sure to be in the front of the line this time, which resulted in me being all done at 12:15 with 45 minutes to kill. I chatted with Christi, the girl from the organic labs, and her friend from physiology. After lunch we had a never-ending talk from the computer guy. We were all restless at that point and he talked about 5 times as much as was necessary. But finally we got released, and now it is the weekend!

I'm about to go to a little get-together with, well, four people from my World of Warcraft guild (one is starting grad school here in Comp Sci, her husband obviously lives here too, and a guy from Austin and a guy from Huntsville are driving in). In my mind, I'm seeing Atsukana the hunter, Istavon the mage, Doune the warlock, and Dugloth the warrior. =PSo we'll see how it goes. Matt gets in tonight to visit, and he will rescue me if necessary.

"Professionalism, Communication, and Life-long Learning"

*deep breath* This is going to be a long one. =P

First, though, a bit about Tuesday and Wednesday. We spent Monday night with the Roberts, since we had no bed or any furniture really in the apartment. We got up bright and early on Tuesday and drove our Budget truck back to the apartment to perform a final few tasks before the move. Mom and Dad met us there and picked up some things we were returning and helped us move the electronics (including the big tv) into the truck. I did some final cleaning (like Piper's litterbox), we checked our mail one last time, I turned in our keys to the office, and away we went. Piper was sitting in the middle of the truck cab, her cage set upon my backpack. She was pretty good the whole time, just meowing occasionally. We let her out a couple times and generally she was so scared that she was happy to return to her carrier. We got to College Station around lunchtime, and the carpet was all done on our side except for Emily's closet. So, we started unloading...and sweating. It was 107 on Tuesday. Yikes. While Emily and Matt struggled with fun things like the couch, I painted the baseboards. :) In the afternoon Matt had to take me to get my picture taken for vet school. It was insanely easy - I walked in, picked up my name off a table, sat down, *click,* I reviewed the picture, said "that's fine," and walked out. Then we finished unloading and I started messing around with unpacking boxes and arranging.

On Wednesday, Matt and I went to Target and the grocery store. We were able to find most of what we needed. Some things we couldn't get - a shelf, one of those plastic things that goes on your carpet to roll your desk chair on - and some we needed to wait - curtains are waiting for Mom and Leslie's expertise. The grocery store was crazy, having to almost totally stock up the kitchen. The only things I had moved were spices and some basics that were worth holding on to. Then we got that all settled and I worked on unpacking the kitchen. Also on Wednesday we got our cable internet and Directv hooked up...the Directv has a couple stories with it. 1) They screwed up our order and didn't bring a third receiver, so we couldn't get tv in our room. But the guy hinted that he'd set it up so if we bought a receiver at Best Buy, the cords were all set to just plug it in. He also left his cell phone number =P and 2) Matt talked him into not switching our local channels from Dallas to College Station. The benefits of this are twofold: we don't have to watch the ridiculously crappy local stuff they have here, and Matt gets to watch Dallas sports instead of Houston sports. He was happy. Emily took Matt to the airport in the afternoon, and I took the time to play on the internet and mess around with some more unpacking. When I checked my vet school e-mail I finally found out what time I had to be at school for orientation the next day. For a graduate program, some of the things with A&M have been awfully disorganized it seems!

I woke up this morning with close to "first day of school" jitters. Emily was kind enough to transport me to the vet school, and I arrived before the 8am scheduled continental breakfast hosted by the US Army Houston Health Care Team (they want us to be all that we can be). Again things seemed disorganized, because we were lined up forever going through to get our food. We also got our folders with our orientation schedule, our class schedule, a bunch of other papers, our lab assignment (A or B - our lectures are all together as a class but we are split into 2 groups for labs to halve the size; I am 'B'), and our name tags. We have to wear our name tags all the time, and every class has a different color, so you can just glance at it and know if they are a 1VM, 2VM, etc. Ours is maroon! Then the real orientation started. I'll go through the day...

