merry two days after christmas, everyone...i know i've not been around much as of late, but those of you who know me know that things have not been exactly swell lately. christmas was a nice distraction for me, though.

that bright blue thingamabobber is my new leatherman juice CS4 multitool that my parents...err, santa got for me. i've already used it to hang a light from my ceiling and put together a ridiculously heavy bookshelf, so it was definately a great gift. i hope everyone hade a safe and happy holidays, and will have fun and be safe on new years. more later...

goodbye, bellarina...

let me just preface this by saying that belle was the best. dog. ever. she came from the humane society at 3 months old, all giant ears and puppy kisses. a german shepherd/great pyrenees mix, she grew to be one of the biggest lap dogs you could imagine. smart, joyful, attentive, sweet, friendly, protective...she was everything anyone could possibly want in a dog.

last thursday, belle became suddenly and extremely sick--what turned out to be an acute onset of immune-mediated hemolytic anemia. basically, this means that her white blood cells started attacking her red blood cells, limiting the amount of oxygen available to her organs. she had a blood transfusion on friday night, and despite every effort and what i know must have been a fierce fight on her part, she continued to decline. my parents made the difficult but compassionate decision to put her down on sunday afternoon. belle was only 6 years old; she would have been 7 at the end of the month.

i will miss so many things about bella...the way she bounced up and down like she was on a trampoline, the way she gazed at people, the way she loved to go for rides, the way she loved to give kisses and be pet...even her klepto tendencies of stealing toys and groceries from the neighbors :). she was sweet and good and i hope that everyone gets to have a puppy as wonderful as her in their life at some point.

i love you so much, belle-face bear...

click here to see more pictures of belle

!!don't forget to vote tomorrow!!

i don't care who you vote for (okay, that's not entirely true), just get out there and vote. polls are open from 6am to 8pm, so you have no excuse. don't make me come over there and go jukido on your punk ass. oh yeah. you know i will.

a bear votes

i love peanuts specials. there's something so integral to the holiday season (whichever holiday season it may be) about them...i always feel like it must really officially be/almost be a certain time of year based on its respective charlie brown cartoon.

i bought the most ridiculous boots to wear for halloween. they are black and high-heeled and they come up over my knees. but they were $20, so what the heck. and i can always wear them with pants or long skirts the rest of the year, right? okay, probably not. but for $20, eh, so what. hopefully they'll look rockin' with my spiffy black wings. there may or may not be pictures next week to support or refute that. you'll have to check my website next week to see.

i am exhausted. i'm going to go crash on my couch and read national geographic. 'cause that's what the cool kids do. later gators.

i am loving this fall weather...

it's leaves-changing, sweater-wearing, makes me want to bake type weather. i've made two batches of chai-spiced honey cakes since the weekend. yum. i'm wearing a red woolly sweater. cozy. outside my window all the leaves are red and gold, and the sun is sunshiney. lovely. all i need now is some hot chocolate. coffee, i have. hot chocolate, i do not. phooey.

so it appears that the red sox are going to the world series. good for them (sorry dad!). don't get me wrong, i'm a yankees fan, but man, how can you not feel bad for the red sox every now and again? i wish the yankees had won, but the red sox played a better game last night, so that's just the way it is. i'll root for them in the world series...winning will mean more to them than it would have meant to new york anyway. my dad is writing me out of his will right now, i'm sure of it.

i noticed on my hit counter that people actually do bother to come and check this site out, so i figure i owe it to them to update every now an again :). but now i must get back to work. adios, muchachos. go have some hot chocolate.

so in case you hadn't noticed, i barely have time to breathe lately, let alone update my blog & website. this semester is killer in terms of work load. i'm taking 2 classes (groundwater hydrology and modeling of small watersheds), and growing ever-closer to completing the set-up of my wetland. all of the pipe is currently laid, and the majority of my data-collecting equipment is set up. it's really just down to odds and ends at this point (i ought to be able to finish this week), then i can start collecting real data. yee-ha! unfortunately, because school sucks up so much of my time, i had to give my notice at the vet...that was a terribly, awful decision to have to make. i love my job, i love my boss and co-workers...but it's just too much, especially considering that i'm fully funded by uconn and making enough money that i don't technically *need* a second job. besides, mike and i were starting to each forget what the other looked like, we get to spend time together so infrequently. yeah, i know we live together...that's what makes it even more pathetic. so hopefully, this will ease up on a little bit on the stress in my life. wednesday is my last afternoon as a vet tech...gah.