• 8:30 - Welcome
• 8:45 - "Expectations of the professional" by the Associate Dean, Dr. Rogers. She was really cool and has a fun sense of humor. She's only been in this position since July, but has been with A&M for decades. This is where we learned that the title of this post is our class' motto of sorts. Joy.
• 9:00 - CVM Faculty Mentoring Program explanation, and introduction of the professional program staff. There are about 8 students assigned to each faculty mentor. Mine is Dr. Hoffman, my anatomy prof.
• 9:15 - "Communication Skills" - This was a lecture by one of the large animal docs. He was really funny...had a thick Lubbock accent and amusing Power Point slides. Unfortunately it was a 45 minute long talk and thus inevitably eventually boring.
• 10:00 - break!
• 10:15 - "Overview of the DVM Curriculum & Introduction of the Fall Semester First-Year Faculty" - this was little more than "that's Dr. Hoffman, your anatomy professor, that's Dr. Landis, your physiology professor..."
• 10:30 - two different vets each talked about a case, one large animal and one small, where they could point out ... I guess ... why you learn stuff in vet school? I don't really know the point. But the large animal guy was hilarious in his talk about parturition hypocalcemia, aka milk fever.
• 11:00 - a talk by a Hill's Pet Nutrition guy (heard of "Science Diet" pet food?). So apparently A&M is quite cozy with Hill's, and therefore they gave him a whole hour to blabber to us. He showed us some propaganda on why the founder of Hill's is a saint and hero and about the beginning of Hill's. More puzzling was the second video, which was about a photographer for National Geographic. It had nothing to do about vet med directly; it was about creativity. It was really boring and the narrator kept faking us out by pretending to start wrapping it up and then going off and repeating himself ten more times. Yikes.
• 12:00 - LUNCH! Woot! Paid for by...Hill's! It was enchiladas. I had cheese. This was after standing in a line for 40 minutes. I have no idea why this wasn't planned out better. I did get a free backpack, which is actually quite nice, and a nutrition textbook that I will apparently use in second year. We ate lunch with our faculty mentors.
• 1:15 - "Summer Veterinary Student Research Fellowship Programs" ... You can do this after your first or second year. It is a program intended to introduce research skills to students with no advanced science degree. It is also all summer long and I don't think I would want to give up my whole summer for it.
• 1:30 - DVM/MBA Program - you can get your DVM and MBA in five years. You either take a year off after your second year, using the 12 months plus a summer internship-type thing, to get your MBA, or you can do it in the 12 months following your 4 years of vet school. Um, no thank you. Great program, no interest here =P
• 1:45 - US Army talk. Basically selling us on applying for their really rare scholarships you can get after first year. What happens is they pay all your school costs, give you a month stipend of $1300+, make you a 2nd Lieutenant, and then you have to 1) serve a year of active duty for each year they paid your way and do 45 days of training stuff during the summer. But as I said, the few spots they have each year are highly sought after. And I don't think Matt wants me to join the Army :)
• 2:00 - Post-DVM Clinical Training - an A&M vet told us about internships and residencies and how to start preparing on day one to be able to get one, if you are interested in specializing. These are very competitive.
• 2:15 - Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital - I get 20% off on animal health care. Score.
• 2:30 - break :)
• 2:45 - Support services. Um...yeah.
• 3:00 - Survival Skills for Vet Students - this was a talk and Q&A with 5 4th year vet students. They talked about notes, reading the book, their hardest class, and stuff like that. Nothing too informative for me, but not boring either.
• The End

So... it was a busy day! I only saw one person in my class that I knew at all. It was a girl that started working in the organic labs a few weeks before I left. It is a little weird because she was two classes behind me, but that's what everyone is who went straight from undergrad to vet school. I was surprised I didn't recognize anyone else at all.

Emily picked me up and we had some errands to run. Well, I did. I had to go get my student ID (another line to wait in) and pick up my parking pass (line there too). And a trip to Albertsons to get prescriptions filled (no line, but the guy was insanely slow). Then we had time to go to the duplex for a snack before heading back to the vet school so I could pick up my $600+ in supplies and books. Emily is a saint. I also got to talk to a guy named Clint who I knew from my Animal Nutrition and Animal Science classes in fall of 2003. He went straight into vet school so he's a 3rd year now, and I knew he was around because he knows Uncle Johnny from their church. Quite the coincidence. Then I finally got to go home, eat dinner, and take my shoes off! Tomorrow is more of the same, but we get out earlier.

The cats are not doing well so far with each other. Nellie is pretty calm and usually only hisses in response to Piper...but Piper, well, she's not nice. She hisses preemptively any time she passes a room. She also has claimed the kitchen as hers and is often found sleeping under the dining table or on top of the cabinets above the fridge. Hopefully she'll simmer down soon. She really needs to chill a bit, because she's nervous even when Nellie is nowhere near her.

Matt comes tomorrow night. Yay :) That's the only thing that made me feel okay to let him leave on Wednesday. I thought "when I wake up on Thursday, I can say 'Matt comes tomorrow.'"

EDIT: I forgot a major part! My schedule. It may not be final, but this is what I have...

• Monday
• Lectures - anatomy (9-9:50), physiology (10-10:50), microbiology (11-11:50)
• Labs - histology (1-2:50), anatomy (3-4:50)
• Tuesday
• Lectures - histology (8-8:50), physiology (9-9:50)
• Labs - histology (1-2:50), clinical correlates (3-4:50) (this may not be a lab...)
• Wednesday (basically Monday +1)
• Lectures - professional development (8-8:50), anatomy (9-9:50), physiology (10-10:50), microbiology (11-11:50)
• Labs - histology (1-2:50), anatomy (3-4:50)
• Thursday (Tuesday +1)
• Lectures - histology (8-8:50), physiology (9-9:50)
• Labs -physiology (10-11:50), histology (1-2:50)
• Friday (awesome!)
• Lectures - physiology (10-10:50), microbiology (11-11:50)
• No labs generally, but my anatomy lab tests are scheduled for Friday afternoons

Moved In

We are all moved in and have internet. Emily just left a while ago to take Matt to the airport. :(

I would type more but I'm sleepy and also need to stop poking around the internet and try to get something done. Expect a better update either tomorrow or later tonight.

Bye for Now

As soon as this post gets published I will be dismantling my computer for the move. We get internet down in College Station (if all goes as planned) on Wednesday. So don't expect me to be able to receive any e-mails before then. In the meantime you can call me or Matt.

Tired (Countdown: 2 days)

Friday evening Matt and I drove down to College Station to work on the duplex. When we arrived, we hung out with Emily at the duplex until John, Susie, and Luke arrived around ten. Since it was getting late and we had a long day ahead of us, we left Emily and scurried on over to Uncle Johnny and Aunt Cindy's house where we were spending the night. On the way, we saw a mommy and baby deer nursing just off the road and an armadillo 3 feet from where we parked the car! We chatted with the Stimsons for a while and then sought our beds.

Matt and I left the house at the early hour of 7:00 to get to work, stopping on the way for donuts and unintentionally running into cousin Danny who works there. That was a fun surprise =P (which was even better when he hooked us up with our breakfast for free). For the next 11 hours we worked insanely hard. It would have been a challenge anyway, but it was definitely harder because the boys left their side pretty trashed. That's the side we're moving into, so we definitely had incentive to get it fixed up. Matt and I painted our bedroom and Emily painted hers ("bubble" and "blonde," respectively). I also ripped up all the cords that were still in place and fixed to the walls from the internet setup, painted doorframes, helped clean Emily's bathroom, and my biggest accomplishment: cleaning the refrigerator. That thing was, to put it bluntly, nasty. There was half a bottle's worth of chocolate syrup spilled in the bottom, debris everywhere, caked on food on every shelf, a sausage fallen behind the drawers. The freezer had had more than one coke explode in it, among other nastiness. I took everything shelf out of the fridge, disassembled anything that I could, and scrubbed, soaked, and clawed my way through. It took forever, was disgusting, and I'm very glad I got it done. I wouldn't have had time to clean it that well if I had waited until moving in. The others (John, Susie, Luke, Matt, Emily, and her boyfriend Rick) worked on cleaning, installing new towel racks, and painting the rest of the duplex (just "Sahara white"). We didn't even get to touch the other side because the boys side was such a disaster area.

We all ate at Texas Roadhouse after we were done and then we all rode back with John, because Matt and I had come in my car and we were leaving it there. Today Matt and I woke up tired and sore, but we have a full day ahead of us with packing and cleaning here at the apartment. I am going to be so tired next weekend!

The Countdown (6 days)

In under a week we'll be in College Station. Well, "we" probably more accurately would apply to Emily and me, not Matt and me. This time next week he will be on his way back to Dallas. :/ The weekend was full of packing - Matt did a ton on Saturday and Sunday. In the later parts of the day I went to Molten Core with my guild. I'm trying to squeeze out the last ounce of summer :) Sunday afternoon I also attended Dr. Lavender's baby shower. It was incredibly weird to be amongst 10 women who all had kids and that's all the conversation was about. Yikes! So not ready to even think about that! I did get to see Sarpong's new (7 weeks now) baby Eloise though, so that alone made it worth it.

On Monday "the Moms" as Matt and I refer to them (that'd be my mom and his) came over and helped pack up basically the entire kitchen. And I have a wall full of boxes to prove it. If I'd done it on my own, it would have taken me six times as long, and I bet half the stuff would arrive in College Station broken. So that was a great help. Lest you think we worked too hard, we did take a break for Sonic in the middle of the day though :) Yesterday was more packing with breaks to relax (I got my druid to level 50, because I'm sure you care!). And today was more of the same. Tomorrow? You can guess.

So Monday was my last day to take my anti-convulsants. Everything has been going great with that, and I definitely have more energy. My fingers (and quite a few others I believe) are crossed that I will continue to be seizure-free. At this point I am very optimistic that it really was just an altitude thing in Colorado and that I should be just ducky.

Piper is going insane with the packing; she is very concerned. She lets us know this by meowing loudly and often, being a brat, and trying to injure us. She is such a little kid sometimes :)

I like my phone. Right now I have it set so certain high-frequency callers have their own songs from my mp3 collection as their ring. The 'rents = Daft Punk "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" (for no reason other than that song makes me happy), Matt is "Character Zero" by Phish (again, don't read anything into the title), the Roberts have some Saint-Saens "Carnival of the Animals", and everyone else is "Scatman" by Scatman John (I love that song).