let's see...i got a sewing machine for my birthday, so i've been playing around with that the past week. i made pillowcases this morning, and i've also made a little sack for my ipod and all its accoutrements (i also got an arm band for it for my birthday, and an attachment that lets me tune a radio station to my ipod...very cool).

that's all for now...i'm teaching (eep!) my advisor's wetlands class tomorrow, so i have to go prepare and make sure i don't look like an idiot...

having issues with the pictures on my blog...please excuse any messiness you may come across while i'm fixing this problem.



thank you muchly :)

i'm so glad i found this website. what a brilliant idea...send $10 to some total and complete stranger, and they'll make arrangements for the people of the future to time travel back and get you. fantastic. technology: it boggles the mind. truly, it does.

every grain of sand...equals all the stars and everyone



that's a lyric from a pearl jam song, and the inspiration for the domain name i recently bought, evergrainofsand.org. it's the same site that i had over on angelfire, only now it's at it's own address and is being hosted by dreamhost, which i'm very happy with so far.


in other news...classes start up again on the 30th, so the summer is officially dwindling down to a close. meh. this summer left a bit to be desired--i don't feel as though i got outside nearly as much as i would have liked. i'd like to start making up for it, but my schedule isn't looking too cooperative. one positive thing about the end of the summer is that lisa is coming home soon (she's been out in wyoming since the end of may). she, abbie and i have reached a serious deficit in girls' nights. another thing to make up for come fall...


anywho, must go check on my cakelets (! so cute !) before they burn... :)

this is cracking me up today...

my bad day
 
okay.  friday was bad.  there is potential for this to be a long, drawn out story, but i will spare you and provide you with the "highlights," as they were. 
 

while moving my six sections of 13-ft long pipe out of the building in which they were being stored so that they could be moved up the wetland, i broke a window.
 
upon arriving at the wetland with the pipe, i realize that i don't have enough pipe length.  at first i think that this is because i suck at math and figured out the wrong length using the scale off the plan.  after a bit of measuring i realize that my math is fine; the scale on the plan is wrong.  i go the the hardware store and purchase more pipe. 
 
after hours of digging with a back hoe looking for a pipe junction that is buried 7 feet below the ground, we realize that, once again, the plan is wrong.  the junction is nowhere near where it is drawn on the plan. 
 
we refill the large, 7-ft deep original hole and re-dig a new large, 7-ft deep hole.  yet again, no pipe junction.  this time, someone comes up in a truck and tells us that our hole is too deep and we need to re-fill and get out of there or we'll get fined.  fantastic.  still no pipe junction.

 
i'm thrilled, really.  my masters research is yet again put on hold b/c someone who should have had access to all of the original plans for when the pipe was first laid made me a plan without looking at those original plans.  which gives me, quite frankly, crap to work with.  i could have had a four year old crayon-draw me something more useful.  gahhh!!!
 
on a brighter note, today i'm going to help april and mark paint their new house.  i love painting :).

err...yeah.  it's been about a month. 
 
school is busy busy, going well...tomorrow we install the piping for my wetland, to route all of the roof water down to it.  pretty exciting, since that means i'll actually have data and samples and all that jazz soon.  ish.  also exciting--i found out today that i'll be TA-ing a class in the spring, which gets me full-time funding for the academic year (i'm currently half-time).  more money is always good, and TA-ing ought to look nice on a resume i suppose.  the guy teaching the class is also a friend (a PhD student in my department), so that helps. 
 
in suckier news, all of my cd's were stolen out of the jeep last week.  stinky, but what can you do?  i'm not even sure where/when it happened, which is even more frustrating.  someone suggested that i make a list of all of the cd's that i can think of that were stolen, so i'm doing that and adding on as i think of more.  if you've got any of them and would like to lend them to me so i can burn copies (i mean, listen to them nostalgically without illegally manipulating them in any way, shape, or form),  i'd be much obliged. 
 
i 'spose that's all for now...

i bought a tent!! i'm so excited!

it's a kelty gunnison 2, and it has two doors and two vestibules, and only weighs a little over 5 lbs. i can't wait for it to come so i can set it up and play in it :)

i swear, i'm not a slacker.

really, i'm not. i've just been super busy lately. i know that's a lousy excuse, because everyone's always busy, but it's all i've got. i've been working on getting my research project off the ground, and it's looking like everything could be up and running within a month's time. and that's really, really exciting. i ordered all the pipe and connectors that we're going to need to route the roof runoff to the wetland today, and that should all come in next wednesday. digging and laying the pipe will probably be the following week, and then it's just a matter of getting all the data collection equipment set up and working (oh, and, uh...teaching me how to use it all. minor detail). sooo...it's looking good.