*cheer*

I'm writing this post from my computer. Yay! The water cooling pump (the new one, fresh from the company) didn't work...again. But Luke just brought back the fan and put it back in place so I can at least use my computer again. It is so much more comfortable typing this post on my lovely keyboard, which rests on a desk, with me sitting in a chair.

Yesterday afternoon Mom and I went shopping for vet school clothes. We went to Target first and I got 3 Mossimo polo shirts (so now I have 5 total...navy, black, rust/maroon-ish, blue, and brown). Then we went to North Park and I got 2 pairs of shoes at Dillards. One pair are brown, with laces, that are nice enough for school but comfy like athletic shoes. And the other pair are dressier, brown sandal-type things with ankle straps and flowerish cut-outs at the toes, and a bit of a heel. They are pretty squishy and go with dressier stuff I have, and any time I actually *like* dress shoes I should buy them because those moments are few and far between. So yeah, those are some ridiculous descriptions, but it's all I can think of. Then we went to Gap and I got some khaki pants that I really like and a nice brown leather belt. =D Mission accomplished! Mom came back to the apartment with me afterwards and we talked about packing strategies.

Then last night Luke came over and worked on the computer. He's been so patient with all the travails, it's very impressive. After that, Matt and I dined on some excellent Kraft 3-cheese macaroni he made. We ended up staying up kind of late working on duplex stuff, specifically setting up internet and TV for down there. Today Matt went off to work and I reveled in having my computer back. And what better way than dropping in and saying hello to my World of Warcraft guild. =D I have been away for more than a month, and I was missed. That felt nice. Also, Zetarg (my level 60 orc warlock that grew up on Silver Hand back when Bryan played WoW with me, if you don't keep up with this sort of thing) moved over to the server (Khaz Modan) that hosts my level 60 priest Hyacith. Blizzard now offers a service where you can move characters between servers for a price, with limitations. I just thought it made sense to get him over to a server with my guild and the characters I play more. So that's kind of fun. I'd pretty much given up on the chap, but he may get some more attention now. A little. =P

Matt will be home soon; it is his last Friday where he gets out at 3pm. That's okay though - he doesn't have all that many Fridays left where he has to go to the office at all!

Musings, mostly on moving

I like it when Matt comes home for lunch. We watched Full House from 11:30-12:00. Who wouldn't enjoy that?

I have been wondering why Matt and I were so quick to obey the doctor in Colorado when he told us I needed to "get out of Dodge." I mean, I know it was serious, but upon reflection, why didn't we just fill the prescription for the anti-convulsants and stay our other week? I guess the seizures were a scary enough problem that we were scared into doing the responsible thing, but...it didn't even occur to me at the time to question whether we could fudge it a little and not leave immediately. *shrug*

I packed up my winter clothes today in my big blue suitcase (the rolling kind, a wedding present, a great piece of luggage). Piper is concerned. She got in the suitcase while I was gathering clothes, as if to say "tell me what is going on, and don't forget me!" But I think she has no idea, except that a change of some kind is coming. She's going to miss Matt at least as much as me, I think, during our six weeks apart. At least she'll have Emily to give her attention and Nellie to torment.

I have an entire banker's box full of cords and cables. You never know when you're going to need something, so I don't throw them away, but...it may be getting a bit excessive. At least I finally tossed out the cords that ended in chewed on, non-functional ends (the work of a certain orally-fixated feline).

My poor battered PS2 box. It has tenderly embraced my PS2 in its move from Dallas (M&D's)-> the dorm, the dorm -> the CS apartment, the CS apartment -> the duplex, the duplex -> M&D's, M&D's -> the apartment. I am glad I've hung onto it. You can't beat the original styrofoam packing for peace of mind. When I finally give away, sell, or chunk my PS2, it'll be in its original box. =P

Books suck to move. At least most of them are paperbacks.

Luke is scheduled to come and fix my computer tonight. It'll be nice to not have to compute while losing feeling in one's butt cheeks from sitting on the floor.

UPS can kiss my...

I finally got my new cell phone. It's lovely :)

Today was nice. I spent the morning reading, and then Stephanie came from the clinic and whisked me away to Peggy Sue for lunch (everyone say hi to Stephanie, she discovered my blog today). I had sliced brisket on jalapeño cheese bread, spinach, and fried okra. And a root beer float. Yum! Then I went back to the clinic with Steph to spend the afternoon trying to be good company and, you know, not have seizures and whatnot (with success). So that was lots of fun and I thoroughly enjoyed getting out of the apartment.

Tomorrow is shopping with Mom at North Park for "professional" looking clothes for vet school (I'll try to not wilt under the strain of shopping...it pains me). And then, at some point, I think Luke is coming to try and fix, again, my water-cooling system on my computer. Hopefully the pump isn't gimpy this time. =D