in totally non-school-related news: my little brother's band has a real live GIG next monday! their band (dysthymia) is going to be playing at the webster underground in hartford next monday (6/21) at 6:00 pm. they're only playing 3 songs, but still...very cool. most people's first gigs are at much less cool places than the webster. so yay, rob!

that's all for tonight...i promise, i'll try to be better about updates. i swear, i'm not a slacker. not really.

oooh, look what i got!

mike got me a lovely green iPod mini for our 3 year anniversary. it's even engraved:

Krista Leigh
Love Mike

the only problem is that it requires windows 2000, and i run windows 98. not only that, when i tried to put windows 2000 on my computer, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth and cranky threats that doing so may result in the sudden and complete death of my computer. it's not a very cooperative hunk of plastic. so...i'm getting a new computer :)! i've got some money saved up, and it's been something that i've been saying that i want to do for a while now, so i'm going to do it. all for the sake of my lovely green iPod, which is sitting sadly at home begging to be filled with fun songs to run to. i'll keep you posted as the computer saga unfolds.

trying to enable comments on my blog...it's not working :P

just got back from texas last night...

mike and i spent the last 10 days bumming around texas, hanging out with my cousin liz and her husband, steve. we had a great time...camped on the beach at mustang island, walked around downtown austin (saw the bats at the congress street bridge), did the riverwalk in san antonio, saw the alamo, did some hiking at enchanted rock, hamilton pool, and the westcave preserve. we also saw a couple of movies (Van Helsing and Troy)while we were down there at the alamo drafthouse cinema, which was really cool (why do we have nothing like this in CT?), and had dinner with some friends i had met through a crafty/cooking/decorating/etc web board i've posted on for years. all in all a very good trip. i'll post pictures over on my homepage some time this week, i promise.

my rude awakening upon arrival home: gas here is now over $2 a gallon for low grade. arghh!! hopefully prices won't go up too much more, although i have a feeling that they will since it's not even technically summer yet, and gas is always more expensive in the summer. oh well. what can you do?

i tuned my guitar tonight.

i haven't touched my guitar in ages. i haven't played it in longer; really, in years. not that i was ever really any good. but i always wanted to be. i'd still love to be. there's something about being able to play an instrument, to sit down and create music, that i always wanted to be able to grasp. i used to play around with it a lot; pick out melodies and strum occasional chords, but i was never what anyone would call good. i don't really know what inspired me this evening...but it was satisfying to still be able to at least tune the darned thing, to hum out the octave switch between the E's and alternately tighten and loosen the strings between until everything blended nicely. it's good to know i haven't gone completely tone deaf since i've stopped singing. really singing, i mean. i sing plenty in my car. but it's not the same. i'm afraid my muscial ability is going to atrophy and waste away on me ;)

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


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eeyuck! gah! why do people do things like this to themselves? aieeee! can't.....look.....away......ack!

go huskies! uconn's women winning last night made uconn the first school in division one history to have both the men and women as NCAA champs in the same year. which means lots of excited people on campus. it also means a stunning lack of campus newspapers in my building, because everyone has snatched them up. which means no crossword puzzle for us grad students to do while we eat our lunch. but that's okay. as lisa put it in her celebratory email: "storrs connecticut is the basketball capital of the world!"

(read more)

rain, rain, go away, come again another day...

:P

i know, i know...april showers bring may flowers. but i want sunshine! meh. this weather makes me sleepy. i feel like i could just curl up and take a nap at any given moment. i need sunshine and flowers poking up out of the ground and tiny little leaf buds popping up on the trees. but what do i get? rain. rain, and a chance of snow on monday. snow! people! i already wore a skirt! it cannot snow!

*grumble grumble*

i saw a dog die today.

not that this is anything unusual...as unpleasant as it may be, i see a lot of people's pets die. it's part of my job. the bizarre thing about this is that i saw this dog die twice.

a woman showed up for her appointment this evening with contessa, her little cocker spaniel who had been acting very lethargic and shakey. i went out into the waiting room to get her, and saw that contessa, who was lying on the floor with her head slightly lifted, had left a large puddle of urine. i ducked in back to grab a towel to lift her up with since she was wet. when i got back to the waiting room (literally seconds later), contessa was flat out on her side. the owner appeared unalarmed, but it was apparent to me that the dog was glassy eyed and not breathing. it had literally walked into our waiting room, laid down, and died.

i scooped up the dog and brought her in to the doctor, who listened for a hearbeat, but found none. she checked for ocular reflex, and found none. she listened again with the stethoscope...and there was a faint, erratic heartbeat. and then contessa started to breathe. and then, contessa sat BOLT UPRIGHT. as amazing as this unaided return from death was, it was apparent that the dog was shocky and in poor condition. we rushed her in back to begin stabilizing her, but as we were putting in her catheter, contessa began breathing laboriously. we put her on oxygen, but almost immediately, contessa died. again. this time, for good. i can honestly say that this was the first time i ever saw a dog, or anything, for that matter, die twice. Not fade a little and then come back, but honest-to-goodness lack of breathing, lack of heartbeat, completely limp, flat-out die...and then start breathing again. the body, human or otherwise, never ceases to amaze me.

Came across this on the blogger site today: a blog devoted to poems written entirely from snippets from spam emails. Aside from being a very clever concept, the poems are actually pretty darn well put together. Apparently spam does have some modicum of worth. Who knew?

hoo-hah! i ran 5 miles this morning! i am en fuego! well, to elaborate, i didn't run the *entire* 5 miles, but i ran most of it. had to take a few little walk-breaks here and there (cold air+lungs=eek, i can't breathe!), but in any event, i am still en fuego. and i am loving my new running pants, which are very very comfy and well worth the $40 i spent on them. my long running pants are very comfy as well, but the new ones are nicer for slightly warmer weather. stop laughing. yes, i consider this slightly warmer weather. so what if it was 27 degrees this morning? it was sunny. and besides, it's warmer when you're excercising. so there.

found this link today--it has video files for all of the saturday night live "jeopardy!" skits. frickin' hilarious. 4/15/00 cracks me up every time ("i know kung fu." "for the last time, no you don't."). any whoo, enjoy :)

oooh, by the way, the sticker-maker i mentioned on february 11th is now mine, all mine! [thanks dad :)]. much sticker making will ensue.

"if women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle, when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?" --gloria steinam

*snicker*

in loving memory of my nana

small world...i was just upstairs looking for the departmental secretary, and i ran into a girl that i went to high school with. she was a few years ahead of me, and had done her undergrad here at UConn, but i hadn't seen her in quite a while. it turns out that she decided to come back for grad school, and our departments share a building. she mentioned that she was going to have a "welcome back" party for a guy that we'd both been friends with in high school who is coming back from florida, and that now that she knows where to find me, she wants me to come. so that should be nice, seeing a bunch of old familiar faces. neat-o.

oooh...
this, my friends, is a sticker maker. and i want it.

i'm enthralled. you can stick anything you want through the little machine and turn it into a sticker. well, not anything you want, but any image small enough to fit. there are some larger versions, including this one which can also laminate, but at $9.99 i think this happy little yellow guy is a steal. someday, when i'm rich and famous, it will be mine.

oh yes, it will be mine.

yay! i went running today, after cruelly neglecting my sneakers for lord knows how long. i've been sick the past few days, and it was cold and windy, but man did it feel good to be outside being active. i definately need to schedule running in at least three days a week and get back in the habit of getting out there. it makes me feel ever so much less sloth-like :)

this is the dress that i might be wearing for erika's wedding...isn't it lurvely? she wants danielle (matron of honor) and i (maid of honor) to wear strapless dresses, and i really like this one a lot. it's pretty and fun. it's not definately "the dress" yet (i don't think), but in any event, it'll be something like that. i've never been in a wedding party before (well, almost, but we won't go there ;) ). i can't wait to see what erika picks out for her dress.

weddings are so fun :D

hooray for feeling useful! i spent my entire morning in the water lab running nitrate and ammonia tests on various water samples. it was nice to feel useful, since my project isn't really up and running yet. the testing isn't something i can do on my own yet; there are about a bazillion steps, so i'm sort of relegated to "helper" status for the first several runs. but eventually i'll be on the rotation to do them on my own. that's several months from now, but still. neat. who would have thought that i'd actually enjoy working, for all intents and purposes, in a chem lab? it all changes once you relate it to something interesting, though. it'll be nice when i actually have some sample of my own to run. hopefully in the next few weeks we'll be able to get something started with the wetland. at any rate, i'll keep you posted :)

so that's what's in that truck...

so, when i lived in windham, i used to see the schwan's truck all the time. i vaguely knew that it involved food delivery; mostly ice cream, i thought. honestly, i never really gave it much thought at all. then kelly brought in a catalog to work the other day. i did not realize that these people bring food to your house. like, any kind of food you want. you just call them and say "bring me prime rib and mashed potatoes and green beans," and then the little truck comes to your house and brings you prime rib and mashed potatoes and green beans! holy convenience, batman! i had no idea things like that existed. i can't wait until i have some more money, b/c you bet your sweet bippy i'm going to their website and stocking up my freezer. really. did everyone else know about this? i'm amazed.

this picture makes me smile :)

it's called "you are my sunshine," and it's from a really neat site called, oddly enough, explodingdog.com. you submit a phrase via email, and the guy who runs the site picks some out and draws his own interpretation. it's an interesting concept, and a lot of the drawings are far less straight forward that this one, which, i think anyway, makes them very thought-provoking. worth checking out.

uneventful day--had a snow delay, and when i went in at 10 am for class i found out that it had been cancelled as well. so i hung out in my office drinking tea and eating chocolate pie (the breakfast of champions!) that erik's mom made. yum. went to work, which was dreadfully slow, fed kim's cats, and now i'm home. la la la. off to work on my hydrology homework, and reheat some of the vast quantities of chili that are in my fridge. hooray for 5-qt crockpots :). anyone want some chili?

man, work stunk today. we have a sub-in doctor while my boss is on vacation, and this evening both the sub-in and one of our regular vets, wendy, saw appointments until 7pm. the other tech was only on the schedule until 5:30, and offered to stay until 7, but the woman who does the schedule said we'd be fine with 2 doctors and me. well, sub-in decided that he needed to do x-rays and mondo bloodwork on a dog, on top of seeing the rest of his evening appointments. i told him we had time to do that, as long as we admitted the dog and did it right then and there. so i take the dog in back, set up for the blood draw and x-rays, and wait. no doctor. so i go to see where he is--he went into his next appointment. so now we're all thrown behind. i finally get him in the treatment room, and he tells me that he doesn't know how our x-ray machine works (?!?!?!?), and i have to do the x-rays myself. he graciously offers, however, to put the dog on the table for me. thanks a lot. so i set up, do, and process the x-rays by myself. then i have to tell him exactly how much blood to draw up for each blood test (how are you a vet without knowing this?!??), and what type of blood tube to use. i run all of the in house tests he wants, and prep and fill out lab forms for the ones he wants to send out. now, mind you, there is another doctor who also needs my help, so i have to run back and forth setting up all of sub-in and wendy's other appointments and getting them into rooms. plus, sub-in doctor won't learn how to use our computer system, and we don't use paper files, so i have to write bills for everything he does, plus type in all the exam comments for him. then, he wants me to find him paperwork from a pet he saw earlier in the day (with a different tech) so he can decipher the blood tests he did that i printed out for him because no one else bothered to do it. i don't know what you did with it, buddy! i wasn't even there! gah! i was so happy to leave there tonight...not looking forward to wednesday.

so on tuesday, i'll be a grad student. surreal. after five and a half years, i was just perfecting the art of being an undergrad ;)

uconn's financial aid department is giving me migraines. they mucked up my aid application so much last semester--after telling me over the summer not to send my revised forms into federal because they could do it faster, they completely forgot to do it. i had to remind them. twice. i didn't even get an aid package offered to me until a week after the semester ended. and the package they did offer me was pitifully small. they don't care that i've filed as an independent for the past five years. they don't care that i don't live with my parents, or that my parents don't pay for my schooling. as long as you're under 24 and don't have a degree (which i do now, but last semester i didn't), they assume that your parents are paying for everything for you. so i had to write a letter explaining my financial situation and why i deserve more money than i got, and maybe they'll reconsider the package. in the meantime, i can't register for classes, b/c i still haven't paid for last semester. gah. the woman i spoke with yesterday said that i'd written a good letter, and i should come back on tuesday to see if it had been reviewed. so that's the plan. hopfully they'll give me enough money to cover last semester...i apply for financial aid for a reason, people! i'm b-r-o-k-e! *sigh*

i love my new cell phone.

it's compact. it's user friendly. it has a color screen. it plays the theme from the muppet show when mike calls me. it plays "chariots of fire" when lisa or abbie call me. it plays "take on me" by a-ha when anyone else calls me (i love that video. did you know that? because i do). it lets me call anyone else with verizon for free for up to 1000 minutes a month. since most of the people i know have verizon, i think this is a pretty darn good deal, even considering that mike and i are on the same plan and have to share the minutes. most of all, i am simply overjoyed to have joined the world of The Real Cellphone, where you never have to hear "you have twenty five minutes to complete this call. please hold while your call is being connected," or "your balance is low. re-up today at any verizon or participating seven-eleven location." hooray!

so what are you waiting for? call me so i can bask in the glory of my digitally modulated 80's music!